Like a lot of kids I had dreams of being something one day, something larger than life. My dreams led via bicycle almost daily to the local Long Beach library by my house where I would pore over books on space exploration, astronauts and anything NASA related. I was consumed by it, I had visions of joining the Air Force, going through their program and enlisting as one of the pioneering elite. It never seemed like it was anything impossible, that is until I talked to my 2nd grade teacher about it. We had just done a school-wide vision test and it was determined that I needed glasses. My teacher said that they didn’t accept pilots who didn’t have 20/20 vision and after that I was done. It faded from memory and I even accepted it later on when we did these standardized “what are you good at and what should you be” tests and it stated I would be well suited to operate a bull-dozer, “ok” I thought, I could do that.
But it never really, truly, faded from memory, it was reignited when I watched the horrific events of the spaceship Challenger with crew of some of the happiest astronauts I had ever seen. It was the same flight which featured school teacher Christa McAuliffe (even thinking about her still brings tears to my eyes so many years later), I can never get her smile out of my mind as she waved to the crowd on her way aboard the ship. The smile stood out as I watched with the other kids in class, seeing what looked like a typical launch and thinking about how excited these heroes of mine must have been. Until the fateful events took place and we all watched horrified as the pieces of the ship burned into the air like meteors. My teacher was as shocked as us, the gravity of the situation weighing down, she stood there unmoving as if waiting for some miracle to happen. She snapped out of it, quickly walked over to the television set and switched it off, I remember crying, I remember even the teacher was red eyed and suddenly so tired looking. Something died that day, I never remember the astronauts being as happy, the program being as exciting. It felt like with the death of those poor souls, the soul of the program for me died too, it became a sterile, faceless body which garnered a quick read of a paragraph or two in the paper or online but nothing more. That is until Columbia went down. I remember it wasn’t that long ago, I was doing a commissioned piece of graffiti on a large 12×25′ canvas for this club called “South” and I remember writing the name of the ship on the side of the piece as some kind of remembrance for those who had fallen that day, I remember the sinking feeling in my gut and the sudden spark of those dreams long since shelved.
Now with Atlantis having recently touched down for the final time. and with it the program we had all expected so much from coming to a close I can’t help but feel sentimental. I know private companies are picking up where NASA is leaving off, I know even the government has continued plans into space though most of it seems strategic and in the name of national defense. But it’s not the same. It’s more commercial now, less innocent, something that feels like it will be manipulated by the capitalistic corporations that have made so many other things into commodities to be traded and watched on the stock market. Regardless of what the future holds for NASA after this past Thursday what it was will be missed. The 7 man/women crews, the massive rockets, the iconic ship and epic burn into the black void. I never got to be an astronaut but I’ve recently become a father, entering a whole new journey of exploration in an unknown space. So here’s to the exploration that lies behind every new wide-eyed discovery and the journey’s of the wild imaginations of a child.
Perhaps my son’s generation will be our future explorers.
Perhaps the childhood dream isn’t lost, it’s just been postponed.
- The above print will be available in the near future and proceeds will go to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation with the hopes that some children’s dreams will come true.
C.
07/22/2011
Nice post. Hopefully our children’s generation will have a renewed interest (both personally and financially) in space exploration and travel.