![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
20 years
Gegarin was the first, back in 1961
When like Icarus, undaunted, he climbed to reach the sun
And he knew he might not make it for it's never hard to die
But he lifted off the pad and rode that fire in the sky.
I'm not quite old enough to remember the earliest manned space flights, but I do remember watching the first lunar landing on TV. I was too young to understand the politics, so I was able to just revel in the "wow, neat!" factor. I wanted to be an astronaut, though by the time I was about 12 I realized that would never happen. But kids are fickle anyway, so that's ok. I was interested in space, but I didn't follow launches avidly.
In 1986 I was a programmer and working in a cube farm. A coworker (who had an office) walked into my cube and said "it blew up". I thought he was complaining about some code I'd checked in. No, he said, the shuttle blew up. He'd been listening to the launch live on the radio.
Most of us programmers went into his office to listen to the news for a while. I remember thinking that this was the end of the space program for a good long time.
And then, three years ago (less a few days), it happened again.
These weren't the first failures and they won't be the last. But these are the ones that I witnessed, albeit indirectly, so they have an impact that other failures and near-misses didn't have. Let's hope we've seen the worst.
When like Icarus, undaunted, he climbed to reach the sun
And he knew he might not make it for it's never hard to die
But he lifted off the pad and rode that fire in the sky.
I'm not quite old enough to remember the earliest manned space flights, but I do remember watching the first lunar landing on TV. I was too young to understand the politics, so I was able to just revel in the "wow, neat!" factor. I wanted to be an astronaut, though by the time I was about 12 I realized that would never happen. But kids are fickle anyway, so that's ok. I was interested in space, but I didn't follow launches avidly.
In 1986 I was a programmer and working in a cube farm. A coworker (who had an office) walked into my cube and said "it blew up". I thought he was complaining about some code I'd checked in. No, he said, the shuttle blew up. He'd been listening to the launch live on the radio.
Most of us programmers went into his office to listen to the news for a while. I remember thinking that this was the end of the space program for a good long time.
And then, three years ago (less a few days), it happened again.
These weren't the first failures and they won't be the last. But these are the ones that I witnessed, albeit indirectly, so they have an impact that other failures and near-misses didn't have. Let's hope we've seen the worst.
the verse I can't listen to without crying
Came a shuttle named Columbia, to open up the way.
And they said she's just a truck, but she's a truck that's aiming high.
See her big jets burning, see her fire in the sky.