And with that the shuttle program ends…

Atlantis landed today and when it did the STS program came to a close. If you haven’t yet – please watch this video. All I can say is thank you to NASA, shuttle astronauts, and all the men and women that kept the dream alive and the shuttle flying for the past 30 years. I hope that the next round of dreamers are as ambitious as you have been and the next frontier is approached with the same enthusiasm as this one was.

So where am I am on the day the shuttle program ended? Like a lot of kids I wanted to go to space. I was tricked into brushing my teeth because of it. (Astronauts can’t have fillings – they’ll float out in space.)  From as early as I can remember I had Space Lego building sets – I still have every brick.  I watched the as Challenger ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’ live on TV in the fifth grade.  I realized that a mouth without fillings was really lower down on the list than I had assumed and math and science were significantly higher. (That and getting sick on roller coasters may have eliminated me from the NASA talent pool.)  I did get to see a launch live – it is something that those of us fortunate enough to experience will always remember and talk about. No – it isn’t the same on television and much like being dead or famous I can’t explain to you exactly why that is unless you’ve been there and experienced it. Fortunately several of my closest friends were there with me.  I wish our RV was bigger so more people could have come with us.

And with all of that – I’ll say goodbye.