Godspeed Atlantis

I've recently flown for the first time and I remember as we hit the clouds on the ascent that we were so privileged to see the side of the clouds God designed to be seen from his end only. I wondered how high we can go?

As a kid I was an astronaut for Halloween a couple times (Dallas Cowboys helmet covered in foil) and I dreamed of weightlessness (irony?) and how cool it would be to leave the freaking planet for a while.

I had the astronaut dream for a while as a kid and I had more than one die cast metal replica I played with. Playing with cars and action figures was cool. But G.I. Joe was just a guy and I'd ridden in a car. Playing with the shuttle? Total imagination freedom.

Though I would never be an astronaut and I'll likely never go to space, the dream and the idea of how cool that must be is still there inside me, and for my entire life, that dream was symbolized by the space shuttle.

Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour weren't the first vehicles to go into space. Not even close. But they looked kinda like airplanes. Regular folks flew on airplanes.

Maybe, the regular folk thought, one day we can fly in one of those.

I know they cost 1.5 billion per launch, I know there's not a crap ton more to be gained from low-orbit exploration of space. I know the shuttle as it is can't go anywhere it hasn't already gone.

If we were replacing it with something better, I might be less upset to see it go. But we're not replacing it at all, not for a while anyway. The Russians are our sole way for getting into space now.

This marks the second time in my lifetime that the world/country has taken a technological step back. If you had the money, you used to be able to get from New York to Paris in half the time it would take a regular plane by flying on the Concorde. Can't do that anymore.

The shuttle loss seems bigger to me. The end of the program without a replacement says to me that America is giving up on space, the final frontier (cue music). We know the vulnerabilities of our planet, our limited resources etc. It seems silly to give up on learning more about what's all out there.

But alas, the shuttle went up for the final time today. Godspeed Atlantis, good sailing and a safe return.

Something tells me I won't get so excited the next time an American goes into space...riding a Russian Soyuz craft.