To infinity and beyond!

My cat tried to abort the shuttle landing this morning. Perry isn’t usually one to pay attention to the TV except as a heating pad, but today I glanced over and saw a white paw frantically batting at Discovery glowing in the pre-dawn darkness. I scooted him away, figuring this mission had had enough troubles already, but then I was mesmerized myself.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched a shuttle landing before. I probably saw some of the moon missions land as a kid, but I can’t say I remember them. Watching that shuttle float through the night made me catch my breath. I listened to the control tower count down the decreasing altitude by thousands of feet and I wondered what it would be like to pilot a craft like that. And when it finally did touch down safely, I have to admit that I teared up.

Maybe some of my emotion had to do with the memory of the Columbia shuttle and the fears for this mission. And some was simply because I'm a a woman ... we cry at strange moments. But most of it, it was watching the physical manifestation of the American spirit, the intrepid soul that has defined this land since the first explorer set foot on our shores. We carved out our own country – we didn’t build it from bits and pieces of other nations. When we finally ran into an ocean, we looked upward and took to space. What other country can really say that?

I’m glad NASA chose to continue the space program. It would be a great loss to our culture to stifle that spirit. Space IS our final frontier and we would deny something essential to what inherently makes us American if we abandoned space exploration. Sure, a lot can be accomplished with unmanned crafts, but it’s not the same. There is an intrinsic need for us to probe the unknown, and fortunately, space is infinite.