Ok, we all have our favorite things -- for Julie Andrews, it was raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. One of mine is the space program. I remember as a 6 year old watching
John Glenn blast into space in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. I followed the
spacewalks and the
Apollo 8 Christmas Eve quoting of the Bible while circling the moon. I even made my own scrapbook of the
Apollo 11 moon landing in the summer of '69, when I was 14. Imagine my joy when I had the opportunity a few years ago to escort
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, for an entire day. But I also remember at age 11 hearing about the horrific fire aboard what was supposed to be
Apollo 1 that killed 3 astronauts. Then there was the
Challenger disaster in 1986. And just three years ago, the
Columbia space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry, killing all 7 astronauts aboard. The struggle of NASA to recover from that latest disaster and bring the space shuttle program back is the subject of
Space Shuttle: Countdown to Comeback, an account of the very real struggle to convince the world (and those who held the purse strings in Congress) that we should fly again. Sometimes, the drama on the ground is as compelling as outer space.
Ok, we all have our favorite things -- for Julie Andrews, it was raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. One of mine is the space program. I remember as a 6 year old watching John Glenn blast into space in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. I followed the spacewalks and the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve quoting of the Bible while circling the moon. I even made my own scrapbook of the Apollo 11 moon landing in the summer of '69, when I was 14. Imagine my joy when I had the opportunity a few years ago to escort Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, for an entire day. But I also remember at age 11 hearing about the horrific fire aboard what was supposed to be Apollo 1 that killed 3 astronauts. Then there was the Challenger disaster in 1986. And just three years ago, the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry, killing all 7 astronauts aboard. The struggle of NASA to recover from that latest disaster and bring the space shuttle program back is the subject of Space Shuttle: Countdown to Comeback, an account of the very real struggle to convince the world (and those who held the purse strings in Congress) that we should fly again. Sometimes, the drama on the ground is as compelling as outer space.
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