2006-07-31 - 4:14 p.m.
It�s 1985, I�m sitting on the floor of my grade school auditorium in Hays Kansas. Jefferson Elementary school, Jefferson Jayhawks, literally attached to, and loosely affiliated with St. Mary�s Catholic church.
I couldn�t be more excited because there is a guy from NASA here to give a program on the space shuttle, and I am completely space crazy. I�m drawing huge pictures of the Space shuttle, regular paper wasn�t enough to contain my enthusiasm so I talked my teacher into giving me several pages from the giant printer in the class.
Remember the huge dot matrix printers? The ones that had the continues folded sheet that was like two feet wide, green and white striped on one side and beautiful blank white on the other.
I remember that the guy could not have been more ordinary, which was a huge disappointment because he was from NASA for crying out loud!! He is supposed to be super cool, like Tom Cruise, and Hulk Hogan in a space suit cool. But instead he was just Joe ordinary.
He must have been there promoting the whole �Teacher in Space� program that was set to launch next year. Now that I think back on it that was like the first �reality TV show� The whole country was crazy about it, or at least it seemed that way to me because I don�t remember any other new story from that time, of course I was pretty single minded. He had a real shuttle tile with him, and he took a little propane blow torch and held it up to the tile to demonstrate the amazing heat resistance of it. I got to hold it, it was like a piece of Styrofoam, much lighter than it looked.
I had a stack of National Geographics at home, but only one had any interest for me, even trumping the ones that had pictures of naked natives, the March 1981 issue that featured the then un-launched shuttle. It was on the cover, and there was a great article inside with cutaways and all kind of cool stuff. This is when the main tank was still painted white, before they realized that they could save several tons of weight in paint by leaving it bare.
Fast forward 20 years, past watching the shuttle explode on Live TV at another assembly, past giving up on being an astronaut, and a fighter pilot, and several other childhood dreams, past the bad feeling I got when I turned the radio on one morning and heard, �..this tragic event when we return� Somehow I immediately knew it was the shuttle, there was something in the tone of voice, and I remembered hearing a tiny blurb the night before saying that the shuttle would be landing in the morning. It was completely routine again, barely even worth mentioning on the news.
I�m waiting at my friend Viv�s house and paging through that very same March 1981 issue of National Geographic. I love National Geographic, especially old ones, the old adds, and looking back on the faces and wondering what ever happened to the people. Reading about what the future would hold, from the real future.
Spooky stuff, especially as they are talking about the Space shuttle Columbia. Half the article was talking about how much trouble they were having with the tiles. There looking backwards it�s like purposeful foreshadowing, there is this feeling of excitement and optimism, �..By the 90�s people will be flying on the shuttle just like an airliner,� �..By the end of the century we�ll all have wrist watch phones that connect by the satellites the shuttle will send into orbit.� (they were pretty close on that last one,) But in underlying it all is this sense of foreboding. The next page had this picture.
Maybe they forgot.
-Justus
