To me, there is nothing quite like a Cape Canaveral countdown, so last Friday as Atlantis lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the final mission of NASA’s 30-year space shuttle program, I was right in there.
I actually had the opportunity to attend a launch of the Columbia about 10 years ago. Columbia is the shuttle that we lost on re-entry; I saw the launch right before that. It was a servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
It was an unbelievable experience.
We actually were given an astronaut briefing ahead of the launch, which was really cool. He answered our questions and told us what to expect. I’ll never forget one of the things he said. When the engines ignite and the Columbia leaves the ground, don’t be surprised or worry about it, he told us, if tears start coming down your face. The person next to you is probably crying as well. It happens every time. We don’t know why it happens but it does.
It was 6 a.m., dark and just starting to sort of turn to day, when the Columbia took off. We could feel the rumble of the earth and actually see the Hubble — it was a white dot going in a straight line across the sky. The shuttle rose with the sun, turned over, and chased after the telescope.
It was awesome.
The other part of this story is that my initial professional dream was to work for NASA. My good friend, the same fellow who got me my ticket to the Columbia launch, scored me an interview with NASA in college. They offered me a job, but it would have required me to extend the time it would take to get my undergraduate degree. Having worked my way through college, extending the process, at the time, felt like signing up for a daily root canal.
Although I chose a different career path, I feel connected through innovation to NASA’s work in space, and I expect that I always will.
So last Friday, when the clouds cleared, and the boosters fired, and the Atlantis left the ground, I had the same reaction that our astronaut told us about at the Columbia launch.