I grew up on the edge of another country. I am not American. My first memory of your country is 1963... my parents' concern over an event very far away. Dallas? Where the heck is that? I also remember we had no TV then.
We ended up getting a TV. We had one channel -- the CBC. I remember American cartoons. They were loony.
I learned to love TV in 1969. "The Eagle has landed" indeed. I remember the feeling that we had all done something. I doubt very much that Newfoundland made much of a contribution to the space program in the 50's and 60's, but I still felt like "we" had done something. That's the magic.
It was not a year later that I had an Apollo model. It was detailed enough for $15. The only tricky part at all was gluing on the service module reaction control assemblies -g (you can seen them clearly here: www2k.biglobe.ne.jp. I became proficient at demo'ing the staging during ascent. Because the various stages were detachable, the configuration that was most precarious was when it was standing upright. (It had a LEM as well, although it really pissed me off that one could not separate the ascent module. -g/ng) Anyway, if we had company, I was expected to get out the model and do the demo. -g I loved doing that.
Since then, I have followed the program as many of you have. I think it would be a lively and good discussion to talk about where it should go, but tonight I thought to say something else.
With keen interest, I have followed the Columbia failure and the loss of the crew. I was thinking at one point, going over scenarios in my mind as many of us have done, that the experience of the crew might be a factor.
This thought lead me to read the bio's of the crew. These people were so accomplished; reading between the lines of the bio's, one has to think that they would have been among the finest in all of what they did. What a terrible loss.
I wanted to read about McCool... hadn't flown before. Then I see that he landed on aircraft carriers 400 times. This guy was a steely-eyed missile man. Experience was not a factor I am sure, and a I am selfishly happy that I took the time tonight to figure that out. |
