Alan Shepard. John Glenn. Sally Ride. Neil Armstrong.
If you grew up in the United States in the last 50 years, these names mean something to you. They mean exploration and adventure. They were our lifetime’s Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook. They’re an elite group that share a bond none of us will ever understand.
When I was growing up, kids wanted to become firefighters or football players or astronauts. Scout troupes went to to Space Camp every summer, living like astronauts. It was something we dreamed about, all part of our national consciousness. In 1998, my 5th grade class watched as John Glenn became the oldest man in space at age 77.
But the program hasn’t been without tragedies. The crew of the Apollo 1 mission were killed fire during a training exercise in 1967. In 1986, two years before I was born, my mother, a fellow schoolteacher, watched as the Challenger exploded, killing Christa McAuliffe and the other crew members. And as recently as 2003, the crew of the Columbia died during their descent back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
While there are other important locations to the NASA space program, namely Houston, Texas, where astronauts train, and Huntsville, Alabama, where many of the spacecrafts are constructed, Cape Canaveral, Florida is where the magic happens. It’s where the crew, all suited up, board the small silver bus to the launch site and changed history forever. It’s where families sat on picnic blankets and watched the shuttles disappear into the sky.
I visited Cape Canaveral as a child, back when the Shuttle Program was still thriving. I couldn’t have known then what the program would be like today and I’m not sure I quite understood the importance of space. But as I returned to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Complex this month, it, for lack of better words, blew my mind. I couldn’t fathom the idea of being in space, seeing Earth as a small, peaceful planet rather than the chaotic place we know it as.
I explored the Kennedy complex on my own, experiencing the Shuttle Launch Experience simulator, remembering those lost at the Astronaut Memorial and admiring the work in the Rocket Garden. But my favorite experience from my visit was the Lunch with an Astronaut program, where I got to meet John McBride, a retired astronaut and pilot of the maiden voyage of Columbia. If you get a chance to do this, I highly recommend it as a way to further understand what it means to be an astronaut.
As you may know by now, in July 2011, the United States ended its thirty year-long NASA space shuttle program. The Atlantis was its last mission for the foreseeable future in a costly program which some Americans didn’t see the benefits of. We’re no longer competing with Russia for progress but rather working side by side with them. And who cares about Mars when the economy on Earth is so bad?
But space is important. It’s where we’ve developed some of our greatest technologies and where we could find new sources of fuel or even signs of life. Anything is possible. While NASA no longer employs the shuttle staff, the Kennedy Space Center is still going strong.
They’re getting new generations of astronauts excited with attractions like the Angry Birds Space Encounter. Tours of the launch pad are also available for a limited time and rocket launches still occur every few weeks. And the Atlantis will find a new home this summer, where visitors will be able to see the inside, a rare opportunity.
While each shuttle flight cost over one billion dollars, the private space industry is booming, as the development of Virgin Galactic‘s New Mexico spaceport shows. Nearly 1,000 everyday (wealthy) citizens have already booked a seat on these space flights, at around $200,000 per ticket.
We’re no longer in the time of elite scientists and pilots being the only ones to experience space. It’s possible that during my lifetime, I will get a chance to travel to space. In the words of the signage advertising the new complex for the Atlantis, “The adventure has only begun.”
I received complimentary passes to the Kennedy Space Center from Visit Space Coast, but all opinions are my own. For more on the United States Space Program, I recommend the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon about the Apollo missions.
I’ve been thinking about this now that there’s that company starting to look at volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars. When I was younger I was fascinated with space travel, and I spent a long time wishing I had the chance to see another planet. But by now there are too many places on Earth that I haven’t visited yet, so I think even if I had the chance I’d stick with what we have here.