NASA

Ever since I was a small child, five or six, I have done what countless billions of our ancestors have done and looked up into space and wondered what is up there.  I have spent countless nights looking to the Moon and wondering what mysteries lay in the deep shadows that cross its pitted face…  Looked at the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter and I instantly knew that there is a God and that he has created some of the most awe inspiring and beautiful things man has ever looked upon.  In my years I have had the opportunity to meet many of the men, and women who are a part of a very select club, the men and women of NASA who have taken that first step; the step that almost every child dreams of, the step into the final frontier that is space.

I have always loved the thought of space travel and I remember as a child I would wake up early and watch many launches from my parent’s living room in Houston. From my earliest memories I remember watching the Space Shuttle launch and dreamed about being one of those brave men to sit on top of millions of gallons of rocket fuel and a machine with about a billion moving parts built by the lowest bidder...  I joke only because of the respect that I have for those men, and a bit of envy that I will never being a part of their exclusive club...  As a child in Elementary School I remember when a couple of Astronauts came and spoke to us about their trip into space, they were giants among men.  I have said it before and I will say it again, I really don’t have a big hero worship for athletes or actors, to me real heroes are men with ribbons on their chest, Heroes are men and women who wear helmets.  Astronauts meet both of these definitions.  

Almost immediately after the end of World War Two a new global contest was begun and that was the space race.  Both the USA and the USSR were racing to be the leaders, not only here on Earth but also in Space.  In September of 1962 President John F. Kennedy, Speaking at Rice University, about 25 miles from where I sit tonight writing this, stated “The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not… …We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it.”  Those words launched the greatest technological triumphs in human history, many of the things we use every day came out of the new ideas and inventions of the 1960’s all brought forth by the most ancient of dreams, the dream to reach the moon.

In less than a month we will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the end of the Mercury project, Where the US planned to send 7 men into space.  After six successful flights the Mercury program ended with Gordo Cooper being the last American to fly in space alone.  That would bring us to the Gemini Project where we would send a two man spacecraft into space, and look at how much more we accomplished, Ed White became the first American to do an EVA, to walk in space hanging above the earth and just looking down on all of us with a joy that I don’t think many can express or even understand.  We sent not one but two rockets into space at the same time and then had them link up in space, not because it was an easy task but one that we would have to do in order to move our program forward, forward to the moon.

The final tasking that Kennedy envisioned in that hot September day was the Apollo program.  Where three men would take the perilous journey 240,000 miles to that large grey ball that has inspired us since we first looked up into the sky.  The Apollo program led us through some of our greatest triumphs and through some of our darkest days as a nation.  The program almost never got off the ground, literally.  In January of 1967 Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were participating in a test of the Apollo command module when a fire rushed through the command module and killed all three men. 

If it had not been for the hard work and dedication of many great men like Frank Borman the Apollo Program might have died there on Launch Pad 34. But like the Greek God that the Program was named after Apollo would rise again and in just under 18 months Neil Armstrong would take that “one small step.”  I have had the joy of seeing and touching that ship that made the journey carrying Neil, Buzz and Michael over the abyss of space, the module is named Columbia, this would not be the first time the US has had a ship Columbia, and I know she would not be the last.

After a nearly flawless landing and return on the next trip led by Pete Conrad showed Americans that going to the moon was a tasking that we were up to and that America would win the Space Race.  Then came Lucky number 13, Jim Lovell, on his fourth trip into space, and his second trip to the moon, uttered those words which will forever haunt NASA, “Houston… We have a problem.”  But again just as Kennedy had predicted Americans rose to the occasion and Apollo 13 became the successful failure and where Gene Kranz coined the phrase “failure is not an option.” The rest of the Apollo program ended without a hitch and 12 men would walk on her surface and would return with countless samples of lunar geology.

After the end of the moon shot NASA took some time and developed the Sky Lab program where we had a temporary home in space, that program started a dream, a dream of an permanent structure in space, a space station that would be brought to life in NASA’s next generation of spacecraft, Thirty-two years ago the Space Shuttle Columbia, I knew that name would come up again, launched on the first trip into space of a reusable Spacecraft. Through 30 years of service the space shuttles would expand our understanding of not only of our world, and solar system but of the cosmos. They built our international Space Station and placed the Hubble Telescope into orbit.

This thirty year odyssey around our home planet was not without its own stumbling blocks, but it also had its fair share of victories. The original name for the first orbiter was to be the Constitution, but because of a very famous science fiction television program from the late 1960’s the craft was renamed the Enterprise.  Although the Enterprise never went into space she was used for testing and she was launched from the top of a 747 and landed on her own.  I have seen the Enterprise a few time, she had a special place in the Smithsonian until 2012 when she was rolled out and moved to her new home in New York.  A year ago when I was in DC I got to see her sitting on the tarmac at Dulles Airport waiting for the weather to clear and she would take her last flight.  Looking up at her white frame and tiles she is an impressive piece of engineering that reminds you what man can accomplish when he sets his mind to a goal.  

Through some of my travels, and my job I have had the honor to meet many of the men and women who have gotten to ride on the five Space Shuttles a few of them are Mike Fossum, Daniel M. Tani, Dr. Mae Jemison, Chiaki Mukai, Jon McBride, who I got to have dinner with in the summer of 2010 at the Kennedy Space Center, and F. Story Musgrave, the only man to ride into space on all five space shuttles, these last two men just happen to be fraternity brothers of mine…

Although Columbia and her sister ship Challenger would not see the end of this program the legacy left to us by these ships will fill scientific volumes for years, but more important will fill the dreams of children for all time. Thank you NASA for this and for the dreams of all children to ride a rocket into space and to touch the face of God.  It is my hope, and dream that the next project is one that will do the same thing for generations of children to come. And I hope that we will never forget those words uttered as an inspiration to all Americans…

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard… …because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” 

~~John F. Kennedy September 12, 1962