moonlandingMy Love for the Astronauts and Space Travel

I remember hearing Neil Armstrong’s historical words “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I remember hearing them in replayed news clips. I’m not old enough to remember the actual event. I was born a few years after the lunar missions but grew up in the 1970’s when the moonwalk was fresh in the minds of Americans.

I spent lots of time trying to imagine what it would be like to step out onto an alien world. What it looked like to the astronauts. How it felt. How it smelled. Do things smell on the moon without air?

It’s hard to believe NASA is marking the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing this week. They have a section on their website dedicated to the even, complete with videos and voice recordings from mission control on their website.

I tried practicing the moon walk. Not Michael Jackson’s, but Neil Armstrong’s. I hopped and bounced around the backyard, but never quite got the same feeling. I wore moon boots because I thought that would put me one step closer to being an astronaut. I know, geek alert.

Growing up, I was fascinated with space. It helped that my mother, a first-grade schoolteacher, was also fascinated with astronauts and space. She had several space visual aides, including a small metal ball, about the size of softball, which was a map of the moon. I would study the moon globe over and over. I learned all of the important moon destinations: the Sea of Tranquility being the most important. If anyone ever needed directions on the moon, I could direct them.

I read and re-read all of my mom’s space books. Everything I could find from the early 1960’s and John F. Kennedy to the present day. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go into space.

I spent countless hours on my back in our backyard, studying constellations. I knew almost all of them and knew where to find them. I loved visiting our local planetarium and watching the star show. I also made many visits to the observatory. I vomited into a bush at the Natural History Museum out of sheer excitement to see Haley’s Comet.

I had my own pair of high-powered binoculars to star and moon gaze. I would study the face of the moon and try to picture what it would be like to stand on it.

My favorite movie? Star Wars of course. I spent countless hours on the playground pretending to be Princess Leia while the boys all fought over who was Luke Skywalker. This seems to be a common memory for many people my age. Did we all spend recess pretending to fly Millennium Falcons and X-Wing fighters?

I remember the first launch of the space shuttle. I remember Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut in space. I remember being at the Field Museum in Chicago and looking at the actual Sky Lab that had crashed to Earth.

My favorite thing to do while camping? Star gaze and watch for satellites to go overhead.

Anther favorite movie? The Right Stuff. I loved that movie. I can’t say how many times I have watched it. I was so amazed by this special group of men chosen to risk their lives to do something no one else had really tried. I knew I wasn’t adventurous enough to do something like that myself, but oh how I wanted to go into space.

I was 14 years old when the Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. I had faked an illness to stay home to watch the launch. My world stopped. Astronaut Judith Resnik was my hero. I had watched her career and wanted to be just like her when I grew up. If I learned anything from the Challenger disaster, it was that space was dangerous and people could die. It made me rethink my astronaut aspirations and consider a life here on Earth.

When I was 17, my family took a vacation to Florida. We went to Cape Canaveral. It was like visiting Disneyland to me. I stood where astronauts had stood. I saw the giant tower where the space shuttle had launched. I wanted to steal a rock from the road where the shuttle is driven from the hangar to the launch pad. I wanted a piece of the space program.

I dream of someday watching a live launch of the space shuttle.

The NASA astronauts are our national heroes. From Alan Shepard to Neil Armstrong to Judith Resnik, and everyone in between and beyond puts their life on the line to further exploration and science into a world very few of us will ever see. Without their pioneering and scientific research, many of the things in our day-to-day life would not be the same.

I hope my girls will also find heroes like the astronauts to worship and live vicariously through to motivate them to go far in life.