CN3y Sharing the Sky Weblog No. 25
Farewell, Atlantis!
This morning, Wendee and I held our hearts in our hands when, just 31 seconds before scheduled liftoff and after a flawless countdown, the countdown computer stopped the count. The problem: the “thinking cap” or GOX vent hood that handles the excess oxygen may not have fully retracted.
Although this can be a real problem, on this day it wasn’t. The cap had retracted safely out of Atlantis’s way; the computer somehow didn’t register the fact. With their usual efficiency the launch team fixed the problem and within a minute were ready to go. In all 135 shuttle missions, this is the first one that had a hold at T-31 seconds and then resumed counting the same day. The main engines lit up at T minus 6 seconds, the stack swayed once, the solids lit up, and Atlantis was on its way.
We at the National Sharing the Sky Foundation desperately hope that this is not the end of human space flight. Although it is certain that some day humans will return to space, we hope that some day falls soon. There is so much we have to explore.
I have attended two shuttle launches. The first was in February 1984, when I witnessed Challenger loft two satellites unsuccessfully into space; although the launch was flawless, the satellites both malfunctioned. One was later retrieved, repaired, and relaunched. The second was in the summer of 2006; this one was scrubbed because of weather problems. The day we left the Cape, they were moving the shuttle away from the launch complex to avoid damage from a tropical storm, but when the storm drifted off in a different direction, the crawler switched directions and returned the shuttle to its pad, where it launched a week or so later.
In June 2007 Wendee and I joined a group the included, among others, Triple Nickel, Ann Miklos, and Sid and Gloria Leach (Sid is chairman of the Board of the National Sharing the Sky Foundation.) It was raining when we awoke on launch day but as the afternoon wore on the sky grew clearer and clearer. Promptly at 7:25 p.m., Atlantis soared into the twilight sky in one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.
As we wait for future human space flights, we must keep the dream alive. At Sharing the Sky, we continue to do just that. Recently I lectured twice to the students at the University of Arizona Astronomy Camp, once in early June and again on June 27. At both sessions I was impressed with the passion and intelligence of these young people. They asked many good questions. Some may make it into space some day; most will not. But all have the chance to open their minds and dream, and this is, in a nutshell, what NASA is for.
On June 8, 2007, I photographed Shuttle Atlantis as it appeared to sit atop its own plume as it heads toward space at liftoff. This is the same shuttle that launched again precisely four years and one month later.
One final note: Today’s launch reminds me of John Gillespie Magee’s famous Canadian poem High Flight: Although this poem was used as an elegy for those killed in air crashes (Magee himself, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s No. 412 squadron, died on 11 December 1941 in a collision with another plane) it is really a celebration of flight. After thirty years of Space shuttles, I think it is an appropriate way to mark the close of the Shuttle adventure:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.