Day 75

I have been watching an old John Denver dvd. Yeah I know, some may ask who he was. Well, you can look him up. For those of us who knows; anyway. One was about the Challenger disaster-Flying For Me. And I had thought about my love of space. It started with my mother. She had a scrap book full of the articles about our endeavors in space during the 1960s. And I guess that's how I got interested in Star Trek. Though I had a love to explore, I was never the astronaut kind. I just knew that I was always interested in what was on the other side of the hill.

But as we almost pass the first 10 years of a new century, I have to ask: when will we seriously return to space? Some may say we have with the shuttles and the International Space Station. The probes we have sent out, the landings on Mars. But I mean, when will man walk on another planet again?

Some may argue we can better spend that money on things here on earth. Oh really? How do we not know that the cure for AIDS or cancer is just lying around on another world; or is known by other intelligence life in the universe? Yeah I am a believer.

Some people need to understands of the price that was paid by the first Apollo disaster and that we haven't walked on the surface of another planet since 1972. Anyone who will sit on a rocket and willing to be blasted into space deserve the best we can give them. But it seems that the American people want it NOW. Like anything these days from microwaves to a quick war; what happened to our ability to last? Guess that's why marriages these days don't last. Not a lot, at least half of those who get marriage are willing to risk, chance and work on it.

In my young days kids wanted to grow up to be astronauts. To me that's a noble cause. Now a days, it seems that a lot want to be rappers. Talk about how times have changed. Hell, I even wanted to work aboard the Calypso at one time. Yeah we need to take care of this blue planet we call earth, but we can also do that by exploring beyond ourselves, in my opinion.

Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were those in the capsule of Apollo 1 that gave their lives in 1967. I was too young to remember that. But I do remember watching the Apollo 11 landing in 1969. And then the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.

Hell I remember when I heard about the Challenger disaster-I didn't believe it just like a lot of people, because we had gotten so used to the goings of the space shuttle, we had forgotten exactly how dangerous it can be. Hell of a wake up call.

Well, are going to let those people perish in vain? My only question after all this is: when will we return to space?