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My Fascination with Space
By Andy on 3 February 2003 the wee hoursCategory: Personal
August 30th, 1983. 2:32 AM EDT. That's when my fascination with space began. As I sat on my dad's shoulders, the Space Shuttle Challenger illuminated the dark morning sky. It was a fireworks show like no other. The intense roar was deafening. My parents took Wendy and me to Cape Canaveral, FL, to witness this first night time shuttle launch, and the magnitude of that night has been forever etched into my memory. My Uncle Larry who works at NASA was able to secure on-base passes for us. From that vantage point, that new experience developed in me such a fascination with space travel that now at age twenty-seven, I still secretly wish God had called me to be an astronaut...even after last Saturday's events. What a sad day for the space program, and especially for the families who were waiting to see the shuttle touchdown in just 15 minutes. We forget how dangerous each mission is and how much risk each astronaut undergoes. But I would venture to say that not one current astronaut-in-training would be willing to trade the incredible experience of space flight for the routine safety of life here on earth. They would rather reach for the stars and miss than to never have reached at all.
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