I think its the dream of every child to be on a space mission ( I'll talk about the "other" dream - being a train driver some other day!) - and watching hours of Star Trek reruns makes it look so easy.But for most us it remains just that - a dream only. Few persons successfully conquered the final frontier and the history is ridden with names of heroic astronauts who didn't quite do it all alive. NASA in spite of its successes has always bogged down by dramatic failures caused by simplest of things. Challenger went into flames minutes after it was launched - and Feynman serving on the inquiry commission so famously explained how it all happened. Then decades later Columbia could not make it safely to home - again caused by something as trivial as a small piece of protective padding falling off. And the smiling pictures of those brave men and women in their orange suits left an indelible impression in the mind.
Years after that tragic event - NASA started gearing up for another launch. And being with a couple of hours driving distance I felt I cannot miss the spectacle. But sadly after negotiating some crazy traffic and reaching at space mountain park, Titusville - just across the river of Cape Canaveral launch pad - found out that the launch is scraped. While it definitely is the right decision - considering that safety is the the most important factor - was disappointing nevertheless. But tomorrow is another day and they are going to try it again. It do leaves a creepy feeling to know that they are going ahead with it in spite of really identifying or fixing the problem which caused the abort first time - I guess they know what they are doing. So I would try to wake up early and be there when Discovery hopefully would light up the skies on its way to the space!
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