MrSpkr's random thoughts . . .: Reminiscing

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Reminiscing
I just watched the launch of the Deep Impact space probe (Lords, that sounds like the name of a bad porn movie -- who names this stuff, anyway?) with my youngest son, Joe.

I can still remember my mom and dad getting me up at Gawd-awful hours in the early Seventies to watch the Apollo missions. I remember watching, awestruck, as men walked on the moon.

I am sure I was watching Neil Armstrong's initial visit to the moon, but I was only two and a half, so I really don't remember that one.

But I remember others. I remember seeing the Lunar Rover, and even wanting a model of that buggy. I remember a visit to NASA in 1976, and seeing the Apollo capsules, the old-style space suits, the enormous Saturn V rocket (I even got a model of that rocket to play with at home).

I can remember going out to my back yard at night, staring at the moon, hoping to see the astronauts (what do you want -- I was six or seven at the time!).

It was all very neat. I felt like the folks in the space program were the new cowboys of my era, and felt enormous pride in being part of a nation that could do such things.

Now, however, it is all so blase' to my son. Joe (four years old) was less than impressed with it all. To him, rockets to to outer space were little more than routine.

Now I can begin to understand how my grandparents must have felt about passenger airplanes, or the thought of taking one-week vacation to florida, 1500 miles away.

Progress is good, but it makes me wonder -- what will happen next? What immense undertaking will my children take pride in? What will fuel their energies, their imaginations?

I can only hope that, whatever it is, it will impact them the way the Apollo program impacted me.
- posted by MrSpkr @ 13:04

Comments:

Ah my friend you bring back some memories ... mind you mine go back further than yours.

I recall staying up with my brother until 2:00 AM or so to see grainy, black and white photos of the surface of the moon ... from Surveyor I on June 2, 1966.

I watched every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launch ... and most of the recoverys as well. Space WAS the final frontier, even before Capt. James T. Kirk said that it was.

I'm still stunned to see 3d photos of the surface of Mars or of Iapetus, a moon of Jupiter. And I've got it logged into my work computer to turn on the TV at 3:00 PM Mountain time to see ... whatever we see when the Huygens probe descends into the atmosphere of Titan.

Give Joe (great name by the way) some time, he's awfully young but he'll see things we can't even dream of today ... I envy him that.

Joe

p.s. I recall reading one of the Hornblower books years ago in which the good Captain marvelled at the technological progress he was seeing ... imagine moving in perfect safety and comfort at such a rapid pace along an English canal and lock system ... :)

# posted by

Joe Shaw : Wednesday, January 12, 2005 3:25:00 PM

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