Are You a Space Geek?
My wife Nancy and I are.
We had a chance last month to listen to Eileen Collins, a retired Air Force colonel and a NASA space shuttle commander, answer questions after the Chicago premier of her new documentary film, Spacewoman. The film follows Collins life as she grew up to become an Air Force pilot and eventually the first woman to pilot and command one of NASA’s shuttle. I highly recommend the film, especially if you have an daughters in the family.
After we left the premier, Nancy asked whether, being a pilot, I would have liked to ride the shuttle into space. I didn’t even hesitate. “In a heartbeat,” I said. The thought of watching the Earth and the continents rotate beneath me and view the stars without the light interference from the city of Chicago would wow me for the rest of my life, I think.
When I was in high school, there were plenty of other kids who were space geeks. Afterall, we were in the middle of the legendary American space program launching Mercury, and Gemini and Apollo spacecraft as America tried to beat the Russians to the moon. We did actually with Apollo 11. Space flight was a big deal in the 1960s and 70s with President Kennedy being one of NASA’s biggest boosters. Far cry from today’s White House.
I've been lucky enough to meet a few other astronauts during my lifetime … Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan and most recently, shuttle commander Charlie Precourt. I instantly became a kid again when I asked each of them What it felt like when they lit those rockets and the entire machine began rumbling like the end of the world was near.
They all smiled at me pretty much the same way before giving me a range of answers, the best one being “really cool.”
So yes, I consider myself a space geek, but pretty much a US one.
I don’t know much of anything about the European Space agency for instance. When my friend Grant McHeron told me he was headed to the Singapore Air Show a few months ago to hear more about their space program, I admitted I didn’t know that island nation even had a space program.
Luckily for me, Grant, a New Zealander by birth and now an Australia resident, overlooked my ignorance and asked if he could send me a story about what he learned in Singapore.
In case you’re thinking you might know Grant from somewhere else, he’s the other half of the PlaneCrazy Down Under podcast co-hosted by my other buddy Steve Vischer. L
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