Time for a critical mindset change. I'm excited to see what happens next. The adventure continues.....

Great website, BTW. There will be more tears of joy and sorrow in the coming months but I am confident that the Human pressence on the Space Frontier will include more greatness from this land of the FREE and the BRAVE. Might take a little while longer than some would like to wait, and there is plenty of argument left suggesting we've been short sighted in our approach but I know there's another euphoria coming and I'm thrilled to be a part of it!

that's a great reflection that you are sharing, Art. I grew up 20 miles down range from the pads. My dad worked for 35 years for Lockheed on the Polaris/Poseidon/Trident Programs. Nevertheless, what I learned as a kid that there was never a launch from any program that was a "sure thing". I clearly remember dad literally building a color tv for our family for the upcoming Apollo program. We would watch the launch on the TV, and once it cleared the tower, we would walk out in the front yard to watch the Saturn V clear the trees that were behind our neighbor's house. Then, within a half a minute or so, the ground would shake, windows would rattle (a couple of broken ones) and the sound was deafening thunder.
Older, as a high schooler, it was fun to take the walk down to the beach with the trusty AM radio to see the Deltas, the Atlases, etc. a few times a month. i saw plenty of crazy stuff, 1980 were two Delta complete failures in a row.

When Challenger lifted, I was at University of Florida trying to convince the bar crowd to turn the channel, they complained that "launches were boring", so i bought a couple of pitchers and got the channel changed. Needless to say, the channel was on the rest of the day.

Best launch ever? It was better than the dozen of Shuttle flights, better than front row seats, better than vip Trident launches. It was Apollo 17, the one and only Saturn V night launch. I was 4 miles down range on the Jettys, I was 13 years old.

Take a look on YouTube, the lack of solid boosters back then made the bird "cook" on the pad after ignition. Today's stuff on solids are like bullets. Nothing better than liquids!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzGfKU3jVDY

Most people don't appreciate the incredible fine line of perfection and disaster with any of these launches. I still watch as many as I can. Thanks to the Internet, the excitement continues.
The shuttle was an awesome program, my brother-in-law worked for 20 years on that program and even my sister managed to be one of the first workers who tried the various gluing solutions to the tile problems before the first missions.

It is in our blood. Thanks Art!

Dave,
I agree with you on all of that. I grew up in Houston and flew rockets at the MSC off of NASA Rd. 1 near Clear Lake City. That is where we held NARAM 14 back in 1970. I was at the Cape for Apollo 17 and it was incredible. The main reason for my comment is small world. My father-in-law worked in Sacramento on Polaris/Poseidon/ Trident. He is just now starting to discuss star patterns in the grains, but very limited info. He also helped design the fuselager for the Convair B-58 Hustler. I am trying to build a detailed model of one to give to him as a gift. He is not interested in my rockets though. Prefers to think about golf and tennis instead.

My parents were saints - they drove 20+ hours down to Florida with no hotel reservations to be had so a 9 year old kid could watch Apollo 11 liftoff (from the parking lot of a shopping center in Titusville) and then rushed back home so we could watch the moon walk on TV... they did it again for Apollo 17. Unfortunately, I don't see us regaining our preeminence in space given modern politics.

Your not counting private enterprise in though Warren. I think we will see space flights from the private sector in the coming years but the big stuff will still be left up to NASA. I think like Joe said, there is another big program coming, it is a few years off but it is coming. Hey, there is a 9 year gap between the last Apollo flight and the first Space Shuttle flight.

It is the responsibility of governments to break the ground and take the initial risk and pave the way for the private sector. NASA is not done, there will be something in the future. Just wait till the Chinese start talking about going to Mars, it won't take much to light a fire under the U.S. then 😉

Thanks for the reply Dave, I am really jealous of you!

Seems to me the SPACE X corp is launching birds, the Falcon 9 is successful, is competitive with the Atlas IV, and Space X recently anounced the Falcon Heavy, which uses 9 Falcon 9 cores, if I have this correct. It will be able to lift 117,000 lbs. into low earth orbit. This is twice the shuttles capabilites and more than twice that of the Atlas IV. They are less expensive than NASA, having only spent about 800 million so far since inception, and they are turning a profit. I think the Atlas IV is about to be certified for carrying people, and I think Space X hopes to have their Dragon vehicle man-rated in the next two years. That said, the lead time to us putting our astronauts into orbit without using th Russians may not be that far off, and will be done by private commercial vendors instead of the government, with less expense. Even the Chinese are saying they cannot launch payloads to orbit as cheaply as Space X. This all is just food for thought and discussion.