Fifty years ago we flew by Mars after two attempts. Men were killed going to space, going to the moon. We stood on the moon. We watched Curiosity land on Mars. Thank you NASA for sharing all this stuff. When I was in **mumble**mumble** grade, we did a big section on Apollo and by the end I could recite the timeline of the entire mission of sending a manned space craft to the moon. Can you imagine? That’s how important it was. It was thrilling. Science fiction is fun but science is what we can really do. <\/p>\n
Tonight no television network broke in to say that we’d heard back from New Horizons but anybody who wanted to share in the excitement via NASA’s live web reporting. We got to hear Alice Bowman (APL’s First Female MOM – Mission Operations Manager) checking in with each of the systems and getting “nominal” status reports and the cheering just continued. All systems go. That’s all we needed to hear and we’ll wait til tomorrow to start seeing what New Horizon is sending back.<\/p>\n
I’ll have to get a real quote because Alice Bowman had some good stuff in there about following your dreams.<\/p>\n
holding our shared breath
\nwaiting for a sign and then –
\nnew horizon’s back!<\/p>\nlong ago we sent
\nman, men and women to space
\nit was exciting<\/p>\nbut reaching pluto
\nand flying past, hearts are cheered
\nwhat shall we find out?<\/p>\ndiscovery and
\nexploration and courage
\nhopes and dreams fly too.<\/p>\ntake my bitter heart
\nshow me the stars and planets
\nrenew all my dreams.<\/p>\nwe walked on the moon
\nlong ago when I was young
\nI’m a kid again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"take my bitter heart \u2022
\nshow me the stars and planets \u2022
\nrenew all my dreams. Continue reading