It all started on June 8th, 2011 with an email from my good friend Tom Wagner (we met as students at the Clarion East Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 2001).
“You have interest in attending the final shuttle launch as a VIP?” he asked. “No guarantees, but I get to nominate people and the deadline is today.” Tom is a NASA Cryosphere program scientist. He’s quite a personality, too. See him here to get what I mean. Tom is also the one who gave me an encouraging enthusiastic shove when he saw me leaning toward writing African-based science fiction.
Getting invited by NASA as a VIP guest was a long shot, plus it would disrupt my schedule, but I said “Sure!” and sent him my bio. Then I proceeded to forget about the whole thing. Two weeks later, an invitation from NASA arrived in the mail. Suddenly, I had an important decision to make.
This was the final Space Shuttle launch for NASA, ending three decades of crewed flight into Earth’s orbit. Sadly, the program is being retired (that’s another discussion for another day). It was a chance to see an exercise in American technological greatness. Space travel. My daughter could witness space travel. She’d love it!
I’ve always had a hard time writing about space. I am very much an earthling. I don’t see myself ever leaving this planet while I am alive (I may be more adventurous after I die, heh). There is so much yet to discover (and fix) on earth, why look elsewhere? And my spiritual beliefs and the systems of magic I’m attracted to are earth-based, born and rooted deep in the soil. They are not in the “heavens”. Also, when I write about something, I have to get and feel close to the subject. I never feel close to “space”, no matter how much research I do. Maybe if I see the Space Shuttle launch this will change, I thought.
The launch of the STS-135: Atlantis Space Shuttle was scheduled for 11:26 am EDT on July 8th from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Just outside of Orlando. Orlando? I thought. Home of Disneyworld and lots of frogs, manatees, alligators and dolphins?
The launch of the STS-135: Atlantis Space Shuttle was scheduled for 11:26 am EDT on July 8th from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Just outside of Orlando. Orlando? I thought. Home of Disneyworld and lots of frogs, manatees, alligators and dolphins?
I decided to go.
Read the rest here...
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