Cargo Ship

Today I watched a cargo ship depart.

I was thirteen years old when Daddy took me over to NC State College to a lecture and display on Vanguard, the first satellite program for the United States. It really excited me. I had grown up with Flash Gordon, and had gone with my family to the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill to see a presentation on humans going to the moon. I remember graphically the high g force encountered while accelerating upwards. I remember the night I it was announced that the Soviets had put Sputnik in orbit. Vanguard suffered two spectacular failures and the US was still not in space. Eventually it did go, and is still in perfect orbit. We abandoned trying to do it perfectly and switched to Army missiles made to deliver warheads, and started being successful matching the Soviets. I remember Kennedy's speech about putting a man on the moon "in this decade". I was older and understood the ramifications of that, and how difficult it was. I was right there listening to the countdowns for the one man Mercury program and Alan Shepherd's first orbit, the two person Gemini program, and the death's of Grissom, Chaffee, and Young on the launch pad. I stood in the canteen at The Citadel watching live television of the first pictures of the back side of the Moon. I was seeing it at exactly the first time as any person had ever seen it. At the NASA facility near Huntsville Alabama I witnessed the test firing of one of the Saturn engines. Wow! Then, of course, The Apollo program. I watched the pictures of Neil Armstrong as he stepped on the surface of the Moon. For 20 seconds or so they were broadcasted upside down, which caused momentary confusion. When the Apollo program was ending, that I wanted to witness the last launch of what was the most powerful machine mankind had ever made. The space program had been part of my experience since I was thirteen. I knew at the time I would regret not going to the trouble to witness the last launch. I also knew at the time I would regret not witnessing the launch of the last space shuttle. Now our space program has entered a new phase. Satellites are routine and there is a permanent space station. Today I witnessed the launch of a rocket, loaded with supplies for the space station, not by NASA but by a private commercial company. Space travel is now routine, and is now in the private sector.
A local radio station carried the countdown. Everything was there, live from mission control. "On internal power" "All systems go" "T minus 10, 9, 8..." "Lift off, we have lift off" I had tears in my eyes reliving those launches so long ago. It was just as I remembered. The fireball disappeared in the clouds and all I could say was, "Wow!... Wow!...... Wow!" I had lived the era of extraterrestrial space development, from the first hopes of a satellite, to commercial, routine launches. Wow! Just Wow!
Now anchored at Cocoa, Florida, as in Cocoa Beach, where the early astronauts, those with the right stuff, would go to play.
Please go to adventtwo.blogspot.com click "Location" at the upper right, to see where I am.
Bill