20 years ago today

Certain memories from the elementary school years stick with you. Mine include practicing earthquake safety, the teacher who pointed at students with her crooked index finger, peanut butter and banana sandwiches that had a hint of Polo aftershave taste when my dad made them, and the Challenger explosion.

I was in third grade when the Challenger went down. Two third grade classrooms separated by a folding wall suddenly became one during our reading period. Fifty students huddled around the same television set as two concerned teachers tried to explain what was happening on the screen. It was a lot for a third grader to digest and it was all the adults talked about for weeks.

Twenty years have flown by and I keep reading about concerns over the NASA space program. It’s unsafe, it’s expensive, it’s this and that. My two cents: it’s a program that should be pursued with understanding by non-scientific folks (me included) that we don’t have all the kinks of space travel figured out yet but the more we continue improving on past experience and future ideas, the less accidents and more leaps we’ll make. A visit to a space center will open your eyes like it did mine; utterly amazing.