Space Shuttle

So I realize this might be a day too late to be relevant, but a fairly historic event took place at 4:14 AM this morning - the last nighttime space shuttle launch by NASA. For those of you that don't know (and I didn't until quite recently), NASA is in the process of phasing out their aging fleet of space shuttles. Will there be a next generation of some kind? Probably, but no one really knows what's going to happen. Other nations still have space programs that can fly, so they'll be taking care of the International Space Station and that sort of thing. I think there's something like 5 shuttles launches left, but regardless, this one was the last one at night, and thus probably the last one I'd ever be able to see from where I live.

So, I mustered my insanity and geekdom and got up at 3:30 AM to go see it. I was barely able to get myself to get out of bed. I pitched the idea to my roommate, but he was not really interested in freezing himself when he should be sleeping in order to see a speck in the sky; I can't say I blame him. Anyway, I did manage to force myself out of the bed, out of the dorm (COLD COLD COLD), and walk about 10 minutes to a pretty open area devoid of streetlights. And right on schedule at 4:20, I saw it. A small but distinct dot, about as bright as the brightest stars out that night, was cruising across the sky a little bit above the horizon. Fortunately, it was high enough that the trees and buildings didn't block it, so I was able to watch it for the whole way.

On the one hand, it really was just a little speck, and arguably might not have been worth it for how tired I felt for the rest of today. But on the other hand, I just took advantage of one of the last chances I'll have for a while where I live to see people going into space. People. In space. How crazy is that? That little dot wasn't some mysterious fusion reactor billions of miles away that we call a "star", it was a human-engineered and human-launched chunk of metal, with actual people in it, leaving the confines of our planet behind. It's really mindblowing, and I wish I'd been alive for the first moon landing, because I feel like people who grew up with that as a given might find it easy to not be all that impressed by space shuttles. It's just something that's there. We sent people into space, yup. Whoop-dee-do. I'm glad I had this opportunity to sort of think about it freshly.

It was also interesting to see how artificial our concepts of "time", "night and day", and so on are. NASA launched people into space at 4:14 AM, a time when most of humanity is rightfully asleep. And what's more, they had a news conference about the launch at 5:30. Five! Who else but NASA has the guts to hold news conferences at five in the morning?