End of an Era

I feel a twinge of sadness when I think of the shuttle program coming to an end.  It has captured the imagination of generations, and certainly impacted mine.  My first real related memory is of the Space Shuttle Challenger - I was nine when with my school class I watched the shuttle leap into the sky, only to meet a disastrous end as we watched live on TV, gasping in horror.  That same year, the movie Space Camp came out (and it's really rather surprising to just now realize that it came out a mere six months after Challenger).  And I loved, loved, loved it, regardless of what I'd seen earlier.  I mean really, a bunch of kids messing around in a space shuttle, actually ending up in space?  Kid movie gold.  And now - twenty five years later - I may have managed to put aside my burning desire to go to space camp, but I don't think the fantasy of space travel will ever go away.

That said, I haven't followed the space shuttle or space station programs religiously by any means (my imagination is more often captured by Hubble and its view into the depths of space), but I do feel deeply inspired when I see images of the shuttle, lift-offs, the view of the earth, and astronauts doing their space-walks.  It really is quite amazing we have sent humans into space for as long as we have.  While it may be sad we're stopping for now, I suspect it is not the last we've seen of human kind's ventures into the final frontier.  

So to memorialize the shuttle program, a few of my favorite images from the recent (and last) launch:

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And how sweet would it have been to see it from your plane...

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And then a totally awesome, rare picture of both the space station and the shuttle clearly in one picture, from a distance.  Rare because usually the pictures must be taken from either the shuttle OR the station.  

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