[thechat] On July 20th, 1969, humans first set foot on the Moon.

dave mclean dave at members.evolt.org
Sun Jul 21 13:09:01 CDT 2002


-- january 28 1986

This one rang close to home for me.  There I was sitting at school.  We had
just come in from lunch and my grade 3 teacher, a usually very stern
Quebecois lady, was crying. She announced to us that the Space Shuttle had
exploded.  It was the first time that whole year that she had spoken to us
in English -I was in the French Immersion program- and I just remember
thinking "Whoa."  You see, my Dad's cousin was scheduled to be the second
Canadian in space later that year.  It could have been him up there.

I don't remember being scared about the whole thing, but definitely a little
sad. I think the reason my teacher was crying, other than the fact that this
was a major tragedy, was because this was the first flight that had carried
a civilian on board and she was a school teacher.

I didn't get to see the images until I got home from school that day.  And I
don't think they stopped showing it for ages after that.  It was indeed a
sad day.

Then on October 22, 1992 I was fortunate enough to be at the viewing area
for the launch of STS-52.  They say that after lift-off everybody counts 73
seconds before breathing again, and it's true.  The tension was tight. but
it made it into the stratosphere and I'd could never ask for a more
uplifting and amazing experience.

If I could do one thing before I die, it would be to go into space. Some
people are more fortunate than they can possible imagine.

Steve MacLean's bio:
<http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/maclean.html>

His first space flight:
<http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-52/mission-sts-52.html>

His latest mission:
<http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0202/26sts115/>

-d

____
damclean 403.708.6215
dave at members.evolt.org
evolt.org member since: 1998




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