Space & Shuttle Memories, pt 2

Continuing the making of a woman engineer. (Part 1 is here)

In fifth grade, our teacher & student teacher started out a series on the planets, by having us create a model rocket out of things like oatmeal boxes and construction paper.  My "rocket" became my new teddy bear.

My sixth grade teacher incorporated a number of 4-H activities into our curriculum, including the Blue Sky Below My Feet series.

I know these latest two seem too tiny to mention.  But for the teachers out there: these little, little things made a HUGE difference.  They helped keep me motivated,  reminded me of why I was studying hard, kept me going.  There were dark nights, many dark nights, along this path.  But I'm trying to stick to the highlights as much as I can, here.  The space program has been a bright spot for most of my life.  (Challenger and Columbia are truly unavoidable lows in this saga.)

Mind the (human spaceflight) gap

So, the Shuttle retirement means that there will be a gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability.

It's happened before. I was born in a gap. A 7-year gap, when the U.S. didn't launch any people at all.

Space & Shuttle Memories, pt 1

How to summarize 30 years of memories?

My father joined the Air Force when I was too small to remember.  For his first assignment, we were stationed at Scott AFB, IL.  The story as I remembered it through my schooldays was that when I was 4 years old, the space shuttle came for an air show.  I think I remember my dad taking us to watch the airplane land with the orbiter piggy-back.  I clearly remember going to the air show that year, walking around the tarmac.  Many of the big aircraft, we were allowed to walk through.  The shuttle was roped off to a wide distance.