Yellow Rose's Garden

voodoolimbo directed folks to a post he found of interest. VL, your friend has non-friend posting disabled, feel free to direct him here if you like.

This is NASA's third tragedy since its beginnings.

I am old enough to remember the fire in Jan. 1967 that took the lives of Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. Grissom was one of the first astronauts NASA ever had. They died in hopes reaching the stars one day. Two years later, their fellow astronauts landed on the moon. There's irony in this somehow, the command module of Apollo 11 was called Columbia, just like the vessel that ended its voyage in history on Saturday.

It's a little hard to believe that should earth be destroyed and the moon survive, the only name to carry on will be.... Richard M. Nixon.

In 1970, those that followed the space program activities felt their hearts skip a beat when Jim Lovell said, "Houston, we have a problem." To those too young to recall it, Apollo 13 is just a movie. Those that hung waiting, prayed and hoped. Tragedy was averted, they came home.

In Jan. 1986, the Challenger exploded. Much to the horror of many school children, they saw the surreal event as it happened. My oldest daughter was in kindergarten at the time. It was hard to explain to her that this time it wasn't just a tv show, it was real. I recall her saying some to the effect of, "That means the teacher died." Perhaps the best remembered of those killed in the Challenger explosion was indeed the teacher, Christa McAuliffe. She reached her goal, but not in a way she hoped, she has touched the future and become a part of American history.

While they may once again postpone any developments for a while, I truly do not believe that the space program as a whole will be shut down. NASA, in some ways, is like the legendary phoenix. It continues rise from the ashes of what was.

I was one of those space kids, too. Among my most treasured possesions of my early teen years are:
Packets of photos from Skylab that include Arabella, a spider weaving a web in zero-g.
Those of you that are fans of the Ultima series might have already known, but the creator, Richard Garriott rarely removed a pendant of a silver snake. I have a picture of his father, astronaut Owen Garriot, who was on one of the Skylab crews. The snake was sent with him as a good luck charm.
An artist's conceptual drawing of Apollo-Soyuz. Americans and Russians in space together that was big news in the midst of the Cold War.
A signed publicity photo of the Apollo 16 crew. I was in one of the first three rows outside the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pa. when they came to town. Real live heroes, definitely a path to aspire to.
Another of my hobbies at the time was stamp collecting, in looking through those things, I found what are called first day or commerative covers. They are dated Dec 6, 1972, Dec. 11, 1972, and Dec. 19, 1972. They were made in honor of the launch, moon landing, and splashdown, respectively, of Apollo 17.

A photo that always blows me away... Earth Rise.

A dear lady named Rose, a friend of my great greatmother, sent many of those thing to me. Her son was working in the Houston Space Center at the time. I still have a post card in her handwriting that Nana passed along. It's dated Jan. 1973. Hard to believe it's been thirty years. Rose has long since passed away, but she is remembered every time I look at anything that says NASA.

Two pieces among the collection seem to stand out. One is a 3-D postcard of the Apollo 11 crew. The second is a keychain. It bears the inscription, "We came in peace for all mankind."