Goodnight, Moon

I just read a blog article today about the last shuttle launch NASA will send into space for its undetermined interim period of financial deficiency. It finished with the words, "Thank you NASA for an amazing space age and good luck in the future, I hope we go to the moon again in my lifetime." As someone who has spent her whole life anticipating the day when I become a filthy rich writer so that I can buy two tickets to the moon (one for me and one for my dad), and become a legitimate space tourist, the possibility that the space age might cease to exist for the remainder of my lifetime hit a terrifically tender spot. Granted, this tremendous realization happened nearly three months ago, but all the same I never thought our 21st Century sprint into progress would halt so close to the starting line.

It tweaks said tender spot even more knowing that even though I was a spectator in a 2007 satellite launch from Cape Canaveral, I never actually got to see it leave the atmosphere.

I remember it was on a school trip. Our graduating high school year always got to go on a Florida vacation during March break, and I was among one of the lucky two busloads of sixteen-year-old snowbirds migrating from Montreal to a week's worth of romping about Cocoa Beach. Originally I'd wanted to go to Cape Canaveral itself to check out the space center, but only one other person was interested in going and our teacher "supervisors" were intent on tanning in their deck-side lawn chairs with no inclination to ferry us anywhere.

Luckily, we heard about the satellite launch. I figured this would compensate well.

When we went out to the beach that night, we were surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds, of spectators. What I remember most was how freezing it was. The air blowing off the ocean was wet, chilling me through my sweatshirt so a coating of clammy droplets clung to me like perspiration. My two best friends weren't there because they'd gone to the theater to watch Music and Lyrics for the third time. I waited on the beach with a bunch of other classmates whose cliques I wasn't quite a part of but with whom the camaraderie of traveling had kicked in to make us associate in a friendlier-than-usual manner. Needless to say, on this cold night, standing on damp sand, frustrated with how little I could see in the dark (and only vaguely knowing where I was supposed to be looking), I couldn't quite wait to go inside and catch up on the sleep I'd been mourning missing out on since the crack of dawn that morning.

For some reason, I was also bent on having my camera with me. I think I wanted to film the takeoff for my dad. In any case, I had it with me and was determined to snap a shot of the moment the satellite left the atmosphere.

I was so determined, in fact, that when it came down to it, I missed it entirely. My camera was not a night camera. It only caught something happening in the nighttime if it was on a long exposure, which needed to be held absolutely still, which my state of bitter shivering was no conducive to.

After an hour or so of waiting, by which time my lungs were drenched in Florida's famous humidity, the satellite took off. That part was masterful, even if it was rather far in the distance. We watched it trek across the sky, leaving a trail as glistening as a slug's, and going only slightly faster than one (it seemed). My camera was poised, and I got distracted by the majesty of the moment before remembering I needed to focus on getting the picture. I turned my eyes to the LCD screen and zoomed as far as I could go. So far, it turned out, that it became impossible to navigate where to point the lens because the sky was one big black monotonous reference point. I did catch it just in time, though, for its grand exit of our planet, and clicked to take the photo, focusing on not moving so it wouldn't turn out all blurred.

Except then I was looking at a blank screen instead of in the air when it actually happened in that split, singular second.

So to this day, even though I was there and can perfectly recall the thunderous sound of atmospheric impact as the satellite passed through it and beyond, I still have no idea what it looks like for the atmosphere to be breeched.

I feel like this is a fallacy in my life. I need to move to Russia to watch their space launchings instead. Either that or make it my personal mission to get the States out of their debt crisis.