Endeavor - And Away She Goes!

This evening, twenty-two and a half years melted away as I watched the space shuttle Endeavor lift off. All those years ago, I watched, with my oldest daughter, as the space shuttle Challenger lifted off. Megan was just four years old. We had talked about the teacher astronaut for several days. And then, suddenly, the teacher astronaut was gone.

Tonight, another teacher astronaut rode the shuttle from its launch pad. Tomorrow we'll see her in news stories and begin to follow her adventures aboard the Endeavor and the space station. Christa McAuliffe's back-up and partner-in-training has finally done what we had hoped would happen all those years ago. There's a teacher in space!

Here's a snippet of NASA's Preflight Interview with Barbara Morgan:

...That was a long time ago, Barbara, but as you head into these final months of training for your flight now some of the same things about training were ... are ... are occurring that occurred before 51L. Do you think of those days very much? Do you think of the training days back in 1985 leading up to January of ’86 in a fond way? Are the memories still strong after all this time?

You know, it hasn’t been a long time. It was just yesterday. It still feels like just yesterday. As we go through training now, those memories still are there with me. For example, when we go flying in the T-38s (and we do that every week), it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience and it’s a great part of training as we fly those aircraft. I always remember the very first flight I had with Mike Smith and how he showed me what it’s like to do barrel rolls and how to fly lazy eights and how to fly in formation with another plane and how, at that time, I knew absolutely nothing about flying. And I’ll never forget after Mike showed me a few of these things and he said, “OK, Barb, it’s your turn, push the stick.” You can fly the jet from either the front cockpit or the rear cockpit. And, I said, “Which way?” And, he said, “Any way you want. It’s your plane. Take it.” And I was shocked by that, and flew some barrel rolls and, you know, realized that Mike had just opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. Those were opportunities that have carried into today, as we learn as crewmates to fly and communicate with each other and to communicate with our air traffic control and to do everything that we need to do both in the T-38s and in spaceflight. Read the rest here.

Barbara Morgan's flying tonight! I'm so glad. And, I appreciate her efforts to share her opportunities with the rest of us.