I grew up just down the road from NASA. The neighborhood where I lived had a rather large number of engineers and other people who worked for NASA during the early years. There was even a large building not far from my home that served as a temporary headquarters until the NASA complex was built in Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, Texas.

Lyndon Johnson was one of the most powerful voices in government even before he became president. He used his influence to lure the headquarters of NASA to the backyard of Houston. Land for the project was donated by Rice University which also promised to develop engineers and scientists for the project of traveling into space. 

Much of my education is a blur of learning facts and algorithms in various subjects but my middle school science teacher, Mrs. Colby, ignited my excitement for space travel. I already had a touch of her enthusiasm from my father who had purchased a book describing in vivid detail a future journey to the moon. My younger brother walked around our house with the volume tucked under his arm and he was always eager to show the illustrations of how such a dream might one day come true. Nonetheless, it was Mrs. Colby breathlessly and joyfully telling us about the future of space travel that ignited my interest in what was happening only minutes away from my home. 

I remember the time that she moved an old black and white television into the classroom so that we might witness Alan Shepard’s travel into space. It was a quick but dramatic trip that opened the possibilities of what would come next. Not so long afterwards Mrs. Colby brought back that television and we watched John Glen orbiting around the earth before returning triumphantly. 

NASA was a constant of my high school life. I had friends whose parents worked there and my brother still boasted that we would one day travel to the moon. I was twenty one years old when a crew led by Neal Armstrong walked on the moon and planted an American flag. The excitement that I felt on that day was indescribable and I found myself wondering if Mrs. Colby was as happy as I was.

I was married at the time and my husband was working for his uncle whose crew did much of the electrical work for NASA. He was crawling under the floor of the Mission Control Center pulling cables to enable the many processes needed to communicate to the guys on the moon and to the world that was watching. 

Eventually my brother who had been celebrating the idea of traveling to the moon since he was three years old graduated from Rice University with a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. While he was recruited for many exciting jobs it was the opportunity to work for NASA that allowed him to finally fulfill his dream. He would spend the entirety of his career working diligently as the focus on space travel matured and changed. By the time he was ready to retire he had played an integral part in developing the navigational system for travel to the International Space Station and had begun the process of shifting back to an idea of returning to the moon to colonize it’s surface.

In the meantime one of my grandson’s became my brother’s biggest fans as he too began dreaming of playing a part in the conquest of outer space at a very young age. Before he was three years old he was able to name all of the planets and their moons. He tagged behind my brother like he was some kind of rockstar. Now he is just finishing a degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Notre Dame University and will enter a PhD program at Ohio State University this summer. 

The siren call of space shouts loudly in my family but the opportunities at NASA are not as plentiful as they once were. One of the first things that Donald Trump did in his second term as president was to gut the funding, resulting in the necessity to dismiss forty percent of the employees. It almost seemed as though the glory days of NASA were over but the quest for space had become a shared venture with the International Space Station, so with the expertise and genius of engineers and scientists from all over the world a new idea about traveling once again to the moon gained traction. 

Once again I watched the glorious result of worldwide cooperation as the Artemis crew catapulted into space on the first journey to the moon in around fifty seven years. The weather was perfect and the launch was flawless making it a glorious moment in a time when it often feels as though we are moving backwards in our thinking. I felt the same swelling of my chest and the moisture of happy tears on my cheeks while messages from my daughters described their joy as well. I learned that my grandson had celebrated the launch with his fellow aerospace engineering students who are all soon to graduate to become the next generation of brilliant souls who plan to learn more and more about the vast world beyond the confines of our atmosphere. 

It was good to be able to celebrate something so positive and exciting in a time when we are too often quibbling with each other on this earth. I thought of Mrs. Colby who is no longer with us and I gave her a little salute for opening my mind to the possibilities of humanity in joining each other in peace. Somehow it seemed so fitting for all of this to happen during Holy Week just before our Easter celebrations. The best of humankind was visible in that launch and I look forward to witnessing the new discoveries that lie ahead.