Saturday, November 3, 2007

Another giant leap

What would you do if the world was watching your every move? Watching you do something that had never been done before? Something that could cost you your life and cost your government billions?

Today one spacewalker who said he 'felt like he was on a tree at the top of the earth', completed a six hour spacewalk to repair a solar shield so that it would deploy and deliver electricity to the international space station. Without the repairs the wing would have been scrapped and would have crippled international operations.

Comments I heard today remind me that controversy still surrounds our continued space activities though many scientific, aerodynamic and medical advances can be attributed to the experiments completed on space missions.

Growing up 3 miles from NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland I was lucky enough to meet some of our remarkable space pioneers and experience their endeavors into spaceflight from its humble beginnings. Since then the space program has become a global effort with contributions and astronauts from over 18 countries.

Thanks to all the brave men and women for the work they do regardless of the danger, sometimes with little recognition of their many accomplishments.
NaNo 4200

1 comment:

Leah Braemel said...

I prefer to work in obscurity, thanks. (This from someone hoping to get published! Talk about public scrutiny.) That must have been really interesting being so close to the space frontier - and meeting some of them. Closest I've gotten is Neil Armstrong's Museum in Ohio.