Le Trevolution!: To the moon, Alice!

Today marks the end of thirty years of space shuttle missions. I remember the excitement of that first launch, the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, the excitement of Dr. Sally Ride being the first American woman in space, and the general sense of pride, amazement and wonder at the men and women who commit their lives to Space...the final frontier (sorry, Captain Kirk, had to do it).

It's impressive, you know, all of this "spaceman" and "going to the moon" stuff. And, it's challenging. Kind of like many things in our lives, achieving what we've only imagined sometimes requires us to accept a seemingly impossible (or just plain CRAZY) goal, challenge our comfort zone, and rely on individual and collective commitment. Here's a clip of President Kennedy giving a speech at Rice University describing the challenge our space program faced when he was President...Have a look:

We choose to go to moon in this decade not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard; because that goal will serve to organize the best of our energies and skills; because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.

Thirty-five years after we started flying airplanes across the Atlantic Ocean, our President told our country we were going to invent new super-strong metal and go to the moon.

And, we did.

Wow.

I'm always impressed with loose collectivism -- people who share a common dream towards the success of a mission, or idea, and then see it through. Our space program has operated in that manner for most of the last century, and I'm sad a big part of it (at least where my life experience is concerned) is coming to an end.

Anyway, enough with the sadness, it is time to for me to: be bold; accept the challenges ahead of me with the excitement and confidence of a kid running into the waves at the beach; keep loving the ones I care about with everything I have; keep challenging my mind, working on my fitness and...