Post #596357 by TikiTomD on Wed, Jul 6, 2011 6:30 AM

For those tiki peeps who are also into spaceflight, take note that this Friday (July 8, 2011), weather and systems permitting, the final Space Shuttle mission will launch from Kennedy Space Center. Here’s a great web site for real-time mission updates...

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts135/status.html

And here’s an essay on the final mission...

http://thespacereview.com/article/1876/1

As Atlantis lifts away, it will be a poignant moment for many, especially those of us who have worked for years in the US manned spaceflight program, as well as those who live in the communities near Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center. This CNN video focuses on one such community, Titusville, located directly across the river from the Kennedy Space Center’s launch complexes...

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/07/04/foreman.space.town.farewell.cnn?iref=allsearch

The late Howard Nemerov, former poet laureate of the US, wrote this poem after viewing a launch of Atlantis many years ago...

http://spaceshuttle.wikispaces.com/Space+Shuttle+Poetry

Witnessing the Launch of the Shuttle Atlantis

So much of life in the world is waiting, that
This day was no exception, so we waited
All morning long and into the afternoon.
I spent some of the time remembering
Dante, who did the voyage in the mind
Alone, with no more nor heavier machinery
Than the ghost of a girl giving him guidance;

And wondered if much was lost to gain all this
New world of engine and energy, where dream
Translates into deed. But when the thing went up
It was indeed impressive, as if hell
Itself opened to send its emissary
In search of heaven or "the unpeopled world"
(thus Dante of doomed Ulysses) "behind the sun."

So much of life in the world is memory
That the moment of the happening itself—
So much with noise and smoke and rising clear
To vanish at the limit of our vision
Into the light blue light of afternoon—
Appeared no more, against the void in aim,
Than the flare of a match in sunlight, quickly snuffed.

What yet may come of this? We cannot know.
Great things are promised, as the promised land
Promised to Moses that he would not see
But a distant sight of, though the children would.
The world is made of pictures of the world,
And the pictures change the world into another world
We cannot know, as we knew not this one.

-Tom