It’s A Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s Superman. No, It’s a SpaceX Launch
The world’s heaviest rocket blasts off
I live 31 miles from Starbase, Texas. This morning we were up watching the launch on the Starbase YouTube channel.
As soon as it launched we heard a sound like thunder. The house shook, and our backyard pool water was sloshing around.
For a split second, I was scared the rocket was falling on our house. A few minutes later friends were posting pictures on social media, along with their opinions about Elon Musk.
Many locals do not like the effect the launch has on the environment.
I am not sure I have an opinion. My opinion will not change anything. When I read this article from the New York Times, I learned that NASA is paying SpaceX to launch rockets, and is hopeful to send a woman to the moon. Apparently, NASA has slightly less ambitious goals than colonizing Mars.
I smiled at the term used to describe this launch. The second SpaceX launch experienced an
“unscheduled rapid disassembly.”
That means it crashed into the Gulf of Mexico instead of making it to the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
Oh well. Success begins with failure.
Marketing begins with euphemisms.
What amazes me most is I feel like I am living in the future. When I was a child I remember reading a book in second grade called
I found the book on Amazon and bought a used copy.
I also remember watching the moon launch when I was in sixth grade on those old black and white televisions they rolled into our classroom so we could watch history in the making.
I have another memory of my mother describing her first year teaching in the 1950’s. She lived in Seattle, Washington, and an older teacher told her,
“Ya know, they plan to put a freeway right in front of our school.”
Now Seattle is covered with freeways. When we took my dad to visit the city he grew up in when he was 89 and had Dementia, I asked him what he remembered of the trip.
“I remember the way your husband navigated those crazy freeways.”
Change is the only constant in life.
I have read the New York Times for a while. I moved to South Texas in the early 1980’s. My aunt lived in New York, and she sent me clippings in fat envelopes with extra postage stamps from articles that interested her. One clipping had an article about the school next door to the school where I taught.
The article began, “On a dusty road in a migrant school in a sleepy border town…..”
I remember feeling a bit insulted back then. A sleepy border town? My students were not dusty or sleepy!
Perspective is everything!
Who woulda thunk back in 1983 that rockets would be launching in 2023 from the previously undeveloped beach near the town I migrated to for a teaching job in the 1980’s?
Things change. The world changes. Life goes on.
