Saddened by end of shuttles

As I listened to radio coverage of the launch of the Spaceshuttle Atlantis - the historic launch that ended the U.S. spaceshuttle program, my mind immediately went back to  1986.
I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade, but I wasn’t at school. I was playing hooky, pretending I had a headache (not something I made a habit of), and I was on my grandma’s couch. Coverage of the Challenger launch had probably interrputed her regularly-scheduled soap.
Before the launch, the main bit of information that had stuck out in my mind was that, on that day, the first schoolteacher ever would be launched into space. I can’t tell you the name of any other astronaut on that flight or on shuttle flights since (not even the one embroiled in scandal a few years ago), but I’ll never forget the name Christa Mcauliff.
I sat and watched, with the rest of America, as she and the other crew members, and their shuttle, exploded into practically nothing in mid-air, as it happened. I’ll never forget the cloud that looked like a Y in the sky.
As a child, there was no way I could comprehend the magnitude of what I’d seen, but I sat there, almost speechless. I remember the seconds that seemed like minutes between seeing the explosion and wondering if the launch was supposed to look like that and finding out that it, in fact, was not supposed to look like that.
As I was writing this, I decided to rewatch some footage of the event. I didn’t watch a lot - just a couple minutes of coverage from networks airing the launch.
I also thought of Christa McAuliff and how excited she must have been to be a part of the mission - not just to get to experience space for herself, but to be a link between her students and such a vast expanse of information and knowledge - to be an inspiration to them, and let them see first-hand that  the possibilities are boundless.
Christa McAuliff isn’t the only person to give her life for the sake of the future of education and the future of our nation, and she’s not the only one to give her life as part of the nation’s space shuttle program, but she is the one most of us know of - the one who most of us can relate to.
I was saddened to learn several years ago that the space shuttle program was being phased out for our nation and even more saddened to learn that, until a little progress is made by some private entities, the U.S. has no way of going into space on its own. Until the U.S. has those capabilities again, which could be a year, we will travel to the international space station in Russian vehicles.
I only hope the private companies who have control of our nation’s space travel in the future are responsible, and I hope the economic impact they can make will offset the thousands of jobs lost by the cessation of the space shuttle program. I also hope they care as much about the future of our nation and the vast knowledge we can gain from interaction with space as Christa McAuliff did.