GOOD NIGHT, ATLANTIS….ATLANTIS, GOOD NIGHT
(….we’ll see you in our dreams)

By a dawn’s early light our Atlantis shuttle glided down out of the darkness, making a smooth feather-like touch down on the runway, and then rolled quietly off into….history.

Thus ended our country’s first era of manned space flight, during which we planted and left our flag in solitary splendor on the Moon, helped put up and piece together an international space station in orbit around our Earth, launched the Hubble space telescope, then repaired its mirror mechanism, and too many other incredible accomplishments to mention here. Nor should we forget the horrific tragedies in the midst of all of these successes. Simply put, our shuttles started us on a path of speculation, experimenting, and testing the practicalities involved with human life in the last frontier….of space.

Like many of us alive today I can recall the great emotion at the moment when Neil Armstrong took that first small step off the ladder of the moon landing craft, to kick up a small puff of moon dust with his space suit’s boot. And the later thrill of watching him and his companion making kangaroo hops across its surface like two kids gamboling over a new playground. And now a half century later we reflect on how far we’ve come from those days.

We humans are now on the cusp of a new era. We’ve landed rovers on Mars. We’ve launched several deep space probes to visit other distant planets, such as Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, and even sent one plunging into our Sun while recording data about its inner workings….before becoming a part of it.

In some respects I’ve stood, and am standing, with the same kind of wondrous reflection about how far and fast we’ve come in my time, as my late mother had stood in her lifetime. Perhaps in her case, even more so because she not only had been witness to, but participated in some of the earliest advances in the technologies of flight.

She was a child at the turn of the last century through those early years after the Wright brothers first lifted off the ground, growing up during that period of weird aircraft creations, and the technological advances leading into WWI. Later, as a university coed, she found herself hired as a –wing walker – by two itinerant pilots operating a barnstorming show throughout the Midwest, Charles Lindbergh, yet to make his historic flight across the Atlantic, and his partner in the show, Bud Guerney, who later developed what’s known as the –Black Box – found on all airliners today. Billed as the –Flying Venus – she found herself harnessed to the top wing of what was then the top flying machine of its day…the Gypsy Moth bi-plane, hanging upside down from it as it made loops and rolls above the crowds below, to end up standing tall and waving at them as they cruised by minimum speed barely a few yards above the ground (years later, on her 80th birthday, she had her last ride in a fully restored, fire-engine-red Gypsy Moth belonging to her old friend Bud Guerney, as they both relived her glory Flying Venus days).

Well, she lived long enough to see us zooming through the air at the speed of sound, and to watch Neil land on the moon.

As for me, I’m still here, waiting to see what new marvels of flight may yet happen before I head for the exits. Of course, I’ve never had the adventurous thrill of been a wing walker like dear old mom, but I can say I was on one of the last trans-pacific prop driven flights, on a grand old Lockheed Electra, droning serenely on and on, and on, while cradling me in the long gone comfort of an airline seat, now only found in first class. And later, on the second jet flight across that same ocean in what we came to call – the flying pencil – an early version of the Boeing 707 (I didn’t care much for the high pitched whiney-bitch sounds of its jets which, though muted, were still a highly irritating background noise for the entire flight). Compared to the Electra….it was not an upgrade as far as I was concerned. But then, much later I did have several jaunts aboard that super-sonic marvel of luxury passenger flight….the Concorde (at least its engines’ whines could never keep up with us), until it too passed into history.

Well, technology moves in mysterious waves. Who knows what’s waiting round that bend. I may yet see us commuting by personal jet packs, or some such. Meanwhile, all I can say is ….good night, Atlantis….Atlantis, good night….we’ll see you in our dreams.

CENTURION