Such a beautiful tribute to the Shuttle program. I too grew up with it being “my” space program, from when my school participated in a contest for getting a project sent up and the excitement of winning, to the Challenger disaster (which was the shuttle that our project went up on so was even more personal, not to mention Christa McAuliffe went to college in my hometown) and those tense moments when they started launching again, to watching this last launch and wishing most of all that I could have somehow found a way to go down and see it, having never seen a launch myself. It will always be a regret of mine, to not have seen one in person. So I will have to experience it vicariously through the experiences and writings of others like yourself.