The shuttle launch in the closing scene has a special personal meaning for me, because my Dad and I were standing in the crowd during the first launch of the Space Shuttle (STS-1), 33 years ago this week. The film editors actually spliced together the original launch with at least one and possibly two other shuttle launches for the scene - they can be discerned one from the other because STS-1 was the only shuttle with a white external fuel tank (the media said the entire vehicle appeared to resemble a space-age Taj Mahal), while the external fuel tanks from STS-2 to the final launch all were unpainted orange metal. In the STS-1 portion of the scene that shows the shuttle launching from the pad, the sky appears exactly as I recall it that April morning - clear with scattered cirrus clouds, the sky a dark blue due to the 7:01 a.m. launch. At that time I was a clerk for a team of atmospheric scientists that were preparing several lightning experiments that were to be launched on later shuttle flights, so my Dad and I rode along with one of the scientists who had obtained a NASA car pass for entry into the KSC complex, and we spent the night with 80,000 other people who were parked on the bank of the Banana River to see the launch of the shuttle, just 4 miles away. The experience meant a lot to my Dad and was a turning point in our lives, because it was the first family event without my Mom, who had passed on 6 months earlier, and made us realize that our lives were meant to continue on to new and distant horizons. My Dad passed away less than 6 years later in early 1987 and my own health is now problematic, but to see that glimpse of our day at KSC so long ago did bring tears to my eyes, though unlike Homer I still wish that I had used my gifts and skills in a bigger way, but anyway this film has become one of my favorites over the past 5 years because of the good memories it brings to mind and because I've always been a fan of the US space program, from Mercury to the ISS...
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