The ISS had its solar panels wide open and was reflecting the sun that had set 30 or so minutes prior.  It took less than 90 seconds for it to come and go, but I got goosebumps!

Yeah, I'm a geek.  I love technology and where it has brought us in terms of science, especially physics and astronomy.  We use products every day that are offshoots from the space program.  We don't even think about such things anymore.  After all, the program has been around for about 45 years.  The stuff it generates, as well as all the things spawned in the past, are now everyday items.  I remember when anything that came to market from NASA and its research awed everybody.

Well, even though I don't recognize all the things I use that came from there, I am still awed at what the U.S. space program has done.  Imagine, there were people up there in that bright light in the sky, moving at speeds you and I will never see.  And their view!  The pictures I've seen!  Click here to open a new window with a photograph showing both the moon and the Earth in crescent at the same time.  (If you click on the photo in the new window, you will get a higher resolution picture to look at.)  You can't take a picture like that from here!  It was recorded on July 18th, 1998 by the Japanese Mars probe Nozomi, launched earlier that year!  It was 100,000 miles from Earth at the time.  The Japanese program was inspired by ours.

One of my few regrets is that I will never get to go out there.  As a kid, I got to experience outer space through the writings of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clark (who I interviewed for the Georgia Tech newspaper back in the 70s); the movies of Gene Roddenberry and, as I got older, Steven Spielberg (who looks a lot like me, lucky guy!), Carl Sagan (whose hand I got to shake once!), and others.

Thank you to all the writers, directors, science teachers, actors, movie model makers and CGI creators, Mom, Dad, Phil, my third grade librarian (who introduced me to science fiction), and everyone else out there that touched my imagination during my life.  

This is truly a very cool time to be alive!