On A Serious Note: Remembering

Suddenly, I am ticked off at myself, so I'm doing a bonus post today. Earlier in the week, I decided that in today's I would make note of what day it is and remember....

But I got caught up in the here-and-now and forgot today was Feb 1.

Three years ago today, the sky over Tyler, Texas lit up with the disintegrating Columbia; it was especially personal as DH had worked much on that mission, being part of the Spacehab team at Boeing that integrated the payloads into the Spacehab Module. It was the first mission for the newly designed scientific double module, and DH had even gone to Houston for the mission, working overnights as an interface between the experiment designers and the CapCom, helping answer questions and such and listening in on all the communication between the astronauts and the CapCom. For someone who had worked in the space industry since graduating from college, it was a terrific experience. He finished up on Jan 30 and came home on the 31st, exhausted and exhilirated. Feb. 1st was devastating.

The Spacehab team is no more, divided and parceled out to other tasks. Lots of things to remember...but especially the seven folks who spent their last two weeks among the heavens: Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, William McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Kalpana (KP) Chawla. Remember their families, who I'm sure did not forget for even a moment that today is Feb. 1.