ENDEAVOR

196 – Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It was a picture-perfect lift-off and launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. On the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the nation’s first lunar mission, I marveled at today’s television coverage and the quality of images broadcast over the airwaves – the clarity was undistorted and pristine for well over ten miles into the atmosphere as the cottony exhaust plume puffed out like a scared cat’s tail and twisted its incomparable signature arch across the wispy-clouded azure skies which, coupled with a couple of hydrogen leaks, had delayed the launch six times previously – only one delay short of a new record. At moments after six o’clock pm, Cynthia bolted through the front door and cast her gaze toward the eastern horizon with the anticipation of visually capturing its view as is possible on the clearest of days, but with no good fortune – her disappointment was evident when she returned, for the actual sight leaves an indelible memory. As Commander Mark Polansky and his crew prepare for their 16-day well-scripted voyage, my memory flashes back to the former years when every launch was a total unknown – we were ‘flying blind’ into the far reaches of ‘outer space’ ala Buck Rodgers. Those years saw Sci-fi films prolifically produce themselves in Hollywood studios decades before the wizardry of special effects and computer generated graphic images would add such reality to the latest genre making today’s productions virtually impossible to separate from actual video footage; yet, we were gobbling them all up with the voracity of a hungry hound dog. Still, forty years later, every launch is a compilation of gargantuan human effort and technological prowess of staggering proportion. Are you impressed? While it is every inch amazing, it does not even compare to the comprehension of the brain or its Creator, without whom, no space exploration or conquest would have ever moved from concept to completion. The ingenuity of man cannot be compared to the omniscience of the Father! Praise Him!

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