The best-laid plans of mice and men

The Scottish poet Robbie Burns said it best I think, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft aglee."

Well, I have had a lot of "aglee" in the past three weeks.

I have been a "space case" since I was 11 years old. That is when my parents gave me a telescope for Christmas.

My teachers had told them to encourage me in things scientific, and so they did.

First it was the chemistry set. My mother was sure I was going to blow up the house. Fortunately I didn't. Not that there weren't thoughts about just what I could blow up.

Next came the microscope, which was great. I could see really small things, I discovered the little creepy crawlies that lived in the small stream that ran behind our house (which also terrified my mother to no end), the stoma on the underside of a leaf, and blood cells. I don't think my little brother was very happy, even to this day, about being the donor.

Then after a few more things scientific came the telescope. I think this one gift far outpaced all the others. Oh, sure, I could see small things and play with various chemical responses and see how a prism produced a spectrum from a simple light ray and how water pressure worked in a pump, but all of that paled in comparison to what was ... out there.

What was in the night sky? All the wonderful things that were now within my grasp. The planets, the galaxies, the stars.

Then a small government agency called, NASA, began putting things up in space. Satellites they called them. Even though Russia was the first one to put something up there, NASA kept trying until, at last, they too were able to launch a small piece of scientific hardware that could send back to Earth information about what was "out there."

I was hooked. I made my father wake me up very early in the morning so I could watch on television when a satellite was going to be launched, and as things progressed from Mercury, into Gemini and Apollo.

I would go outside to look for the satellites when they would pass over and I read everything I could get my hands on about space and the things in it.

Well, enough of that, now to the "aglee" I mentioned before.

On April 19, of this year the next-to-the-last space shuttle was going to be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I had visited the space center when I was 18 years old and had been thoroughly fascinated. This was going to be the place where humans would reach for the moon, although that was four more years into the future.

I had made plans to travel there and watch the shuttle launch, in person, for real. I arranged for the necessary vacation time, I would take my pop-up camper for a place to stay and I would be able to watch, and photograph a for-real, live space shuttle launch. I even arranged, with the kind assistance of the Benkelman Post, to get a press pass which would put me even closer to the action.

That is until NASA moved the launch date back two weeks because the Russians were going to launch a supply mission to the space station and both missions could not be near the ISS at the same time.

The second date drew near, some plans had been modified but perhaps were still do-able. Then NASA postponed the launch another week because of mechanical problems.

Well, this killed the whole thing. I would not be able to keep switching vacation days ad-infinitum, to stretch them to fit the vagaries of a launch schedule that kept changing. So, alas, the trip was off.

At this present writing the launch is scheduled for Monday afternoon, May 4, so I won't know if it will launch then or not, could be another delay.

But, rest assured, when the launch does take place, I will be at my computer watching the giant count-down clock as it runs down to zero and the massive engines of the launch vehicle flame into life with a thunderous roar and gouts of flame hurl the shuttle and the people inside from a standing start to almost 34 times the speed of sound in only a few minutes...and then run outside after dark in an attempt, as that little boy did so many years ago, to catch a gleam of sunlight off the surface of a thing in space carrying people from our planet in a never ending circle.

God speed Endeavour and your crew, God speed to the individuals inhabiting a mechanical creation called a space station. God speed those who go to where the mind of a little boy once dreamed to wonder.