Place Where You Live:

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

The shuttle Endeavour

Space is a wonderful and interesting place. Space can capture the mind of anyone who looks up at the sky. From scientists, to creative people, to the average person, space is beautiful. Many dream of walking among the stars, yearning to go beyond and to see the future. Media has also captured this idea with movies like Star Wars and Star Trek, and video games such as Halo and No Man’s Sky. My interest is space and science began in Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida and from there I began my path to where I am now

The year was 2010, I was ten years old and my entire family went down to Cape Canaveral to watch the last midnight launch of the Space Shuttle. While we were there, we wandered around the Kennedy Space Center. The center was like an amusement park, there were multiple buildings, such as information buildings, arcades, rides, and gift shops. Outside one of the buildings they had a full scale model of the Mars’ rover made out of Legos. The information buildings had information about the shuttle program, history of space exploration, even moon rocks.

The launch was on a cold February night. My family and I were on the waterfront, which was as close as we could get to the shuttle. On the other side of the water was the shuttle launch platform. The night was freezing and windy, so I used the space blanket my parents had bought to keep warm. We had to wait for a while, maybe twenty or thirty minutes, I cannot remember, but it felt like forever. Everyone there had to wait for mission control to give the go or no go. Eventually they gave the go ahead to launch. I remember my chattering teeth and the countdown from ten, and then I remember the shuttle launching. A large pillar of fire roaring through the night, and as the shuttle climbed into the sky, the rocket disappeared in to the clouds and everyone started to clap.