ImageI was moving some things around in my bedroom earlier today, trying to find some clothes to work out in, when I came across a coffee table book that my friend Angela got me for Christmas (thanks, Clock!).  It’s “Last Launch” by Dan Winters.

He’s a photographer who got special permission to take a series of photos of the last launches of the Space Shuttles Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis.  Awesome shots of one of the greatest machines ever made.  The photo above is not from the book, but still expresses the power and the feeling of what our space fleet once was.

There’s a poem by Story Musgrave that in part of the foreword I want to share with you:

Floating in a spaceship,
Falling through my heaven,
Through epic altitudes
And higher latitudes.

Falling into sleep, 
Drifting into dreams, 
Cosmic crashes in my eye,
Cosmic flashes in my brain.

Cosmic rays and Wilson clouds,
Clear my consciousness.
Memories of infinity,
Particles of eternity,

Starlettes* pierce my eyes,
In my brain fire flies.
Periods of light,
Punctuate my night

*In reference to cosmic particles in the magnetosphere.

Here’s to dreams of light, of infinity, of eternity for all of us around who live on this little Blue Marble.