Wordsmithing: SHUTTLE OFF FOLLOWED BY SPLASHBACK

Monday 11 July 2011

SHUTTLE OFF FOLLOWED BY SPLASHBACK

The five space shuttles transported 355 astronauts.

There have been 134 missions.

Shuttles have travelled a total of half a billion miles in space.

The ground crew and astronauts have been routinely heroic.

Nothing I have read about the replacements sound anything like as versatile as the space shuttle.

I wonder what the new craft might look like?

How far we will we expect the next generation of brave explorers to go?

We use vast sums of money to fund our ability to look outwards, do we suffer from insatiable curiosity or planet envy?

Could it be that we have we lost hope in our ability to protect and share the Earth?

Where is X-33? I can't help thinking the Orion rocket looks - splash-back-to-the-future - limited.

2 comments:

Sherrie Petersen12 July 2011 at 00:50
Our family actually got to see the Orion in person when we were in Tucson. It stopped at the Pima Air & Space Museum on its way to Kennedy in Florida. It looks like a pretty versatile craft, but they haven't figured out how the astronauts will exercise while they're in there. It doesn't have nearly as much room as the space shuttle did.
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Unknown12 July 2011 at 08:19
Wow! I've only seen it in pictures. It looks so 1970s... looks like a step back to the future ;) My tour of California will bring me through Solvang - I've been thinking of you a lot recently :D
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RETURN: YA Paranormal Romance

I was running late. But, it was nothing I couldn’t make up with a bit of effort. I shook my head. Confident and happy? I smiled. Increasing my stride, I pushed until the muscles in my legs burned. I kept up the pace even when the hill grew steeper.

Magpie Lane was hardly wider than a ribbon that edged the woods but that didn’t stop traffic using it to get to the motorway quicker. Large trucks and fast cars loved Magpie Lane. They sent vibrations running through me rising from the soles of my trainers. I felt the disturbance in the ground, even before the air pressure tried to knock me off balance. I hunched my shoulders as the cab hauling a container spat stones up at me.

Jogging on the spot, at the entrance to woodland, I ached to leave the road and go inside. My Mum was probably still asleep but I could hear her you-never-know-what might-be-in-there lecture buzzing on repeat inside my head. I should run safe. Not even I would argue that running through the woods on my own was the best definition of safe but I wanted to run-wild and the woodland offered me that. This early, I should be safe from axe murderers or perverts in the trees and besides, I was fast.

I jogged down the slope into the trees. From two paces in, I felt different. Freer. It felt so right. Running in the woods did great things for my style. Avoiding the roots and dodging branches forced my stride longer, I had to step higher. The woodland, The Weald, was only a sliver of ancient woodland that the developers forgot to build on but it felt like it could have been anywhere. Everywhere. At any time. The oaks and beech trees dominated the space and the skinny, silver-birches squeezed up beside them. I laughed. For a second, the woods reminded me of school and I needed to run a lot faster.

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Monday 11 July 2011

SHUTTLE OFF FOLLOWED BY SPLASHBACK

2 comments: