I never knew I could fly so high

April 18, 2010

Clayton Anderson

Mission specialist

Space Shuttle Discovery

Dear Clay,

Greetings from Earth! I can only imagine how breathtaking the planet must appear from your vantage point on the space shuttle, not to mention how exhilarating it must be to float in zero gravity.

It might surprise you to know that down here, I, too, have been defying gravity. I don't know if this phenomenon is something that scientists, and perhaps NASA itself, might want to investigate, but I can assure you I have literally been walking on air for quite some time now.

I first noticed a hint of weightlessness last fall, when you invited my family and me to your then-upcoming launch. And when you asked if I would draw two cartoons that you could take into space, I was, of course, elated.

But it wasn't until we arrived at the Kennedy Space Center a few weeks back, in the early morning hours before your launch, that I became convinced I was walking several feet off the ground. Maybe this feeling was due to the gathering of space enthusiasts and the anticipation-filled air, not unlike the energy one feels outside of Memorial Stadium on a Husker Saturday. Times a thousand.

A little after three in the morning, we boarded buses for the Saturn-V complex, adjacent to the VIP viewing area where we would eventually watch your launch. Lining a wall inside the complex were 22 famous front pages from July 1969, all the headlines proclaiming that man had landed on the moon. The newspapers came from all over the world, but among them, to my delight, was the front page of the Omaha World-Herald.

Then my son, Josh, pointed out that just a few feet away stood a statue of Snoopy. As you know, one of the cartoons I drew for your mission was of Dogie, a dog character I created in childhood that eventually lost out to Snoopy as the “first dog on the moon.” Now, Dogie would finally make it into space.

And not far from the World-Herald declaring that Neil Armstrong had set foot on the moon, in the shadow of an actual Saturn V rocket hanging horizontally, stood the icon himself, reserved but willing to pose for photos. I marveled at the alignment of the World-Herald, Snoopy and Armstrong. I'm grateful that Armstrong allowed me to shake his hand. Otherwise, who knows? I might have floated away from my excitement.

Outside, in the predawn darkness, my elation only grew as the International Space Station glided like a star across the face of the moon and then high above the gleaming launch pad, on the other side of Banana Creek, where you waited inside of Discovery.

At T-minus three minutes until launch, the crowd was asked to stand and sing the national anthem, the most powerful and moving version I have ever been a part of. After the last line of the song, for the entire two minutes before launch, the crowd stood in reverent silence. I thought about my Uncle Ed, who as a syndicated columnist interviewed Wernher von Braun and had reported on the launch of a Jupiter rocket from Cape Canaveral in 1958.

At T-minus 10, the crowd joined the PA announcer in the countdown. I wanted to savor those 10 seconds, make them last forever. At just after 6:21 in the morning, when the booster rockets and main engines began to fire, the sky became illuminated into a spectacular work of art; after the slightest hesitation, Discovery left Earth.

How could anything with such magnitude and force rise from the ground with such grace? A moment later, the roar of the launch rumbled across the water. I felt the vibration in my knees, in my bones and, of course, there was that feeling of floating.

We watched until we could see you no more, and still, we continued to marvel in awe, witnessing some through tears this splendid beauty, a contrail left behind, now cast in the pastels of sunrise.

A while later, Josh asked what it felt like to know that two of my cartoons were now in space. I had been so enthralled with the launch that I briefly forgot; I was walking on air.

And I still am not sure when I'll come down to Earth.

Sincerely,

Jeff Koterba

Cartoonist

Omaha World-Herald

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