Born in 1958, I was just the right age in the mid-’60s to put “astronaut” at the top of the list of What I Want to Be When I Grow Up. Bad eyesight and other real-world obstacles killed that dream by the time I was thirteen – but I’ve always had a secret wish that things could have been otherwise, and I’ve always followed spaceflight and spacefarers with far more than passing interest.

I confess, however, that I’ve never been a big fan of the Space Shuttle, which has always seemed to me to be something less than what the Next Step After Apollo should have been.

On the other hand, I’m not an aerospace engineer . . . so it may be that the Shuttle, when it was designed, was the best of all possible spacecraft. It may even be that the Shuttle is still the best of all possible spacecraft (although I’m more dubious about that).

But regardless of whether the Shuttle is the best of all possible spacecraft, I admire the people who fly it. I always watch the skies when they’re up there in the Void, and I always await their return.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, I was on my way to a post office in Lawrence, Kansas to mail the completed manuscript of my first novel. Since I was already a few weeks late turning it in, I had decided to skip watching the Shuttle Challenger lift off – because I wanted to finally get the book out of the house.

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