The very last space shuttle launch has occurred. As a child of the ‘80s this is bittersweet for me. I remember watching the very first shuttle launch on TV in 1981 at the age of 11 with the wonderment of a child’s mind and the limitless possibilities of what the future of space exploration could hold. Never dreaming that at the age of 41, I would be watching the last launch and the end of the shuttle program as we have known it.

Throughout much of my basic education, the shuttle program played a pivotal role in bringing science and space exploration into the classroom and into my home life. In 1983 I remember working on a report for one of my classes about Sally Ride who was the first American woman to go into space. In 1986, TV’s were rolled into my high school classroom as we all watched and grieved over the news coverage of the Challenger disaster.

In 2003 we lost another shuttle, the Columbia, over the skies of Texas. That next summer, in 2004, we traveled as a family down to San Antonio for a friend’s wedding.  During our layover in Dallas, a wonderful gentleman, who was a volunteer tram operator at the Dallas Airport, gave my 3-year-old son Nick a shuttle pin from that doomed mission which he had received from one of the NASA employees assigned to the debris recovery efforts. We still have that pin.

In 2008 we timed our family trip to Florida so that it would coincide with a shuttle launch. On Nov. 14, 2008, mission STS-126 with the shuttle Endeavor blasted off during one of the last nighttime launches as the three of us watched with unobstructed views lakeside from across the water in Titus, Fla. Nick was 7 and will remember witnessing that event through the eyes of his own childhood wonderment for the rest of his life. The next day we toured Kennedy Space Center and took an enormous amount of pride in the documented history of what the brave explorative American spirit had been able to accomplish over the decades for our country and our world.

As one door closes another one opens. Space exploration is something human kind will always seek. How we go about doing that is being worked on and developed right now by some of the greatest minds on the planet. It may be the end of the shuttle program for now, but the beginning of something even greater for Nick’s generation and for the generation of his children.

Here is to the next 30 years and a new beginning.