Christmas on the Space Coast

Every year I try to get a Christmas ornament to commemorate our year or some aspect of our family. This time I went with a space-themed one, as it's been a spacey year for us:

We've seen a number of Shuttle launches, Matthew and Jonathan went to space camp, Matthew is totally into reading books about the space program, we've been watching the DVD series From the Earth to the Moon, a Delta 2 satellite rocket was launched from NASA yesterday, and just this morning Matthew announced that when he grows up, he wants to be an astronaut! Coupling that with the fact that 2007 was the first year that Matthew started reading the Sunday comics-- I thought this Peanuts one was a good fit.

We've told Matthew that he's certainly smart enough to be an astronaut, and that if he keeps his studies up in school, he would be an excellent age to be in space after NASA heads back to the moon by 2020 and then on to Mars by 2037. He'd be too young for a 2020 mission, but age 37 wouldn't be bad for Mars. Kinda crazy to even think about, huh?

Another thing we've told him is that he can do whatever he wants in life, even if later he decides he wants to do something else-- we'll be there to support him. The most important thing will be that he's using his God-given abilities as well as he can. And Jonathan is an excellent example to him! We've also told Matthew that there are thousands of people working in the space industry who never leave the planet-- there are lots of ways to be involved. I've always said Matthew would make a great air-traffic contoller. So why not work at Mission Control!? Aren't these speculative thoughts fun? Spoken like a true first-time-parent-of-a-7-year-old! My 60 year-old self is laughing even as we speak.

A word about the Delta 2 rocket-- it streaked across our neighborhood sky, and I was not only amazed at how well I could see it, but also how much faster it was moving than the Shuttle usually does. When I called Jonathan on his cell phone and told him to "look up", he told me that the rapid ascent rate was because it was unmanned. No worrying so much about human-squeezing G-forces-- they could get up there as fast as they wanted to. Other than a falling star, I've never seen anything move through the sky that fast before. Amazing. Below are shots of it, closer to the launch site at NASA.