Curt Breneman
Associate Professor, Chemistry

"It would be accurate to say that many defining moments of my life have
been associated with the high and low points of the "space race".  As a
late baby-boomer born in 1956, I arrived in the world at almost the same
time that orbital flight began.  My grade school memories are punctuated
by the launch footage from the Mercury and Gemini flights, with the
Apollo program standing as a highlight of my high school years.  I was
inspired by these momentous events unfolding before me during my
formative years.  I frequented our local planetarium and was chilled by
the final photographs relayed back from the doomed Ranger probes as they plunged into the lunar surface.  I followed the incredible soft landing
of the Surveyor craft on the moon and knew that it was only a matter of
time before men would follow it there.  Deep space interplanetary
missions such as Pioneer Jupiter and Voyager also made deep impressions
on my young mind, and stirred a rich mixture of pride and wonder.  Since
an adult friend of the family worked at TRW, he was able to take me on
tours of the facility and show me such things as Vela satellites undergoing preparation for launch, and obtained for me a beautiful set of 8x10 photographs taken on the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission.

I found myself wishing that there were more public information available
about the Soviet space program, since I realized that there were amazing
things going on in that parallel space program as well.  I grieved for the lost Cosmonauts who died when their capsule depressurized during re-entry, and the sweated out the Apollo 13 mission.  When Apollo 17 left the lunar surface, I felt a profound sense of loss that the first great adventure in lunar exploration was over.

As a graduate student, I was shocked and horrified by the Challenger
launch video. As it was repeatedly played on the networks that evening, I
kept wishing that during one of the replays it would just continue to
soar until MECO. From the first belly-punch of the radio announcement to
the final transcript of the telemetry contents, I was deeply affected by
this event.

While we have yet to recapture the incredible national spirit associated
with the first heady days of the space program, I believe that recent
cooperative MIR missions and the wonderful new Mars probes have
rekindled a world-wide sense of accomplishment and wonder.

The world would be a much less interesting place if not for the efforts
of thousands of engineers, scientists, astronauts and cosmonauts who
taught us to believe that we could accomplish the impossible."