Its odd, what notches the wheel of time in ones mind.

The human brain, an

incredible device, manages to save an awful lot of information, and that can get lodged
in memory like a piece of last nights broccoli stuck in that one place your tongue cant
reach. This is evident in what happens when you ask an older individual about the day
JFK was shot, or for Generation X perhaps, the day that Challenger exploded. More
often than not, they will say I remember exactly what I was doing that day, maybe
doing the laundry, or coming home with groceries. Mundane things made extraordinary,
by the extraordinary. Simple addition.
I remember a cold day at the end of February. It wasnt snowing, but it wasnt
warm, either. I had just gotten off the early bus from the middle school; usually, I stayed
late so I could talk with teachers, but today was different. That day, which I had been
looking forward to all week, was the day that the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off for
the last time. Walking a little faster than normal, I knew it was about twenty minutes to
T-0 for launch. Wait, was Cape Canaveral in the same time zone as New York? Maybe
I missed it already! Fortunately, my mom had already turned on the TV by the time I got
inside, and Discovery was still there, sitting quietly on the grey launchpad.
Never before had I seen a Shuttle launch. Well, not a live one. Of course, the
Shuttle was an American icon, plastered all over the walls of classroom posters,
teaching the occasional bored middle-schooler about physics, math, or engineering.
Every kid, enthusiastic about NASA or not, could tell you what happened when the
Shuttle launched; there was a lot of fire and smoke, and then it flew up,and then the
boosters fell off, and then the big orange tank fell off, and then the astronauts were in
space! It was childs play. And yet, there was a different feeling, watching the Space

Shuttle live. Here, voluntarily strapped into that thin, white soup can, six humans would
slip the surly bonds on a trail of fire, and wouldnt be coming back down for a long time.
It was as if the Earth was about to become lighter under my feet, with the knowledge
that what goes up doesnt always come down.
There, on that grainy old CRT television, I stood watching, with my mother beside
me. I was too excited to sit, and what reason was there to do so? I would be standing
back up again anyways. Transfixed by an unnatural power, my eyes had been locked
onto that screen. Even through the salt-and-pepper static, I could pick out the features
of Discovery; a small, pristine orbiter, married to a monstrous, orange fuel tank, and two
lanky boosters. Then the camera angle changed. A close up, a view of the three
engine nozzles on Discovery, wreathed in the white smoke of venting liquid oxygen, just
screaming to be lit. The entire spacecraft had an air of potential energy, a boulder
sitting on the precipice of a large cliff. Everything about it spoke of power, from how it
dwarfed the tiny staircases for the astronauts next to it, to the skyward facing cockpit
windows. Nothing would hold back the beast.
My heart started to beat faster, matching the clock as the seconds ticked away to
zero. Will the astronauts be safe? Will it all blow up? How old is Discovery, can she
last one more ride?
And, despite all of the warning in the world, it felt incredibly sudden. A batch of
sparklers were ignited at the bottom of Discoverys engine bells, a taste of the fire to
come. Out of nowhere, blue cones shot from the nozzles, and the entire orbiter rocked
forward, yanking against its restraints, begging for freedom. Finally, without a care for
gravity, the nozzles, the orbiter, and the big orange tank deftly lurched upwards, out of

the frame of the camera. Cutting to a new shot, one could see huge plumes of white
smoke, and at the top of the ever-lengthening column, a bright speck.
I was awestruck. I was dumbfounded. I was ecstatic. Right then and there, I
knew that I must devote my life to the furthering of mankind from our terrestrial
nascence, and into the spacefaring age.
Not even looking away from the television, I said to my mother, This is what I
want to do with my life.
Thats a long, hard road, son, she said, frank as ever.
My response? I dont care.
I will always remember my mother as the shepherd, one to guide the way but
allow freedom. She quietly said, Very well, if thats what you want to do. Youre going
to have to work hard for it.

Something about me changed in the following days. Instead of using the internet
to, perhaps, look up funny pictures of cats or watch YouTube videos, Wikipedia became
my best friend. As if someone had shaken the rust off my brain and my ambition, I
began to soak up as much information as I could about space.
Id already had a base to build from; since an early age, I had been exposed to
the concept of outer space, through films such as Star Wars. Young me had his first
exposure to rocketry at the tender age of seven, in the Cub Scout program. We each
constructed a model rocket of our own to launch; I remember that it had been painted
blue, and, the evening news still fresh in my mind, had christened it Colombia II, in
honor of the recent disaster in 2003. Ever the engineer, my thought process during
construction went as follows: if one gunpowder rocket motor makes it fly this high, then

two rocket motors would make it fly twice as high! Little did I know that this wasnt how
model rockets worked, and sadly, much like its ill-fated counterpart, Colombia II
exploded shortly after liftoff. It was horrifying.
With the echoes of this incident still reverberating across the folds of my mind, I
became determined to head back into the field of rocketry, and this time, avoid any
rapid, unplanned disassembly. Our school had a tiny library, yet I checked out and read
every book they had on the history of NASA, and the worlds spacefaring exploits. In a
short time, Id picked up that preventing failures required a lot of hard work, attention to
detail, and perseverance. For example, one fact I had picked up from a space
encyclopedia went something along the lines of, During the Apollo 1 disaster, the lives
of Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee were lost due to a fire resulting from an
electrical short. To prevent a repeat of this, NASA insisted that every single electrical
connection in the spacecraft, hundreds of them, be waterproofed and insulated.
Interestingly, this attention to detail saved the lives of the crew of Apollo 13, as during
reentry, the switches that they had needed to flip were coated in condensation from their
breathing
This information struck a chord with me. No shortcuts could be taken with
rockets. Now spurred by hope, knowledge, and the last flight of Discovery, I would
attempt the skies once again. My next model rocket, a cheap model called Titan III,
would have several hours of careful cutting and gluing involved. It flew successfully a
number of times, prodding me to aim higher. Inspired by the experiences of Yuri
Gagarin ejecting from his craft, I attempted to engineer a similar system: a lego man,
strapped to a tiny parachute, would be punted from the model rocket instead of the

recovery system. Flying my innovation the next day, it worked the first few times,
kicking the lego astronaut out of his cozy tube and suspending him below a parachute.
However, all innovation comes with risk; on his last flight, my intrepid astronaut and his
parachute got caught by a particularly strong gust of wind, and was carried into the
forest, gone forever.
All this time, while I was working on my rockets, I was going through middle and
high school. While some languished in their fear of the unknown, I knew that the only
path for me was the one that would take me to the stars. In 10th grade, I began with
simple Google search: Best aerospace engineering colleges.
From the moment that Id read of its distinguished alumni, I knew that Purdue
would be the place for me to go. However, like many other attempts, this too was
fraught with roadblocks. I was accepted, although not into the degree I wanted.
Determined to go, I went to Purdue anyway, and decided to simply change my major
midway through the semester. Yet, again, I was stopped; one of my grades, calculus,
was too low to permit me to be an engineer. For a while, it seemed, I would never get
what I wanted.
However, while ruminating over my self-perceived failure during the winter break,
I fell back into what I did best: engineering. My memory of Discovery goaded me
forward, daring me to try. It wasnt even the flight itself that did it, it was simply the
memory of my reaction. I wasnt going to give up yet.
As I had in middle school, I began to learn again. Only this time, I was searching
for flow rate equations, heats of combustion, and how to make oxygen. My next
creation would be a liquid rocket engine, the same type that had propelled Discovery

into orbit, all those years ago. Lacking money wouldnt prove to be a boundary;
resourcefully, I used a steel soup can for the structure of the engine. Finally, it all came
together, and on one dry day, before I was to return to school, I lit the engine. It worked
just as Id designed it to.
I had the same feeling that day as I did with Discovery. Yet this time, it was my
discovery, my creation, my engineering that had come to life and worked. Once again, I
had overcome failure, and the long, hard road predicted by my mother became a little
shorter. With a head hung a bit higher, I boarded the plane to return the next day.

When I think about it, there was so much more to watching that launch than
seeing something spectacular. It was the result, the reactionary force that came from
the experience that stuck with me, and notched the wheel of time. Every aspect of that
day has been played again and again in my minds eye, just because it reminded me of
my ultimate goal. More than a catalyst, Discovery prompted me toward a lifetime of my
own discovery, and with its end, came a beginning.