As a young child, I dreamed of one day leaving this world and gazing back upon it from space. I dreamed of floating among the heavens, weightless. Someone once said that Heaven is the place where all your dreams come true. I once said that to live among the heavens is to truly be in Heaven. I used to read every book I could get my hands on about space and space exploration. I once successfully named every single manned rocket NASA has launched at a county fair, and I still have in my apartment now a two and a half foot tall model of Columbia that my dad and I built when I was seven or eight years old. That dream, though deferred, still lives on in me. I still gaze in wonder toward the stars and watch in awe as other men and women live my dream. I long ago decided that dream was beyond my grasp, and turned it towards an intense interest in science fiction and space art, but I still marvel at those people who make more and more of that dream a reality every day. In an age seeming devoid of true heroes, these people are my heroes.

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never Lark, or even Eagle flew -
And while with silent lifting mind, I've trod