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Hell, I could use that last one in the Sailor Moon step.

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Mp3 available here.

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(Hey, Bob? How's this Sunday sound?)

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For a get-together? I think it's workable -- I have to check with Peg, of course, and I hope you don't mind the detritus of several home projects (like the aforementioned closet) scattered around the place...

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Quote:In the year of Nineteen Eighty Six,
On an icy winter's day
The shuttle Challenger left the pad
And started on her way
The shuttle Challenger lifted off
With seven brave women and men
In flames they died just ten miles high,
And never came home again.

Never came home again,
In flames they died just ten miles high
And never came home again.

And seventeen years later
Nearly forty miles high,
Columbia's wreckage wrote a line
Of fire across the sky
But long before the jetstream blew
Her trail of smoke away
We saw that it marked a highway
We would travel again some day.


--2003--02--01


So never say that they died in vain
Nor stay on the ground afraid,
The stars are one step closer now
Because of the price we've paid.
And mourn for the shuttles that fly no more,
And weep for the friends we've lost,
But to leave the Earth will still be worth
Whatever it has to cost.

And fire no guns in last salute
But let the rockets roar,
And reach for the wide and starry sky
As Challenger did before.
And raise no earthbound slab of stone,
To mark the place they lie,
But write their names with a shuttle's flames,
Ten miles in the sky.

And here's a toast to the shuttle crews
Who died for the dream of space
And all the pioneers who have
The sky for a resting place.
No grave nor tombstone do they need,
For their memory will survive
As long as we fly beyond the sky
And keep the dream alive.

Keep the dream alive,
As long as we fly beyond the sky
And keep the dream alive.

Keep the dream alive,
Let the shuttles fly beyond the sky
And keep the dream alive.

Quote:She was first among our shuttles, and we watched her from afar:

Liftoff's soaring angel-plume, re-entry's falling star.

She carried hope and knowledge on that flying fortnight run

Crewed by warriors and healers, and sometimes both in one.

Sixteen minutes out from home she faltered in her flight,

Lost communication, and broke up in beads of light

And my heart is soaked in sorrow as it slowly understands

That Columbia, sky-strider, is fallen... with all hands.

As a people and a nation we have paid a price to learn

That in any exploration, there are some who don't return.

We are neither fools nor cowards, to be shaken now to know

What our founders could have told us, twice a hundred years ago.

Pictures stark before us, spelled out the flyers' fates.

A hundred miles of wreckage lay strewn across two states:

Scraps of twisted metal, a helmet grey with char,

Across the fields of mem'ry, a black and smoking scar.

Across a waking nation the shock and sorrow ran

From sunny Amarillo to the forests of Spokane.

From India to Israel the mourners claim their own;

A nation grieves its heroes, but we do not grieve alone.

Columbia is fallen, yet her journey isn't done;

The secrets of the universe are dear--and dearly won.

In every generation we find some dreamers rise

And set their lives at hazard to give us all the skies.

Quote: Chorus:

Twelve thousand, half-million, million and more

Picnicking out on the warm-water shore.

Nobody notes that we're always at hand

To watch all the space-ships that take off and land.

Come along Harry and Mary and Joe.

Pack up some lunches, and everyone go.

Fill up the camper, drive down to White Sands,

And we'll pour the champagne when the Space Shuttle lands.

It's the loveliest show on this Earth that you'll see;

It's living and real, not just tape-on-TV.

So come to Canaveral, and bring lots of beer.

When the space-ship takes off we'll all stand up and cheer.

Politicians ignore us, the media too;

But if they don't notice, the ships always do.

See her landing so lightly, you'd swear that she cares

That she flies on two wings and a good million prayers.

So come let's go witness the takeoff today

While the world's biggest beach-party cheers her away.

We'll bang the drums proudly and blow on the conch.

Leave a sign on your door that just says "Out to Launch."

Quote:Worlds grow old and suns grow cold

And death we never can doubt.

Time's cold wind, wailing down the past,

Reminds us that all flesh is grass

And history's lamps blow out.

But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.

Time won't drive us down to dust again.

Cycles turn while the far stars burn,

And people and planets age.

Life's crown passes to younger lands,

Time brushes dust of hope from his hands

And turns another page.

But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.

Time won't drive us down to dust again.

But we who feel the weight of the wheel

When winter falls over our world

Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes

To a silver moon in the opened skies

And a single flag unfurled.

But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.

Time won't drive us down to dust again.

We know well what Life can tell:

If you would not perish, then grow.

And today our fragile flesh and steel

Have laid our hands on a vaster wheel

With all of the stars to know

That the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.

Time won't drive us down to dust again.

From all who tried out of history's tide,

Salute for the team that won.

And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach,

The wave that carried us up the beach

To reach for the shining sun.

For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.

Time won't drive us down to dust again.

Quote:Prometheus they say brought gods fire down to man

And we’ve caught it, tamed it, trained it since our history began

Now we’re going back to Heaven just to look Him in the eye

And there’s a thunder ‘cross the land and a fire in the sky

Gragarin was the first back in 1961

When, like Icarus, undaunted he climbed to reach the sun

And he knew he might not make it, for it’s never hard to die

But he lifted off the pad and rode a fire in the sky

Yet a higher goal was calling and we vowed we’d reach it soon

And we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the moon

And Apollo told the world we can do it if we try

For there was one small step and a fire in the sky

Then two decades from Gragarin, twenty years to the day

Came a shuttle named Columbia to open up the way

And they said she’s just a truck, but she’s a truck that’s aimin’ high

See her big jets burnin’. See her fire in the sky

Yet the gods do not give lightly of the powers they have made

And with Challenger and seven, once again the price is paid

Though our nation watched her falling, yet a world could only cry

As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky

Now the rest is up to us. There’s a future to be won

We must turn our faces outward. We will do what must be done

For no cradle lasts forever, every bird must learn to fly

And we’re goin’ to the stars. See our fire in the sky

Yes, we’re going to the stars. See our fire in the sky