october-2010

is all skinny legs and has a big grin on her
face, posing before a full-size replica of the
space shuttle. “When I first saw (the shuttle)
I thought it was so big,” Brenna Ebitz tells
me. “I thought it’d only be the size of a bus.”
This is Ebitz and her grandfather’s first
trip to the complex, where IMAX films,
rocket displays, tours of launch facilities and
the simulated Shuttle Launch Experience
ride attract 1.5 million visitors each year.
Two or three years from now, visitor complex
officials hope to exhibit one of the three
retired space shuttle orbiters (which are three
times the length of a school bus, and five
“The shuttle represents what this
country’s capable of. We want to tell
that story for a long time.”
times the height) not far from where Ebitz
is standing. In the same way the complex
recaptures the thrill of the Apollo program,
enabling visitors to walk beneath a 363-foot
Saturn V rocket and touch a moon rock, the
display will keep the shuttle alive for future
generations.“The shuttle represents what
this country’s capable of,” says Bill Moore,
who oversees operations at the complex. “We
want to tell that story for a long time.”
For me, envisioning the shuttle
program living on in this way puts its
conclusion in a broader context—not as
an ending, but as a closed chapter in a
continuing story. “A whole lot of people in
America, they’ve never known anything
but the shuttle,” Thompson says. “But this
is just another program at its twilight, and
other programs will come in and be just
as exciting.”
I like her optimism. And when that new
dawn comes, I hope there’s a little girl standing
on a bluff somewhere, watching and
wondering what else might be possible.
AIRTRAN AIRWAYS provides daily,
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for more information.
OCTOBER 2010 GO MAGAZINE
047