Today, the shuttle Endeavor crossed over Southern New Mexico one last time. It flew from Biggs Army Airfield over White Sands Missile Range and west from the NASA facility on WSMR’s western boundary towards its final resting place at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, CA.

I watched the mated behemoths of the Boeing 747 and the obsolete spacecraft fly directly overhead on its path to eternity. I had seen one space shuttle prior to this day. On April 6th, 1982, I watched as a similarly configured tandem pulled in to Barksdale AFB, LA (or was it Eglin AFB, FL?) on its way from White Sands Missile Range. That vehicle had been the space Shuttle Columbia, which would disintegrate over Texas two decades later.

So my contact with the space shuttle program began and ended with White Sands Missile Range, NM.

This, a short time after the deaths of Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong, makes me mourn the U.S. space program.