Longing to Touch the Moon and Stars

For reasons that probably don’t reflect well on me, I’ve lost interest in outer space. From a kid caught up in America’s space race and who ditched a summer job to watch the 1969 moon landing, I’ve morphed into an adult who pays semi-attention to what NASA is up to.

My only consolation is that lots of other Americans feel the same way. I didn’t even know the Discovery shuttle was set for launch last week until the day before it went up. Nor would I have paid much attention afterward if it weren’t for the early fears that another disaster might be in the offing because loose foam came off during launch.

But perhaps because there’s little hope for me, it was a total delight to hear Cherie Rabideau’s sheer joy over space flight coursing through the phone

line.

She traces her love of space to one of the best parenting moments I’ve ever heard. “I was probably 8 or 9 years old,” she says. “My dad was a teacher. He taught on an Indian reservation, and I was raised on the reservation in Utah. One night he took me outside and said, ‘Look down and look up. Where would you rather be?’ ”

How cool is that?

Rabideau remembers her reaction. “I knew exactly what he meant, and I didn’t say a thing,” she says. “I just pointed up.”

Rabideau is 53 now and lives in Lake Forest with her equally enthusiastic husband. When they met 24 years ago, one of the first things he saw in her apartment was a mural of Earth from space, thanks to photography from Apollo 16. They got married on July 20, 1987, the 18th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. It was one way, Rabideau jokes, to ensure that neither would forget their anniversary.

Rabideau knows there are millions of people like me -- people once excited about Americans in space, but now less so. We have lost the feeling of newness and exploration we once had; she never has.

Why hasn’t she?

“Passion,” she says. “And honoring my father.”

She laments a national mood that doesn’t include clamoring for expanded space travel. She longs for another president with John Kennedy’s commitment to outer space. She worries that America’s youth are obsessed with computer games at the expense of real-life adventures.

When we talked Friday evening, she was vexed that NASA wasn’t providing enough photos on its website. Despite first-day jitters from NASA, Rabideau says she isn’t worried about the shuttle’s safety. Besides, she says, potential danger goes with the territory.

“These are people like policemen,” she says. “These are astronauts. That’s their whole thing. They take a chance and they live that chance.... Astronauts have the chance of losing their lives every day. I don’t mean to sound blase, but realistically, that’s it. And if I were up there, I’d realize the chance I’d take also.”

But with a shuttle in space on a 14-day mission, these are good times for Rabideau who, with husband Larry Evans, is part of officialdom for the Orange County Space Society, the local chapter of a national organization.

“When I see the shuttle go up, I cry,” Rabideau says. “I feel like I have a hole in my chest. It’s exciting, wonderful and I envy those people so much. I’m saying, ‘Take me. Take me. I’ll go.’ ”

Not everyone gets it. She phoned her mother the day the shuttle was launched. “Her complaint was that it was 6:30 in the morning,” Rabideau says with a laugh. “She said, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

You’d think Mom would understand her daughter by now, that thrill she gets when contemplating the shuttle crew: “It’s knowing that perhaps that could be me.”

Before hanging up, Rabideau made me promise not to make her sound like a nut. I told her the truth: All I heard during our conversation was a little girl who’d grown into a woman and transferred her father’s inspiration from a starry night into a lifelong passion.

We should all be so nutty.