Tiles

[talon]

You remember the television broadcast, remember the world collectively holding its breath, remember the words as every person remembers them

Comments

[jexia]

*thumbs up* Good job.

[talon]

Thanks! Any grammar issues? Plotwise, I'm sure it's kind of rambling and meandering, because I pretty much just put everything I've loved about space into it, but I'd like it to at least read well, and you have a good eye for it.

[jexia]

Nothing jumped out at me :)

I liked the structure - people don't always have deep revelations about their lives in nice plot points.

(When my eldest was little, he was space-mad. Someone gave him a soft toy space shuttle for his fourth birthday. He looked at it and then said, "There's no re-entry tiles on the wings, and all the astronauts are going to die.")

[talon]

Holy cow, that is one precocious kid! Is he going to grow up to be an astrophysicist? aerospace engineer? :)

[kickthehobbit]

:D

I am so glad that you wrote this, and also that it ends happily after all.

[talon]

I'm glad to have written this, too, even if I go out on it :)

[halfshellvenus]

The Columbia incident was one of the first things I thought of, for this prompt, but couldn't figure out what to do with it.

This a nice piece of historical fiction that captures the loss and ripples from when things go so very wrong.

[talon]

Thank you! It's been one of the things that I've always cared about and thought about, and when someone mentioned to me 'the tiles on the space shuttle', the rest of this honestly wrote itself. It was originally going to end with him constructing a mosaic of tiles, black and white on the field, but that felt a bit too pat.

Thanks for reading!

[suesniffsglue]

Wow. This is so beautiful. "It's a long, hard road to the stars" is one of the most stunning sentences I've ever read. Is that something you came up with, or is that an actual wording on a real plaque? It's gorgeous and it's inclusion is brilliant. Really nice work.

[suesniffsglue]

Ah, a google search granted more insight. Anyways, lovely.

[talon]

:) Yes - the phrase has actually haunted me ever since I first read about the Apollo 1 incident, and this felt like the right place to set it. Thank you for the kind words!

[gratefuladdict]

This made me cry.

Probably because my father stayed up all night watching coverage every time a shuttle was launched. Also probably because I'm a thousand weeks pregnant and overly sentimental. :)

[talon]

:P Probably!