Astronauts help dedicate shuttle monument

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — Facing a crowd next to an eight-ton stainless steel space shuttle emblem, astronaut Bob Crippen reminisced about his NASA spaceflight career that started in April 1981.
"When I look back on the program, it was a great experience," said Crippen, who orbited the Earth aboard Columbia during the first shuttle mission.
"Yes, we had two terrible tragedies," he said, referring to the loss of the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. "But every time it happened, the program picked itself up by its bootstraps and got the program back flying again — and flying safely."
Saturday morning, a jacket-wearing crowd attended the dedication ceremony of the 15-foot-tall shuttle monument at Space View Park in Titusville, just west of Kennedy Space Center.
The audience was largely comprised of current and retired space workers, some dating to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo days.
The U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum spearheaded creation of the monument, which cost about $350,000. Six black granite panels on the 8-foot-tall base display information on shuttle processing, ground operations, missions and major NASA and space contractor sites.
"When my daughter called from Houston and told me that we had lost contact with Columbia, I knew that that was probably going to be the demise of the program. But truthfully, I never expected the shuttle would be canceled without some other way of putting our crews up in space here from the United States," Crippen said.
"But that's what's happened. And we can look back and remember the program fondly," he said.

Former astronauts Bob Crippen, left, and Jon McBride laugh during Saturday's dedication of the space shuttle monument .

Dozens of former shuttle workers lined up at the podium, then briefly took the microphone, introduced themselves and described the work they did.
"We get a lot of the credit, a lot of the glory for going up there in space, get to meet the presidents and all the other people and things like that," said astronaut Jon McBride, who commanded shuttle Challenger in 1984. "But we couldn't have done anything we have done, had it not been for all those we stood up and spoke to us — and all the others who couldn't be with us today.
"God bless them," he said.
Astronaut Andy Allen, a veteran of three shuttle missions, concurred.
"I think it's wonderful that we have a monument here for the folks that make it all work right. It's really not that hard to get strapped into a rocket," Allen said.
"My mother told me it was a lack of intelligence to get strapped into a rocket," he joked, drawing laughs from the crowd.
"You know, I've got to echo what Andy just said," said astronaut Fred Gregory, a commander and pilot who also logged three shuttle missions.
"Everybody gives us the credit. And for every launch we had, I think there were probably 40,000 people around the world who were going to make that the safest, most successful mission ever."