High Flight

On Jan. 28, 1986, seven astronauts lost their lives when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

STS 51L – the mission’s official name – was to feature America’s first teacher in space, Sharon Christa McAuliffe.

Then-President Ronald Reagan addressed the stunned nation later that day. His closing line from his statement reads:

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'”

John Gillespie Magee Jr. was a World War II Anglo-American Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and poet, who wrote the poem “High Flight”. He was killed in an accidental mid-air collision over England in 1941.

He composed the following sonnet.

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sun ward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”