Ok, fine, I admit it. I caved in to the social pressure and bought a lottery ticket today. I thought about what I would do with a metric flock ton of money (other than the obvious). For me, there's only one thing to do with that kind of money. Follow my passion and do whatever I can to advance space tourism, commerce and access to space by anyone.
With that in mind, I picked the following numbers:
05 - For the Saturn V and my hero Wernher von Braun, whose rockets enabled humanity to achieve jaw-dropping escape velocity and get to the moon.
11 - For Apollo 11. An unprecedented achievement that I watched as a small child on an old black and white TV and just like that, a space geek for life was born.
30 - For 30 years of Space Shuttle flights that awed, inspired and kept me looking to the stars.
35 - For STS-135 Atlantis, the last shuttle flight and one I saw in person. Never underestimate the power of 20% go for launch (a special good luck charm mention here goes to @phiden and @charmcitygavin.)
51 - For STS-51L Challenger and in memory of the astronauts who lost their lives in the January 1986 shuttle disaster. Also a reminder that space travel is a risky business.
13 - As the Mega Number because I just have to pay homage to an Apollo crew that patched up their faulty capsule with a sock and duct tape to plummet safely back to Earth. Talk about luck.
Will my Space Numbers be the lucky ones tonight?
We will find out in about an hour.
