As if I didn’t need MORE reasons to absolutely love Beth Revis, one of my favorite YA sci-fi authors (she wrote Across the Universe, A Million Suns, and Shades of Earth) who happens to be a sci-fi junkie and a self-proclaimed Whovian Browncoat – props to you if you know what that means.

Beth is hosting a giveaway on her blog in honor of NASA Month. Every weekday in March, she’s been writing about NASA and how freaking awesome it is, and she is inviting her readers to do the same (and possibly win some amazing book swag in the process). I knew as soon as I read about NASA Month that I wanted to participate, but I wasn’t sure how. Do I write about some of the shuttle launches I’ve seen? Nah, I’ve done that. Stuff we love that was inspired by NASA? I’ve done that too, sort of. Favorite NASA inventions? Ehhh, too many to list, and probably too boring for most people.

It wasn’t until last night when Adrian put on a couple episodes of one of our favorite shows ever, Star Trek: Enterprise, while he was working on his computer, that I realized what I wanted to write about. Hearing the show’s theme song, “Faith of the Heart” by Russel Watson, made me remember what I love the most about NASA…

IMO, never has one organization (especially one that receives so incredibly little funding from our government, only 0.5% of the total US Federal Budget) been able to bring about the kind of unique, visceral reaction from people that NASA does. People are passionate when it comes to space. As for me, I always loved Star Trek and sci-fi as a child and thought astronomy was kinda cool, but it wasn’t until I saw my first Space Shuttle launch in 2001 that I became an evangelist. I even took an astronomy class in college that I was totally unprepared for (I’m a geek, but I’m actually quite bad at math and science – haha).

NASA and the space program gives us hope that we can do anything, imagine anything, be anything. If you watch the video I embedded below, the opening theme of Star Trek: Enterprise, you’ll see a timeline of human accomplishments over the past few centuries. To me, it is like a mini-tribute to NASA, an acknowledgement to the fact that as a species, we have come so far in so little time, reaching forward towards the amazing dream that we can go even farther. That is what NASA is all about, to me: Invention. Imagination. Achievement. I love science, and I love NASA, and I am awed and amazed by everything NASA has done over the past 55 years.

NASA inspires me to imagine an incredible future. Perhaps by the time NASA reaches 100 years (when my little Zachary is 50 years old!), all that we’ve learned from NASA will allow us to cure cancer, settle on Mars, and even develop a way to create our own “warp speed” space ships.

But for now, we’ll just have to dream.