Space

What gets you fired up?  What really interests you?  Is it a hobby, or your family, your job, or losing yourself in literature?
What is it?

When I was just 5 years old, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.  The TV coverage was grainy and black and white, but we still sat there mesmerized.  I still remember that day.
A few years later, the Apollo program ended, partly due to the disinterest of the American public.  I never lost interest.

In October of 1975, my grandmother took my two brothers and I to Florida for a long weekend.  It was a great trip that included Disney World (newly opened at that time), and the Kennedy Space Center.  My grandmother was as hooked on space as I would become, and I credit her with keeping me interested and enthused about the possibilities.  We toured the entire facility, and I was completely amazed at the enormity of the vehicle assembly building.  Little things, like the fact that the building had it's own interior weather, at times producing a fine rain inside, or so we were told.
I was completely hooked.  The only let down was that nothing was going on.  Nothing was being worked on.  The Shuttle was still being designed and built, years from flight.

But I waited for the day that it would fly.  I watched every update, and every launch and landing that I could.  When my grandmother would visit on weekends, she would wake me up if there was an early morning launch.  Just me and her sometimes.  Not everyone was interested.

The shuttles have been retired now, and the future seems to be private companies taking over.  At least for low earth orbit projects.
At first, I was enthused by Burt Rutan, and his Spaceship One.  It was exciting to see them become the first private company to reach the barrier of space.  But after selling out to Richard Branson, they have been slow to fulfill their stated promise.

I've been following Space X since I heard about them, before their first aborted launch of the now mothballed Falcon 1.  I watched them launch 3 successive failures.  But each one built on the previous lessons.
Tomorrow, they launch a Dragon capsule to the ISS for the third time.  Will it become routine?  Will those who follow them lose interest?  I know that I won't.  There are too many milestones in the near future to look forward to, including the launch of private citizens within just a couple of years.

Regardless of who is funding the project, what country or company, I will always watch the launches.  I'll always watch the coverage and landings.  And, when possible, I'll look up into the night sky, to catch a glimpse of them going by.