Given the events of this morning, I think there’s really only one possible song I can post tonight:

Ah, Rush. The Canadian prog-rock so beloved of nerdy, intellectual fourteen-year-old boys and Ayn Rand fans (often the same people, now that I think about it). And also, weirdly, by the mullet-and-muscle-car set I used to hang on the fringes of. I was never a huge fan of these guys — a greatest-hits compilation is all the Rush I require, thank you, and then I really only like about two-thirds of the songs on the disc — but this particular song raises the hair on my arms. The throbbing synthesizer is very 1981, but also very dramatic and futuristic… at least in terms of how we used to imagine the future. Nobody in ’81 anticipated Auto-Tune. I’ll happily take the synths over that thing.

Anyhow, this song was obviously inspired by STS-01, the first shuttle flight made by the lost Columbia. The voices you hear layered over the music — part of what makes the song so awesome, in my opinion — are the real thing, taken directly from the tapes of that historic launch. And all the non-Rush clips in this video are authentic to the first flight as well. If nothing else, this song and video should demonstrate just how prominent the early days of the shuttle program were in the North American zeitgeist, as reflected by our pop culture. People were excited about the shuttles back then. It’s sometimes easy to forget just how excited. There was so much hope and optimism about where we were going, so much national pride generated by our achievements in space. Healthy, non-militaristic, non-jingoistic, non-partisan pride, I might add. The ’80s usually don’t seem that distant to me; I can clearly remember so many of the textures of everyday life back then. But tonight… well, things have changed so much in this country that the ’80s may as well have happened in the Cretaceous Era.

And now, to bed, I think. It’s been a long damn day. But first, maybe I’ll just click over to NASA TV and watch a few minutes of the earth slipping by beneath Atlantis on the live feed… so peaceful… Goodnight, kids…