At the end of last week, I sheepishly asked my preceptor for the privilege of a day off…to which she inquired as to the reason for my brief absence. I told her simply “I’ve been invited by NASA to see the last Space Shuttle launch from the press site.” After that I briefly explained the NASA TweetUp program that allows common, ordinary space dreamers like me a chance to go to a NASA facility and see things and talk to people not available to the general public. I explained how I was actually chosen for the STS-134 mission TweetUp and that because of school; I was not able to return for the 2nd attempt at a launch because of class schedules, this invitation was because I was not able to return. Her response was simply that of course, I had to go. I had to go and see this once in a lifetime event.

And so I went, traveled across the country, made it through the airports and rental cars to security and badging at the launch site in Florida at 5am last Friday morning, and arrived with my heart pounding and bleary eyed, three miles from the spotlight illuminated spacecraft about to roar into orbit to supply the international space station.

For a moment, I reflected a little bit on how this is how much of what we do in medicine has become. To sustain our presence in space we have to get all the little things right. There is so much more than the quick knife, the keen eye, and the dramatic. Doing good work, over and over again, in a way that can be duplicated again and again; this is heroism of its own time and place. In the days of talks with astronauts, technical managers, and engineers, what struck me about NASA and America’s space program was in the end, not the technology, but the fact that it was a very human endeavor of literally tens of thousands of smart, dedicated people working together. That is the incredible thing. Working together, this may be the simplest thing to imagine a group of people to have to do, but the hardest task of all.

In the end, this is our challenge today in Medicine. Healthcare. Whatever you want to call it. We have all the technology in the world needed for every person on the planet to live productive, full, healthy lives. We do not have the social tools or will to make that happen. Yet. Not yet. But we will. Maybe there is something about seeing something as amazing as a manned spaceflight launch that brings out the dreamer in me.

At the one of the presentations during my last visit to NASA, Astronaut Leland Melvin, relayed a quote from Astronaut John Young, the commander of the first Space Shuttle flight. He was speaking of why go on into space when it was so dangerous (at that time we thought it was only a 1 in 100 chance of death, we were wrong about that, it is much higher). He said simply, our future is out there, and dreams are our future. He then concluded by saying something that is burned into me: “When we give up on our dreams, we give up on ourselves.”