Moonglow

crushing boredom can unlock great powers of invention.

but with his rocket only halfway up the slope of its parabola he took her words as provocation

e had maybe two minutes before the rocket of his anger burned up its fuel and fell back to earth.

outside his office, where a quick-witted girl had been positioned to filter out creditors and tax inspectors

was the hardest-working but least effective member of the Feathercombs sales force.

He was the hardest-working but least effective member

For months he had felt that it was not just the shuttle program that would be at stake when Discovery blasted off. It would be an entire vision of the future, shared by all the fading partisans of space flight, for whom the launch held the promise of collective redemption. Now my grandfather understood that his interest in the loss of Challenger and the fate of Discovery, his obsession with the modifications that had been made to its solid rocket booster, or to Commander Rick Hauck’s vintage Corvette, amounted to nothing grander than Sally Sichel’s feeling that she was living only to care for her late husband’s cat. There was nothing collective about it. It was purely personal, a seal to stop his heart against a leak of sorrow. Seen in that light, the whole business struck him as much less interesting.