When I think of my heroes around me, I turn to the ones I see every day: the firefighters, police officers, and teachers. Never a thought to the ones who are flying into the great unknown.

Last Sunday I was in Walt Disney World, Florida in Magic Kingdom, just going about my evening just as anyone else there; enjoying the warm weather and trying to decide what ride to go on next. That evening I saw something that I wasn’t expecting to. I got to witness in person the launch of space shuttle Discovery. It was an amazing site to see the smoke left from the rockets almost adjacent to Cinderella’s castle and to be able to tell when the rockets had disengaged. That wasn’t even the best part. The people around me were the ones who blew the experience out of the water. For about a minute, the entire park was almost silent as everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch the shuttle lift off, and once we could no longer see the shuttle, the crowd broke out into applause. It was amazing the appreciation that the crowd was showing the shuttle, proving that the astronauts had not been forgotten about and that they were still important to everyone there.

I am sure everyone there had their own reason for clapping. I was clapping for the bravery of the six astronauts aboard that shuttle, for their hard work and for their determination to make new discoveries so that we can learn about the worlds and space around us. Without them and all the other astronauts, we would have no clue about space. They will be up there for ten days, make two space walks, change solar panels on the international space station and more. It is because of all they do that they are the heroes that I will never again forget.