Keep the Dream Alive

© 1986, 2003 Stephen Savitzky. CC-by-nc-sa.

Written in 1986 shortly after the Challenger blew up on takeoff. Revised, unfortunately, for Columbia in 2003.

Recordings:

Lyrics [pdf] [txt] [cho]

	C	G
	In the year of Nineteen Eighty	Six,

	C	Em
On an	icy winter's	day

	Am
The shuttle Challenger	left the pad

	Em	Am
And	started on her	way

	C	G
The	shuttle Challenger lifted	off

	C	Em
With s	even brave women and m	en

	Am
In flames they died just t	en miles high,

	Em	Am
And	never came home ag	ain.

C G

N ever came home again,

C G

In fl ames they died just ten miles h igh

Em Am

And n ever came home again.

And seventeen years later

Nearly forty miles high,

Columbia's wreckage wrote a line

Of fire across the sky

But long before the jetstream blew

Her trail of smoke away

We saw that it marked a highway

We would travel again some day.

--2003--02--01

So never say that they died in vain

Nor stay on the ground afraid,

The stars are one step closer now

Because of the price we've paid.

And mourn for the shuttles that fly no more,

And weep for the friends we've lost,

But to leave the Earth will still be worth

Whatever it has to cost.

And fire no guns in last salute

But let the rockets roar,

And reach for the wide and starry sky

As Challenger did before.

And raise no earthbound slab of stone,

To mark the place they lie,

But write their names with a shuttle's flames,

Ten miles in the sky.

And here's a toast to the shuttle crews

Who died for the dream of space

And all the pioneers who have

The sky for a resting place.

No grave nor tombstone do they need,

For their memory will survive

As long as we fly beyond the sky

And keep the dream alive.

Keep the dream alive,

As long as we fly beyond the sky

And keep the dream alive.

Keep the dream alive,

Let the shuttles fly beyond the sky

And keep the dream alive.

Note: Permission is hereby given to record, reproduce, and publish this song, provided you notify the author and send the usual mechanical license fees to a space-related charity, for example the Space Shuttle Children's Fund.

Watch this space: I intend to put up a lead sheet and recording as soon as I can get them together. Meanwhile, a very inadequate (low-resolution scan of a second-generation copy of a hastily-pencilled, inexpertly-transcribed) lead sheet can be found here. Don't say I didn't warn you.