There are plenty of reasons to look up these days. Eclipses, moon missions, those UFO hearings, and SpaceX launches that show up in your feed like any other notification. When you look back at the Space Race, space used to feel special – something you caught on a fuzzy TV broadcast or saw in the movies.

Now it’s part of ordinary life. Satellites run our phones, steer our cars, track storms, and help set crop prices. And yet, when a rocket actually lifts off, people still stop and watch. There’s something about watching something that heavy leave the ground and shoot off into space that grabs everyone’s attention.

You have to be brave to go to space. It’s easy to forget that when we see one successful launch after another, the risks are real. We’ve lost crews on Challenger and Columbia. We lost the Apollo 1 crew in a fire during a ground test. Space doesn’t care how hard anybody tries or how good their intentions are. If there’s a leak in the spacecraft, the vacuum outside will still pull everything out – no matter how late the team worked trying to fix it. If a part gets too hot or too cold because of the extreme temperatures in space, it doesn’t become less dangerous just because people really want it to work. When something’s wrong, space does not wait for it to become a lesson.

The moment right before liftoff is inspiring and intense. On the pad, the rocket sits full of super-cold fuel, wrapped in cables, held down by clamps, with vapor rolling off the sides. Like a modern-day scene in “The Right Stuff,” it’s still a complicated machine that could go wrong. Computers are running through every reading. “Not yet.” Blast off only happens when the numbers say it’s safe.

Containment turns pressure into thrust. The same force that could tear the vehicle apart only becomes thrust when it’s properly held and aimed at the right moment.

That moment of waiting is containment in action. A lot of discussions about pressure tell you to either escape it or push through it. I’ve talked about pushing past the pressure, but it’s interesting to note that the space rocket doesn’t push past the pressure – it is pressure being shaped and controlled. Without the tanks, the pipes, the nozzles, and the people willing to stop everything, that pressure would just blow everything up rather than lift it into space.

Seems like society teaches two ways of dealing with pressure in our own lives. One view says get rid of it – lower the stakes, protect yourself, make life easier so nothing can hurt too much. Another treats pressure like proof that you’re doing something important. If you break, maybe you just weren’t built for it. But the rocket doesn’t treat pressure like an enemy or a badge of honor. It just contains, uses and directs it.

There’s a lot of pressure to launch on schedule, but delays are part of the process. Artemis gets mocked for falling behind, but many of those delays stem from engineers finding something that still needs fixing. That is pressure in action, too – not just the pressure to go, but the pressure to get it right. A delayed launch is not always a lack of courage. Sometimes the delay means you care enough to check the seals, rerun the numbers, and make sure what you’re building can actually survive the flight.

What we’re really watching in those last few seconds before liftoff isn’t just a machine leaving the ground. It’s every “not yet” finally turning into a yes. Every delay, every scrubbed launch, every person who stopped everything because something wasn’t right – all of that is sitting inside that flame. The fire is loud, but it’s the quiet work behind it that actually gets the rocket off the ground.

Maybe that’s why we still look up.

• Toby Moore is a Shaw Local News Network columnist, star of the Emmy-nominated film “A Separate Peace” and CEO of CubeStream Inc. He can be reached at feedback@shawmedia.com.