CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 9 (Reuters) - The space shuttle Discovery capped a successful construction mission with a smooth landing in Florida on Wednesday, ending a 27-year flying career for NASA's most-traveled spaceship as the agency faces an uncertain future.
Discovery commander Steven Lindsey circled his ship through clear, sunny skies over the Kennedy Space Center to burn off speed, then bee-lined toward the marsh-surrounded runway a few miles from where the shuttle blasted off for its final space flight on Feb. 24.
Only Endeavor and Atlantis are left; both are slated to retire after their missions later this year. The Space Shuttle program, begun in the year of our nation's bicentennial, is ended; whether a new chapter will be written remains to be seen. Discovery is once again leading the fleet; she was launched after both the Challenger and Columbia tragedies to show that we would continue the program. Now she leads the program into that good night.
Perhaps private industry will fill the void; the role of transporting US astronauts to the space station will be accomplished by two private firms. Japan, Russia, and the European Union have vessels capable of delivering payload and crew to the space station; it will be interesting to see if there is enough interest in a commercial venture to sustain private industry's efforts.
The shuttle program is only a little younger than your humble host, started in 1974 with the construction of the OV1 - the first Orbiting Vehicle which would be re-named Enterprise before its launch in 1976. I distinctly remember the test runs, the shuttle flown into its high earth orbit by piggy-backing on a 747. Watching the futuristic space shuttle glide to a graceful landing as a child of the 1970s, it seemed like the skies above were limitless. Cold reality would prove otherwise.
Rest comfortably in the Smithsonian, Discovery - we'll be visiting you soon.
That is all.
11 comments:
Good riddance. The shuttle was an overcomplicated, over engineered make work program that was a complete waste of money. I'm glad to see it go. Maybe we can finally get a real space presence now that NASA won't be holding everyone back.
On your visit to DC, If you want to visit a Shuttle, you'll need to go out to the Udvar-Hazy Center.
The Enterprise is there ... not at the Mall A&S.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/articles/space_opening.cfm
...and you can easily spend an entire day there.
I remember most of the NASA programs before the Shuttle: Gemini, Apollo, Skylab. (I'm not quite old enough to have experienced Mercury first-hand.) Most of them were leading edge of exploration, new frontier, to boldly go, etc.
The Shuttle was different. It wasn't discovering new vistas, it was making the new vistas accessible to us. It was the elevator to the future, the pickup truck we'd use to move into our new homes in space.
But the homes in space were never built. All we have in orbit is the contractor's trailer, and the pickup trucks are destined to be propped up on blocks in the nation's front yard.
I'm not putting down NASA's achievements. The people who imagined, built, and (sometimes) paid the ultimate price for our dreams have my respect, from the astronauts to the people pushing the mail carts. I'm grateful to each one of them.
But I feel like we've let them down. America doesn't dream the dreams that sent our best into space. We don't have the spark, the enthusiasm to build another rung on the ladder to the stars.
What happened to us?
I'm sad that the Shuttle program is ending, and I'm sad that NASA is being relegated to studying "Global Warming" and Muslim outreach.
But I'm happy to see the private sector pick up the load. I think we are closer to the future we were promised as kids than we realize.
Actually Enterprise is in Udvar-Hazy.
I'm not sure WHERE Discovery is going to go.
I actually remember ALL of them, going back to Mercury... sigh... End of an era in more ways than one!
What happened to us?
Three things:
* Progressivism drained the funding -- NASA never recovered from Proxmire's assault on it.
* Bureaucracy drained the program's energy, as NASA managers spent more time empire-building than actually working on spaceflight
* The Challenger disaster, and the tale of bureaucratic stupidity that was behind it, destroyed public support.
I want to believe that private efforts will accomplish what NASA could not. But in the economic collapse that's coming, I wonder if anyone will still have the wealth and capability left to run a space program.
I find myself very depressed when thinking about space today. The general public is so apathetic to the space program that it makes me sick. Doesn't anyone dream anymore?
Tell me, Jay... do you remember the bitterness when, after a huge write-in campaign to get the first re-usable space vehicle named Enterprise, the bastards went ahead and did so... and never mentioned that oh, by the way... we're never sending this one into space.
I do... and still grind my teeth over it. Had we known...
The author distinctly remembers wrong.
A 747 can't make any kind of orbit (at least without some rather EXTENSIVE mods).
The STS is an interesting proof of concept technology demonstrator. Columbia proved it and should have been at most 1 of 2 orbited.
The "third" shuttle should have been a more produceable design and so on.
We really should be on our fourth or fifth generation design. New things develop fast as we learn. The damned bureaucracy bought shuttles like they were fully matured production airliners.
Look at the 737 which has hardly changed since 1967. Look at how many designs from the invention of the jet to the 737. If we bought airliners like NASA bought shuttles we'd still be in deHaviland Comets!
I think private industry can do things more efficiently than a government agency can, but there needs to be a significant profit motive to spend the capital. Right now the companies that are in the running to provide space access are hoping to suckle at the government teat. They're not going out to drill for oil. (Or dilithium, or some other valuable commodity.)
Not that it's not a valid way to get space development funded, but I see two things that will hinder progress:
1) NASA will pay only for the services NASA needs: lofting satellites and servicing the ISS.
2) Government money -always- has strings attached.
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