Well, it has finally come down to this. Today, July 8, 2011, was the final launch of a United States flagged manned space vehicle. After thirty years the Space Shuttle program - or at least the launching part of the program - has come to an end with the launch of Atlantis. I suspect that we will continue to dabble in space exploration but I wonder what it will be like without a recognized manned space program. I'm 62 and space exploration has been part of my life for almost all of my life. We had an old Crosley radio that had a shortwave band of some sort and I remember searching for the Sputnik radio beeps. I was home from school the day that our Vanguard rocket blew up on the launchpad. I remember the first Astronauts being selected and most of us wanted to be Astronauts. My brother did a really cool science fair project on rockets and actually got to meet a few of the space scientists. Some of us were almost able to overlook the fact that Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was Russian...at least until Alan Shepard was launched on his 15-minute suborbital flight three weeks later in May 1961.
Both of these space pioneers have passed away...Gagarin in a plane crash in 1968 and Shepard died of leukemia in 1998. Sadly, Gagarin didn't live to see the first moon landing in 1969. Shepard went on to land on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 where he made golfing history by driving a few golf balls into deep space. We were all captivated by the Gemini missions when we had two Astronauts flying together in a tiny capsule (How did they pee? especially after drinking all that Tang...we all wondered). Then we were consumed with the Apollo program when we were all getting ready to go to the moon.
The first actual Apollo crew was killed in a launchpad fire in 1967. These were guys we all knew because they were involved in earlier missions and it came as a shock. Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were going to be the first guys to actually pilot a lunar mission spacecraft and we were all looking forward to the launch date. Ed White was the first man to "walk in space".
It seemed then that the Apollo program and the moon landings were the high water mark of the space program. There were other things going on. Skylab was an early space station - an orbiting laboratory that flew from the early 1970s until sort of a momentous and fiery return to earth over western Australia in 1979.
The Space Shuttle program was a new twist on space exploration because it was a reusable vehicle. It took off strapped to a rocket but landed like a plane on an air strip and then could be used over and over. The first manned shuttle flight took place in April, 1981 and they have continued all the way up to 2011. There were some spectacular disasters along the way but the shuttle proved to be the successful work horse of the space program. Before long we almost lost track of whether there were people in orbit and we no longer could remember their names. The International Space Station was constructed and the shuttles were used to ferry astronauts from several nations and their supplies to and from the space station.
Now Atlantis, a Space Shuttle that entered service in 1985 as the 21st shuttle mission, is completing the last shuttle mission. This one is number 135 for the shuttles and is the 166th NASA manned space flight. There are no other manned NASA flights scheduled or planned. This is the end of an era and I'll be sad to see it go.
We have a bunch of Astronauts but no planned missions. Some will be "let go" while some will remain and will probably fly on trips to the International Space Station aboard Russian shuttles at a cost of $60 million per seat. How long the Russian shuttles will fly is a good question. There are a couple private American companies that want to provide space flights to NASA or other astronauts but they haven't been able to demonstrate the ability to launch and return anything let alone a manned vehicle.
I think that this will be a loss for the United States if we end up relying on rented seats on a Russian space bus. Manned spaceflight is risky and expensive but it was a wonderful part of my early life. I can remember that the whole nation collectively held it's breath as the Saturn rockets...all 360 feet of them...rose off the launchpad and hurled the Astronauts into space. We waited for those few minutes until we heard the first voices from space and then everyone smiled.
We could use a few reasons to smile these days and also a good reason to believe, once again, that we are one nation indivisible. Kids could certainly use some heroes and role models other than the NBA stars or the pop culture instant celebs. Astronauts got into the spotlight of our collective attention by hard work and bravery and risk taking. I think I'd also like to see some of our young American heroes not dressed in camo and carrying guns in foreign countries. Kids need to aspire to greatness...to make the very best out of what they have and I regret that they won't have much of a space program to give them inspiration.
The last few Space Shuttles will be sanitized and retired to eventually end up in various museums. I wish we could take just one Space Shuttle and send it out into deep space as a memorial to what we once could imagine and accomplish as a nation -- and the inspiration that the space program gave to a generation of kids.
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