“Atlantis” lifts off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A. ©NASA/Bill Ingalls
“STS-135: the Final Mission.” Sounds like the title of a new Star Trek film, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s the phrase denoting the end of our nation’s space shuttle program.
When Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on July 8, 2011, it marked the final flight of such spacecraft over a 30-year span. STS-135 is a 12-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), carrying a crew of four and the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module, a unit packed with supplies and spare parts for the station.
If you grew up anytime in the 1960s or 1970s, adventures in space are part of your being. Through the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle missions, you came to recognize names such as John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, pasted up posters of waving astronauts in space suits and witnessed “splashdowns” on TV. You probably had a mobile of the universe dangling above your bed; a battery-powered planetarium stashed on a shelf; plastic, reflective stars glued to your ceiling that “lit up” when the lights were turned off; or had a pair of pajamas with swirling planets printed on them.
If you grew up anytime in the 1960s or 1970s, space adventure is a formative part of your being.
U.S. space flights fueled our childhood dreams—who didn’t want to become an astronaut?—and turned our wildest thoughts to the worlds above.
If we now become mere hitchhikers on Russian craft, what happens to our collective dreams of exploring the “final frontier”? Is the end of the space shuttle program a signal that America is becoming less adventurous?
Sweet “wheels”
Our generation is unlikely to see the United States have anything to match the capabilities of the space shuttle ever again. For three decades, it was the fastest winged vehicle ever to fly: it has an orbital velocity of 17,500 mph, or 10 times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. It is the only winged craft to reach orbit and the only reusable space-launch-and-landing vehicle.
The Hubble Space Telescope allows us to look at objects whose light takes us back to the beginnings of the universe. ©NASA, ESA, A. Nota (ESA/STScI), et al.
The shuttle can carry cargoes of ponderous weight and dimensions. It has taken into space more than half the mass of all payloads launched by all nations since Sputnik in 1957—more than 3,450,143 pounds. Even more amazing may be its ability to return payloads from space. It has brought back from orbit more than 97 percent of all mass returned to Earth, a total of 225,574 pounds (through STS-132). It has sent up 802 crew (including the 14 lost on Challenger and Columbia).
Atlantis’s final flight will conclude an amazing bout of exploration, which built an International Space Station and taught humans how to live, work and thrive in space. Space shuttles took up and repeatedly upgraded and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument that provides us with a look at objects so distant that viewing their light takes us back in time to the beginnings of the universe.
Hitchin’ a ride
Unfortunately—for the time being, anyway—Russia will be the only game in town as far as transportation between the Earth and the International Space Station. Last March, NASA and its Russian counterpart signed a new $753 million modification to its current ISS transportation deal. We secured six seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for launch in 2014 and six more the following year, along with the return of both crews—at a cost of almost $63 million per seat. The new agreement is meant to bridge the gap between the end of the old contract in 2014 and the expected emergence of a homegrown, commercial space transportation system sometime in the middle of the decade.
Starry skies—such as this one over Old Faithful—are the fuel of dreams. ©Henry H. Holdsworth
After its final mission, Atlantis will return to Kennedy Space Center, where it will end up on permanent display; just another relic of a golden age of adventure.
Some say that Americans won’t long tolerate a U.S. space program dependent on Russian rockets, and that alone might rekindle an interest in bigger budgets for space exploration and more daring missions. The optimistic hope is that retiring the space shuttle program will free up NASA to focus on other adventures: heavier vehicles capable of leaving orbit and perhaps landing humans on Mars.
Now that’s what I call “rocket fuel” for childhood dreams—of the adventurous sort.
Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,
Candy
When NASA had a goal (get to the moon) and a deadline, they did some amazing things. Lately, they weren’t able to sell the American people or the government on their long range plans.
Sorry, I do not see it that way. I’m sure there were some accidental discoveries that were found to be useful but NASA is a remnant of cold war and the money that were wasted on NASA would have been better spent on other domestic and international needs.
Alex,
I would disagree with you. There have been a lot of every day products that you use that have come from NASA inventions. Just do a quick google search and you will find these two links:
https://curiosity.discovery.com/topic/transportation-science/ten-nasa-inventions.htm
https://space.about.com/od/toolsequipment/ss/apollospinoffs.htm
Even if you don’t use these products, look at the market opportunities they created and how they have helped the US Economy.
All of the technology and science that came out of the shuttle program is immeasurable. The program might have matured but it is disappointing that there is nothing to replace it in the public eye.
True, but all the technology and science that came from it does not add up to trillion dollar that was spent on that program over the years…
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said that, “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.” It may be that if we could look out into the universe at large, we might find it littered with the one-planet graves of species who made the “safe, sensible” decision to give up on manned space-flight.
Being able to put a man on the moon was one of the greatest achievements of our civilization, and choosing to cut costs by continually scaling back NASA’s budget is daft when NASA consumes only 0.7-1.0% of the national budget.
Last I heard, the price to send one of our astronauts up on a Russian rocket was $53 million. I think that disqualifies us as hitchhikers! I never paid that much when I was hitchhiking back in the 1970’s!
I think that it was a good move to close it down. It was not value added…