Next-to-Last Shuttle Launch

[pdub]

So there goes the space shuttle again. Back to the international space station.

The politician lady, according to news headlines, was able to see her husband leave on the thing as commander (or pilot?) of the mission after she survived as assination attempt by a looning idiot.

So, a happy day for lots of folks. Lots of emotion an national spirit. I went to three shuttle launches at the Cape back in the day, and I have to tell ya, it's really a spectacle of technology. What a show, and people are riding on that thing. Awesome. There's one more launch left, and if you can, get there to see the last one, though I'm sure motels and parking near the launch site will be at a premium for that one. It's a circus. A big one.

But I've ranted before, and I'll sure not rant again about how I question the value of the space program. Since then, I'm even a little bit older, and somehow more ...uhhhh, attuned to the bigger picture.

With the shuttle program coming to an end, lots and lots of folks are going to lose their high-tech jobs, or have already done so.

At the same time, I don't know what to compare it to. I work in a dying industry, paper manufacturing, and it's only a matter of time before it's gone. People don't need paper nearly as much anymore, except on the toilet.

So all of the folks who worked so hard to make the shuttle fly, which cost us all so many millions of dollars every time they lit the solid boosters (that's the best part of the launch)...they will look for work doing WHAT? that's the worst part of it ending, all the jobs lost, but...

For decades on end, the space program was a self-justifying initiative funded entirely by the federal government, born during the cold war when we had to beat the Soviets to the moon, or die trying. A political venture turned scientific.

It sure did last a long time.

Not ranting at all, just musing, and wondering. You've got the private companies trying to enter the fray to take rich folks to the edge of the atmosphere for something like $200K a seat.

That might be the next thing, but we'll see how that goes. Space flight is incredibly dangerous. It's not EVEN a bus with wings, like an airliner. We'll see how that goes.

Babbly pdub

[Scott Liggett]

After it gets back to earth, that shuttle is heading to LA to the Science Discovery Museum, or something. I'd like to see how they get it there.

[oldsman496]

After it gets back to earth, that shuttle is heading to LA to the Science Discovery Museum, or something. I'd like to see how they get it there.

YOU BETTER!!! its gonna be bolted onto the back of that 747 that is specially made to fly them around the country and its gonna end up close to you and will proably land at the longest runway around. They will then load it up onto a truck of some type and they will close lots of roads and will get loads of media hype and lots of media pics... but we need our own!!! so clean that camera lens!!

please?

i'm not gonna get the chance.... sniff...sniff......... crap.

[Thumpin455]

I am wondering when we will finally decide to go somewhere else. When we can stop fighting over things that really dont matter, and trying to fulfill our greed, we can start to move forward again. If we dont continue with the science and technology needed to go to places like Mars and even Alpha Centauri, we will cease to have the capability to produce new technology. Sure it costs money, yes it is dangerous, but it is a fraction of what we spend in other areas where many more lives are lost on a daily basis.

I think about the advances that came from Redstone, Gemini, and Apollo. The huge leaps in technology we have had since 1909 when Orville and Wilbur first flew. It really is stunning and amazing to realize how far we went in just 60 years. Men walked on the moon one month after I was born. Very little has happened on that scale in my lifetime, and in that time we have been reaping the benefits of the programs that took us to our closest celestial neighbor.

Right now our country is stagnate, we are moving jobs overseas, we have become a nation of consumers rather than a nation of explorers and builders. We have high unemployment, two wars costing us billions each month, and there are companies raking in billions in profits on our backs due to a severely limited transportation technology. That limit is imposed artificially in an effort to maximize profits for a few, not in an effort to fund continued technological growth or exploration.

Knowing there is only one more shuttle launch saddens me, but I still have hope that we will undertake an even greater mission in the shuttles absence. If we go through my kids lifetime with the same limit we have had in mine, then what was the point of us ever reaching out, or even looking up towards what is out there? Why would we ever dream or think, why dont we just go back to the dark ages where any attempt at flying resulted in being burned at the stake? We need the space program, we need to solve the problems associated with space travel, because it makes life here on Earth much better.

I often wonder what Orville and Wilbur would think of the C5 Galaxy, the An 225, or the Saturn V if they were alive to see them now. What would they feel knowing the C5 flew just 60 years after their first flight, and the cargo deck is longer than that first flight? If we dont continue up and outward, what will we be missing? I am sure neither of the Wright brothers could imagine a C5 or a 747, and even those who flew in WWII had only the slightest inkling of what was to come. If we dont keep going, what are we not imagining that could be reality? What breakthroughs will never come to pass or be found by someone else who is willing to take on the challenge? Our country needs manned missions now more than ever, and we need a goal to strive for, if we dont have one soon, we wont be living in the same country we have been enjoying.

Just some thoughts I have when I think about the end of the Shuttle missions.

[pdub]

That's a great piece, Thumpin! Yep, that's the two mindsets around it, you said it, and very well said indeed.

I'm not quite the "other way" all the way, but when they keep (kept) on doing the same thing over and over, from an adventure standpoint, I guess the public allure (and therin the political clout) must have finally run out.

I typed it here before, I think, I was in either the 7th or 8th grade at a fancy private school. There were race riots going on at the public schools and my parents wanted me away from that for a couple of years. I finished high school in public, but there I was at the fancy private school, with a TV in the classroom (yes, even back then - unheard of).

Before math class I turned on the TV and set it to the live coverage of a moon walk, I think it was Apollo 14 or 15, not sure which.

The teacher came into the room and abruptly turned it off, to the groans of all of my young classmates. I was the spokeskid. I said, "Hey, they're walking on the moon!"

The teacher said, "They've done that before. Now, turn to page 87 in your books." Whatta bee-otch and a buzz buster. I was especially appalled that any adult, any American could have that stance on it.

Being a rabid space program fan as a youngster made me aware that math and physics and stuff really do come into play no matter what you're doing, and no matter what you use it for. But I guess the oceanic flow of money eventually has to go somewhere instead of somewhere else...I couldn't fathom that part of it back then.