As someone who grew up with the NASA manned space program as a beacon of innovation, strength, and hope for the future, it is a sad day for me, and I’m sure for many others.
While at ICCC6, I had the honor of once again meeting Dr. Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and the only geologist to ever walk the moon.
I made sure that my children met him, and he surprised me the next day by offering two signed photographs. A most gracious man and I offer my sincere thanks. He, like many others, must feel simultaneously a sense of pride and of emptiness today.
My family and I watched this final launch this morning, I made it mandatory to witness history, even if only on television.
et tu NASA?
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Related news from Aviation Week:
Lawmakers Seek To Kill Webb Space Telescope
A House panel recommends killing the Northrop Grumman-built James Webb Space Telescope, calling the Hubble successor “billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.”
Overall, the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee backs funding NASA at $16.8 billion in fiscal 2012, a cut of $1.9 billion to President Barack Obama’s budget request, according to a committee statement. The subcommittee is scheduled to approve its draft of the spending bill that also covers the Commerce and Justice departments on July 7. The bill still must pass in the full House and be reconciled with a Senate version before becoming law.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) defends the committee’s decisions. “Given this time of fiscal crisis, it is also important that Congress make tough decisions to cut programs where necessary to give priority to programs with broad national reach that have the most benefit to the American people,” Rogers says.
NASA’s future space telescope has run into its share of trouble, going $1.5 billion over budget and seeing its launch date slip at least three years.
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I am in favor of space exploration, but manned missions to space, as of now, contribute nothing to our knowledge and exploration of space. A review of the Space Shuttle’s history shows it to be a very dangerous and expensive way to launch satellites.
One day, Anthony, I’m sure we’ll be sending people to various places in the cosmos. I view it as an interlude. One day, NASA and our govt will get their priorities right……… one day.
…but manned missions to space, as of now, contribute nothing to our knowledge and exploration of space
I guess Hubble was a waste of time? I’m sure a lot of astronomers would disagree.
One thing history has show time and time again is, to generate interest in doing something/having it done is to have humans do it. In spite of the costs, in spite of the risks, tax payers felt better about putting Hubble into orbit rather than a rocket.
When we lose the human aspect of exploration, we lose the interest. When rockets and robots do the job, the interest and fascination are lost, technology seems so much further out of reach.
With any luck, we find a way to walk the fine line of cost/expense while keeping the fascination and dreaming intact. Otherwise, we run the risk of future generations losing interest…
The failure to continue with the Shuttle or some variation on the theme rests solely on the Administration’s inability to keep the US economically strong and expanding–they’re always patting themselves on the back for being the progressive party of science, education, foreign policy, hope and change, but when it becomes obvious their folly in all areas prevents us from going forward, one can only describe their governing approach as “FAILED”. The end result is that they’ve fully embraced an attitude of “No we can’t”.
It is definitely time for a change for the better.
Manned space flight has been tremendously costly in lives and treasure, and has produced little that could not have been produced sooner, safer and cheaper with robotics. I’m glad to see the end of throttle-jockey thrill shows and geopolitical grandstanding. Perhaps now we can out more money into the actual science.
REPLY: I can see this line of thinking being relevant hundreds of years ago too. For example…
Christopher Columbus: My queen, I want to send ships and men to explore the great unknown beyond the horizon. It will be historic and will broaden our understanding.
Queen Isabella: It is too expensive and dangerous, let us wait for the future when robotic sailors are introduced. That will be the time./sarc
– Anthony
Nonegatives says:
July 8, 2011 at 9:05 am
Hubble was not a manned program.
REPLY: Bzzzt! Sorry. Hubble would be a useless myopic hulk in space (or burned up in the atmosphere by now) if man hadn’t gone out to fix the optics and maintain it’s electronics and fuel. It every sense, the program was dependent on the manned space program. Now that the JWT is in trouble, and with no manned space shuttle, care to wager how long Hubble will stay working? – Anthony
The space shuttle is and still is safer then driving a vehicle or even flying in an airplane. You see, it was designed that way to be ultra-safe, the only people who claim it is not are those who like to repeat the myths that its a killer and like to in general spread fear and panic.
As far as expensive, yes, it was that, which is why it did need to get replaced at some point, but note I said replaced and it did not get replaced. One of the things that President Obama promised during his first campaign was to increase NASA funding. Then he turns around and scraps their original missions, and increases their funding to junk science such as global warming. I am still fairly irritated about this, to just scrap the next thing because it went over price. What has not gone multitudes of over-priced in Gov.s? This was just a cheap excuse to kill something he hated…
Who will explore and innovate like NASA did to get us to the moon on a manned mission?
I will tell you, no one, because a mission like that does not see profits that are easy to quantify. But it did provide us with so much technology…look up the Palo Alto lab of xerox’s for some more information on what “un-temperered” research can produce.
Xerox might not have made as much money as others did on some of that technology developed..
But alas, it is an end of an era. The US is now just another nation which has to rely on others for space.
Rafer Hoxworth/8:54 am, July8/2011
He doesn’t think the end of the Space Shuttle is sad because it added “nothing” to either our knowledge or exploration of space, and was”a very dangerous and expensive way to launch satellites”.
Indeed, in the details there is little “value”. At least that is how an accountant might view things. But accountants see nothing further than the end of the next cost-revenue period, which can be a two-week payroll consideration. The loss of the Shuttle program is not the sad thing, but that there is nothing really to replace it. Our (Canadian, Russian as well as American) desire to stretch our boundaries has fizzled. Considering the foolishness of climate change costs, there IS money to go to the Moon, to develop new technologies and abilities that could push mankind into the stars. But the vision – as so quickly and well reflected by the position of RH – has gone and its worth, dismissed.
Back in the day the space program was attacked for being a waste of money and effort when “real” problems such as poverty and hunger still afflicted the human race. Forty years on those “real” problems still exist – and will exist for the next 400 years, probably, because mankind in its struggle between the gain of individuals and the gain of the societal group, consistently rewards the individual rather than the group effort. The here and now concerns will remain; our true struggle is to work towards the future regardless of might be considered wasteful or ineffective or misdirected in the present.
If the Shuttle program was to be finished, if the Space Station was to be allowed to fall into the sea, if planetary probes were to be put on-hold for now because all our efforts were to get a self-supporting Lunar outpost going, there would be the sadness of nostalgia. That is different from the sadness I, for one, feel. I feel the sadness of an end of dreams, an end of possibilities. It took a great effort and incentive – a war-to-the-death philosophical struggle with Communism – to get the space program going. All it took to stop that program was the need to bail out a corrupt (incentive-wise), inefficient, bankrupt auto-maker or two. The money had to come from somewhere else.
And that is sad, indeed.
Hopefully only a temporary break in US involvement in manned space exploration.
Some people are excited by space exploration.
Some are excited by controlling how much sugar your kids breakfast cereal can have.
Some folks follow dreams, find knowledge and create wealth.
Others kill dreams, are in thrall to myths, and redistribute and destroy wealth.
So the shuttle is dead, and NASA is engaged in Muslim outreach and climate fraud.
But some of us can still wave the flag and be proud of what our nation has accomplished.
sic transit gloria, I’m afraid — we’ve been nibbled to death by the socialist ducks.
Sending humans to space is very expensive as you need to bring a lot of things to keep them alive with them there and you need to deliver them back safely. What’s the point in sending humans to Mars if you can send a whole flotilla of probes and even get some samples back for the same money without humans involved (and getting in danger). Much less people will hate you if an automatic probe crashes than if the same happens to a manned mission.
The point in sending humans to space is in them doing things automats can’t do, but as long as automats are becoming gradually better, humans are gradually less needed there.
We’re still very far from creating habitable ecosystems on other planets, we still don’t even understand out own.
Farewell, Atlantis.
Oh common people, cheer up.
With no shuttle to burden them, NASA can focus more intently on their outreach program.
The sad truth is, no matter how much we admire the shuttle program, it is/was a white elephant. It was a prototype reusable spacecraft whose program should have gone back to the drawing board with new technologies to build a new spacecraft long ago, probably as soon as the Challenger disaster. This program ran 20 years too long, it still uses 1960s era materials technology, and only 10 years ago did they get anything resembling a modern computer installed into the birds. Columbia hadn’t yet received its upgrades when it broke up on re-entry (if memory serves right). For those who doubt my assessment on this, please remember that JPL has never re-used a spacecraft, all of them are new each time. The last mars launcher was sending back amazing pictures because it had the latest and greatest CCD technology in it, ditto for all other unmanned missions. Manned U.S. spaceflight has been stuck in the 60s technology wise, and the shuttle program was part of the reason for that.
I liked watching the shuttles, I liked watching what they could do. But it was a proof of concept that should not have been held onto. The Russians kick our ass in cheap manned missions because the shuttle costs too much to refurbish and ready for each new launch. The shuttle program survived criticism because Florida didn’t want to lose jobs and lobbied to keep their launch prestige.
The bid for a shuttle replacement in Clinton’s final term was our best chance to replace the shuttle with modern technology. Unfortunately they selected a project that wasn’t quite ready for primetime, and couldn’t survive congress when cryogenic fuel storage problems manifested. Of course that problem was solved post-cancellation. Since then, we had Bush Jr tell us to go to Mars but take too much time re-directing NASA. And Obama who pays lip-service to space exploration while telling NASA to become cultural outreach and funding social services instead.
In a perverse way, the end of the Shuttle program is likely to be a boon for NASA. The shuttle program was a bit of a head weight around it’s neck. So long as all that money to refurbish and use the shuttle had to go to the shuttle, it couldn’t go towards anything else more grand. Now with no shuttle program to worry about, when someone asks NASA to shoot for higher, there is less going-concern to get in the way.
The long history of the shuttle program (from its initial conception to the present) prove to me just how inefficient the government can be at getting a job done. Once we beat the Soviets to the moon, the public lost interest in manned space and a combination of William Proxmire’s career building at the expense of NASA and the general sentiment of “can’t we solve our problems on earth first?” served to slash the space program’s budget year after year. Throughout the seventies, the initial concept of the shuttle and its mission was repeatedly downsized and re-purposed to serve political objectives rather than scientific.
We ended up with a vehicle that fulfilled few of its original objectives.
Rather than beating the Soviets, I think the U.S. would have been better served finding ways to capitalize on space. Like we did with communications satellites. Anything that makes a frontier profitable assures a flow of fortune-seekers and entrepreneurs into that frontier.
For that reason, I now look at the activities of organizations like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic as our best hope for an expanded human presence in space, and thus more research and development of space-related science and technology.
Anthony, I agree that it’s sad the shuttle program is being retired … I watched today’s launch with tears in my eyes. But the shuttle was almost stillborn to begin with. None of the followups to the shuttle materialized, and neither the Delta Clipper nor VentureStar came along to replace it. Downsize NASA and give private industry a shot now.
A very sad day indeed. Felt very acutely here in Houston. But NASA must shoulder much of the blame. The shuttle is a marvelous machine, but its lack of a compelling plan for the future of manned space flight over the last 20 years (with a clear path forward for the next generation of space vehicles) and the absence of compelling manned missions expose a stagnant agency more interested in maintaining the status quo than looking forward. Shuttle needed a successor 15 years ago, yet there is none even today. It’s agonizing to note that Dr. Schmitt left the lunar surface nearly 40 years ago and that no one has been back since. Moreover, if we wanted to return today, it would take another 15-20 years to develop the capability, despite the incredible advances in so many areas over 40 years. It only took 8 years the first time.
The the first time since I was a baby, the United States now has absolutely no manned space flight capability.
Obama and the Democrats will obliterate real science in favor of the current voodoo science we see spreading like a plague. Totally agenda driven.
The generally accepted estimate for the chances of a catastrophic failure of a shuttle is 1 in 100 missions. As of today, the Shuttle program has had 2 catastrophic failures in 134 missions.
It is *NOT* safer than flying or driving.
Sorry, I didn’t see a /S
I have very mixed feelings on this. NASA bet big with the shuttle that it would be a cheaper way to space. Instead, it turned out to be so costly that it created an opportunity for Ariane Space to become the commercial launch system of choice by the mid-80’s (and with the end of the cold war, the Russians became another source). We were on the moon 8.5 years after Kennedy challenged NASA to do it. 8.5 years after the Columbia disaster and the decision to stop using the shuttle in 2010, NASA still has the replacement vehicle on the drawing board. My father worked on the space program in the 60’s and for JPL from the 70’s until his retirement so I always immersed in the American space program. It is sad to see NASA immobilized by the bureaucracy it created. Its very hard to be excited about the space program any more.
Like Anthony, I grew up inspired by NASA’s accomplishments. However, it is time to retire the shuttle and move on to a better and more cost effective way to access LEO. Commercial Space is the answer for servicing the ISS. Boeing, ULA, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corp all have skin in the game and are looking to be tested and ready for crewed flights by 2015 (SpaceX and Boeing by 2014). Thanks to the CCDev program we’ll have at least two independent systems providing access for a magnitude less (cost) than the Shuttle Program.
Far from giving up or getting depressed, take a look around and see that we’re about to see a very exciting time in the arena of manned space flight.
NASA is a government agency and most government agency’s are inefficient or become inefficient. In the long run space exploration will be done by private companies more efficiently because it is their own money not money from taxpayers and people are less likely to waste their own money. NASA should be devoted to protecting Earth from asteroids. A project that can not be done by private companies since it will not bring in any profit.
Jeremy, I was a bit skeptical of Ben’s methodology, but upon reflection I think he might base his statement on “per mile flown”. A typical mission could easily have the shuttle traveling three or four million miles. Still, given the sheer number of jetliners in the air at any one time, I’d expect flying to easily remain safer than “shuttling”, but I bet we can tease the numbers to make the shuttle look safer still!
Next year, all being well, Virgin Galactic will send the first paying passengers into sub-orbital flight.
That’ll be the start of the new era.
In another half century people will think it strange that at the start of the 21st century we still expected government programs to lead the way into space.