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?
==============================================================
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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Ah Yes, major discovery….. blogging is destroying the AGW theory because I believe most people are reading the comments on AGW articles rather than the articles themselves, and for some reason, skeptics seem to be the most vociferous and succinct with more scientific knowledge at hand.
I’m sure in the future there will be travels to space from the U.S. again. Wonder what’s gonna replace the shuttle?
Still the US Government can spend hundreds of billions on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya. That’s OK. Plenty money for that kind of “stone-age” behaviour. You want money to advance science, and add to Human knowledge and perhaps wisdom ? You fools, you want we should make a loss already ? ….. Oy vey !
I started reading sci-fi back in the ’50s and it influenced the path I took through life. I may be old but (to steal a quote from elsewhwere),
we are made from the dust of stars, and I want to go back.
It is impossible to understand the current state of the US Space Program without understanding how NASA and Lockheed botched the X-33 project. A proper SSX follow-on to the DC-X technology demonstration would have led to fully reusable spaceships and economical, routine access to space. Instead we got another fiasco.
Calling the Shuttle “reusable” stretches the meaning of “reusable” to the breaking point, if not beyond. “Rebuildable” would be more accurate. An airliner is reusable: after a flight, you top up the fuel tanks, restart the engines and go again. You change out the engines every few years, not every flight or two. You don’t throw away the fuel tanks every flight. Etc. Etc. Etc.
The amazing thing is that NASA, Boeing and LockMart have not managed to kill SpaceX and the other private launch vehicle developers.
The main Shuttle program requirement was to provide employment for the NASA Standing Army of government workers and contractors that had been recruited for the Apollo program. In that, it succeeded admirably. In providing economical access to space — not so much.
Shuttle also demonstrated that certain technologies cannot be used in a system that provides economical, safe access to space. Solid rocket booster technology is one of them. Ultra-high-performance liquid-hydrogen+liquid-oxygen rocket engine technology is another. Naturally, the Official NASA Shuttle follow-on programs proposed to use both. How many billions we will pour down those rat-holes remains to be determined.
The future of US manned flight into space belongs to SpaceX and its competitors — unless the NASA standing army and its supporting politicians and contractors manage to kill them.
It will be discovered the shuttle has been damaged. With no other shuttles and nothing else ready at the moment, NASA will be unable to send up the needed supplies for proper repair.
The landing will be risky, but the crew knows they are up to the challenge and are ready to go. However, it is determined by NASA administration in consultation with the White House to avoid having the shuttle program end with catastrophic failure. The crew will be sent back in a Soyuz capsule.
Faced with having to properly dispose of the shuttle, the decision is made to ditch it in the Pacific Ocean. On full computer control, the shuttle detaches from the ISS and begins a normal reentry.
To the surprise of many, the shuttle survives, finally gliding down to what would be a perfect landing if on tarmac instead of over water. It hits the water, eventually stops while apparently remaining intact, then begins sinking slowly.
And YouTube crashes for three days straight as people keep wanting to watch Atlantis slip beneath the waves.
bladeshearerJack Maloney says:
July 8, 2011 at 9:16 am
“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”
I with you Anthony – I’m sure there would have been protesters all around Isabella’s Royal Palace, with clenched raised fits, shouting “We needa the money for the babies and old ones now…..” Others, perhaps Jack Maloney’s ancestors, were screaming that they needed the money to do ‘real science’, like alchemy!
I find commentary such as Jack offers to be repugnant. They will always be with us, however. For each of us, who would have willingly and gladly boarded any of the shuttle flights for the opportunity to experience extended zero G and gain the 1st person perspective of our beautiful blue planet from the isolation of an MMU in free flight, there will be others seeking safety and security in their personal lives by stifling the direct exploration of the great unknown by their brothers. We see them marching today, shaking their fists and crying “We need the money for the children…. and to ‘do real science’ like AGW!”
Against this stifling slide of humanity into naval lint gazing, we strive ever to kindle that fundamental desire for direct human explorations of the great unknowns! “We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!” And in demanding and accepting those hard challenges, we drive the boundaries of human knowledge and capabilities forward, to keep those most basic aspects of the human spirit alive. Explore. Learn. Apply. Repeat.
Are my eyes a little ‘misty’ today? Yes…… I’ve worked on some Shuttle system bits and oddments, mostly related to the OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System). I’ve worked on other deployed launch systems, as well as R&D programs like NASP, that never came to fruition. From each program, we made great gains, we made mistakes, we experienced and learned how to make our launch systems less expensive and more reliable, and we filled in more areas on the ever expanding map of human knowledge and experience. I’m damn proud to be a part of that great adventure, regardless of the denigrations thrown by the rear echelon arm chair generals out there.
Uh, one thing folks. America has no publicized civilian way to put men into orbit. I would be awfully disappointed if there weren’t a functional fourplace version of the Boeing/AF “Mini-Shuttle” in case we have a defence need on orbit. Its been proofed publically in Automated form, and the life support package can’t be very different that a cross between The Shuttle and the SR71. If not we are in more trouble than I thought.
1DandyTroll says To my recollection only sov. communists and religious, and green, extremist thought the whole idea of space flight was “pointless”
Better check your recollections – does the name Yuri Gagarin register? Clearly the “sov. communists” saw a value in manned space flight!
This is a disgrace!! And it’s all Obama fault, he SCRAPPED IT!!!
kim says:
July 8, 2011 at 11:40 am
> Childhood’s End.
I never warmed up to Clarke’s story, but certainly a lot of people did..
My all time SF favorite is “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein. It could make a great movie, and Judy Collins’ song with the same title would be a wonderful theme song and music for an opening sequence. I used to think the movie couldn’t be made until there was a lunar colony, now special effects could fill in since we won’t be getting back to the Moon anytime soon.
——–
End of an era indeed – NASA no longer has the means to launch a person into space.
I’ve always been a little jealous that I was born too late to experience the moon landing. What an amazing thing it must have been to feel such pride and wonder. How limitless the possibilities must have seemed.
How inane and even obscene is the current garbage that passes for ‘science’.
It is truly a sad day.
NASA never had a mandate to colonize space, they did exploration and science, and yes, politics (big example is when SS Freedom became ISS and the Russians were brought into the program). Just as the government funded Lewis and Clark expedition pointed the way to the American West, it was private companies and individuals who settled there and created wealth. Today, there are several possible routes to space tourism and possibly later living off planet. Others here have mentioned Space-X and Sierra Nevada and Boeing launch vehicles in development. With real competition, the cost will fall enough that real profits can be made. I come to this site to read about government failing to do good climate science, but I am optimistic about private industry taking over from government in getting people to space.
Also, I can’t resist being a bit anal:
“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.”
———————————————————
I wholly agree with your sentiment, Anthony, but IIRC, the Hubble had no fuel or other fluids on board. It was boosted to higher orbit each time the shuttle visited, and it points by using momentum wheels and magnetic torquers to desaturate those wheels. I don’t recall it having control moment gyros, at least in its original launch configuration. But those pesky astronauts kept changing stuff and I didn’t keep track.
The shuttle program was an embarrassing failure with literally only the servicing of the Hubble telescope as a success.
This is what happens when vision and execution is replaced by bureaucracy and policy.
And, while I am in no way a supporter of the President, it’s unfair and dishonest to blame Obama on this one.
Nixon was the president who decided to abandon manned space exploration and go for “cheap” LEO. His and congress’s decisions and a compliant and often dishonest NASA leadership led directly here.
Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush did no better, some talked a game but no one really engaged.
And let’s remember, it was Bush who decided to pull the plug on the shuttle and its pal the ISS… both already flat-lined.
Don K says (July 8, 2011 at 2:41 pm): “In point of fact, the Shuttle was grossly oversold. It overran budgets, slipped schedules, sucked up money like it was going out of style, and never came close to meeting the promise of 40-50 launches a year…”
Sound familiar? 🙂
Although I was ga-ga over the shuttle in the early days, I long ago joined Don K and the other shuttle “skeptics” on this thread. In retrospect it was the height of folly to require that “wetware” (astronauts) accompany all hardware (sats) into orbit, at huge expense (and no little risk) to the former. Now that NASA is out of the shuttle business, maybe it can concentrate on science and leave the deliveries to the future space FedEx’s (Ha! SpaceX! I just got that!)
Mac the Knife says:
July 8, 2011 at 4:37 pm
awesome! game set match
“Red Star, Winter Orbit”
The Space Shuttle was a magnificent achievment given the state of technology at the time of its development. The shuttle will be remembered in future as the first true spaceship. Much has been learned through 30 years of operation that will contribute to follow on vehicle designs. A manned space program is essential to the preservation of the species. Without an off planet presence the next large Asteroid or Cometary impact will end mankind!
The demise of NASA was predicted in Larry Nivens “Fallen Angel” in 1991, I think it was. The Greens are in power all over the world, and “technofiles” are hunted down. I recommend the book, it even talks about climate “Scientist”‘s publishing alarmist papers for grants.
I watched the first shuttle launch, and the last. Sad day indeed. What is sadder is the US is no longer a space country, but a hitchhiker to other countries. Who’s next? China, they will put a man on the moon.
I was invited to tour the Space Shuttle part factory that produced the Transducers by John Tavis in 1977. There I saw a black rubberlike compound made in a beaker that, once set, could not be cut. You could break the beaker, but the stuff in it was impervious to sharp instruments, yet remained pliable. A variant of it has made it into such things as Kong Toys for pets, and who knows what else.
That was a first-hand look at the new technology created for manned space flight.
Things that eventually we benefit from.
Looks like we are back to unmanned probes, like the one at Mercury and the one travelling towards Pluto. Mariners and Pioneers will rule the next generation.
I loved the space program, too. I’ll be happy to see it now able to grow in private hands with values I share as the goals.
I’m not sad to see the political circus go. It was gripping, but very, very expensive. What marked the end of the show was, ironically, international cooperation. Up until the invention of the ‘hi-tech’ device that permitted international cooperation, it was all about cocksmanship, to be sure.
One must remember that ‘international’ at the time was limited to the USA and Soviet Russia – nobody else was able.
The device that allowed international cooperation in the first instance was named ‘the androgynous docking mechanism’ which was required by politicians overseeing the Apollo-Soyuz project.
If you weren’t around at the time, think about the word ‘androgynous’. The cocksmanship was explicit. No Russian or American could suffer the allusion of being on the receiving end of a sexual encounter by ‘mating’ spaceships. It required committees and engineers and diplomatic discussions to work this out.
That’s what was behind it and I won’t miss that.
It was a really great show, but it was only a show. I hope we may see the real thing happen.
Now that the Space Shuttle program has reached its end, 3000+/- NASA employees in Florida will join the unemployment roles in 10 days. Why can’t Hansen and Gavin join them too?
A little OT, but what the hey, my favorite ex. of technological inertia. There are several versions out there. This one, wh. I found many years ago, appears to be a conversation between a curious every-person & a slightly obtuse nerd:
and all that is left is….. James T. Kirk!