The Space Shuttle is due to make it's final flight. It's the end of an era and the start of a new one for NASA. It's strange that the Space Shuttle just never fired my imagination like the earlier space programmes. I wonder if that's just an age thing? I was just a kid when Apollo was landing on the moon. In many ways what followed - the International Space Station and the Shuttle, were far more advanced but instead seemed, what can I say, workmanlike, almost mundane. This does their achievements a great disservice and I regret not taking more interest. I imagine and hope, like Apollo, the Shuttle years will have their own 'generation' who will look back nostalgically upon it, lovingly collect memorabilia and bemoan their passing. I wish the crew of the last Shuttle flight every success and a safe journey home. God Speed!
I feel much the same, which strikes me as sad :(
ReplyDeleteWhat happens now, do you know, Woodsy?
I have to say I feel like that too with the Shuttle.
ReplyDeleteI remember after Apollo, feeling depressed that the moon missions were over, with the great rockets and machinery, and the strange looking lunar modules and lunar rovers and stuff.
When the Space Shuttle era began I got excited again but somehow the Shuttle never delivered for me. It never lived up to the first things I heard about it either and as far as I was concerned it was just a souped up airplane, rather ordinary and clumsy looking. It had none of that "Outer Space" mystique to it that the Apollo rockets and space probes had.
Of course, this is not to say that I don't appreciate the technology and intellect that went into designing and building it and I will be sad to see it go.
"God Speed," as Woodsy said.
To hopefully answer your question PT, NASA plan to replace the shuttle with a launch vehicle similar to the shuttle solid rocket boosters and a spacecraft which resembles a larger Apollo Command & Service module....so the golden age of space technology makes a comeback! One writer postulated that for the cost of the war in Iraq you could have supported ten (Yes TEN)Apollo programmes.....
ReplyDeleteFurther to the above NASA had planned a return to lunar exploration in 2018 but President Obama has now told Nasa that is off the table but that they can go to Mars in 2037...assuming his sucessors don't do a Nixon on the programme! The real problems are a)People don't think money should be spent on space exploration b)People can't comprehend the benefits of a space programme.
ReplyDeleteOne Last thought (I don't want to be hogging this thread...honest!)C)those who still believe that mankind's greatest adventure.....was all a hoax "The earth is the cradle of the mind....but you cannot stay in the cradle" (Konstantine Toilchovsky) "We touched the face of another world and became a people without limits" (Andrew Chaikin-A man On The Moon)
ReplyDeleteI have never, ever understood those who think the moon landing was a hoax. It's not just that their arguments are spurious at best, but having watched denouncers on various TV programmes I have to say their body language makes me uneasy. While I am sure there are some who genuinely believe the whole thing was a fake, a few make me wonder if they perhaps have a hidden motive. It strikes me as interesting that one of those whose body language sets off the most alarms in my head, was also a former NASA employee. Does his stance come from a grudge to to with that? I wonder ...
ReplyDeletePersonally, I rate the whole moon landing venture as one of the most inspiring events in human history. The fact that it was done for so may wrong reasons just makes it all the more inspiring - just think what humans could do if they really did it for the right reasons!
Remember the scene in 2001 where the ape (is it Moonwatcher?) throws the bone into the air ... the camera follows it ... and then it "becomes" an object floating in space? (ie, from throwing a bone in the air, we move on to be able to throw fabricated objects into space). Well, that's kinda how I see the moon landings. In my mind is a picture of a group of hominids standing and shivering on the banks of a river, wondering how they can get across .... and then the scene shifts to humans crossing that vast gulf between Earth and the Moon. Ain't we amazing?
Thanks for the info, Spectrum Steve. Much appreciated.