Category Archives: discovery

We Still Have a Space Program

But We’re Saying GoodBye to a Once-Active Part of It Today

Today is a bittersweet day for space buffs. The space shuttle Discovery left the Kennedy Space Center for the last time this morning and a few hours later made its victory lap over Washington, D.C. before settling down on the runway at Dulles Airport. It now begins its retirement at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy complex near the airport, as an exhibit. It was a thrill to see the shuttle (mated to its carrier 747) swoop over the D.C. area in a graceful display of our hopes and dreams in space. Look at the pictures below, and you’ll see not just Discovery, but the people who came out to watch her final descent. People who wanted to see something special, people who realized this was the passing of something special. It meant something to them.

Those hopes and dreams are going in a different direction these days. Ever since President Bush announced in 2004 that it would bring the program to a close and signed directives to that effect, we’ve known this day was coming. Still, it’s sad to know that the shuttle program is really coming to an end. Yet, it didn’t have to be this way. In the years since then, NASA should have had the funding and support to come up with a new means of getting to space that improved on the shuttle program.

Instead, we have begun work on what looks like an Apollo-style program that is withering on the vine, being jerked around by political considerations.  The companies working on it are doing the best they can, and I wish them the best. But they have a rough row to hoe, reinventing wheels that NASA people were raised to perfect long ago.

NASA’s other missions of planetary exploration, education, and research are also suffering, getting just enough money to keep stayin’ alive, but not exactly thriving. Tax cuts or not, NASA programs create JOBS and pride; two things that Wall Street lobbyists, Teabaggers, wingnut politicians, anti-science bigots, and many others either just don’t get or just don’t really care about.

But, many, many people of our country DO care. The space program is part of our national psyche, something we’ve always been proud of.  Just look at the faces of the people who lined D.C.’s roads today, flocked to viewing sites, and took millions of images and videos to post on the Web and Facebook and Flickr and other sites, and tell ME they don’t care.  It excites them.

The political hacks who are helping to “ungrow” our space program one program at a time are mocking that excitement; worse, they’re mocking a thing that makes many Americans feel good about what we can accomplish if we set our minds to it. They’re mocking fellow Americans, and that seems almost traitorous.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that we had an aging shuttle fleet and that it would have needed to be retired sooner or later. That’s the nature of technological change. And, for the record, I doubt there’s very much the current administration could have done to resurrect the shuttle program. By the time President Obama took office, the shuttle program was too far gone to bring back. The relevant work needed to be done well before Bush left office. A new program that built on the success of the shuttle, rather than going back to “spam in a can” designs should have started up as soon as Bush signed the warrant killing the old one. But, that didn’t happen, and so today, we have our last shuttles becoming museum pieces. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Congress (more so than the President) bears a HUGE responsibility for funding for NASA. Congress has not met that responsibility; indeed, rather than admit that, some members prefer to finger-point away from themselves, blaming the President or anybody else even as they gut the NASA budget. Hypocritical much?

The good news? We still have a space program, but one that is being gutted by science-intolerant hacks intent on wrecking government in order to save it. Our space program, which costs YOU and ME (if you’re a U.S. citizen) LESS than half a cent apiece, is a job creator. It’s a technology incubator. It educates. It inspires. It returns MORE to our economy than it takes in. It feeds the future, which is something we need. It shouldn’t be ripped to shreds by politicians in Congress who waste their taxpayer-paid salaries and gold standard benefits (that WE pay for) creating and wallowing in ugly political pigsties in order to get elected (or re-elected). Perhaps if we didn’t vote for people whose only intent is to destroy jobs and technological innovation in their efforts to pander, things would change. But, that’s a rant for a different day.

Several million young stars are vying for attention in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula. Courtesy NASA/STScI. Click to embiggen.

Today, let’s focus on the beauty of what our space program does provide: some of the most gorgeous insights into our cosmos that anyone on Earth has ever been given. That’s priceless.  You can’t put a value on it, or what it does for the human spirit. Or what it pays forward in terms of knowledge and advancement in fields as diverse as biology and medicine and chemistry and physics, astronomy, and technology.

Yes, we can acknowledge the graceful beauty of the shuttles, the sadness of their passing, as is entirely right and proper. It is the end of an era and all such ends should give us pause to reflect on what we have accomplished and what remains to be done.

But, let’s also look at what our space program still offers us. For example, this gorgeous view of star formation in a nearby galaxy, released to celebrate Hubble’s 22nd anniversary of its launch to Earth orbit.

This is what investment in scientific knowledge gets you on the front end — the technological savvy to take pretty pictures AND explain them and relate them to our lives here on Earth. That kind of research IS an investment, and it pays off HUGE dividends on down the line. We just have to focus the attention of our leaders, to help them see their way clear to reupping and maintaining that investment.

As the Shuttle Missions Wind Down

An Era is Slowly Ending…

The space shuttle Discovery as seen from the International Space Station. Courtesy NASA/USTREAM.

Those of you who were born in the early 1980s and after have always had sights like these to define what “near-Earth” space exploration looks like.  For the past 30 years, shuttle launches and delicate orbital ballets have been standard fare for us all to watch.

But, as we all know, that time and those missions are coming to an end. The last space shuttle flights are taking place in the next few months, and after that, the orbiters will fly no more. At least, that’s the current plan.

I’m not going to weigh in here on the relative merits of the next stage of U.S. space exploration hardware and missions, other than to say that we don’t have much tin being officially bent to take PEOPLE to space again anytime REAL soon.  Yes, there is the private sector activity, which I watch with great interest.  It will be interesting to see just how it all plays out. And, if it’s possible, I’ll try to make my way to space on a future “tourist flight” since I’m not likely to be picked as a “citizen journalist-astronaut” or “blogger-naut” or “Tweeter-naut” or whatever it is they’ll call them (if they come into being). Access to space, even 60 years after the first human flights, is still deemed a pretty risky and expensive proposition for all but the most fit (or, in the future probably, the most politically connected or wealthy).

Space shuttle as seen from above the ISS arm. Courtesy NASA/USTREAM

But, for all of us who “grew up” watching space shuttles loft to space, dance in orbit, take astronauts to the space station, deliver repair parts for Hubble Space Telescope, and many, many other important missions, these flights ARE the end of an era.  So, what can be more profound than to note that change in space flight status with a few views of today’s docking of Discovery with the International Space Station?  Enjoy!

As the shuttle slowly put itself into position for the docking, which took place at 1:14 CST today, I was reminded of a plane coming into the gate at an airport.  For all the hundreds of times I’ve landed at airports, and watched as the retractable jetway was steered out to nestle next to the plane by a gate agent, it never occurred to me how familiar it would  look as our own “space plane” would cuddle up next to the ISS.

Discovery passes under one of the station modules. Courtesy NASA/USTREAM.

But, there it was, earlier today, gliding into position just as if, for all the world, it was another flight landing and delivering a planeload of passengers and cargo. In fact, as I watched, the lyrics to the Alan Parsons Project song “I Can’t Look Down” from On Air, ran through my mind:  Another passenger, “Your baggage thank you sir”… even though I’m not afraid to fly and would just about give anything to go to space. I wish it were as commonplace as flying to LA or London or Paris is for many people. And that it cost about the same. I’d so be there.

A few minutes away from docking. Courtesy NASA/USTREAM

As I write this, the shuttle and ISS are docked together, and the astronauts will soon begin their work of ferrying new modules and equipment to the space station.  Right now they’re waiting while some relative motions and shaking die to down — a teachable moment in physics, actually, for anyone who wants to live and work in space some day (or has ever pondered what it would be like). Objects have mass, they gain momentum, and when you work with them in space, you have to take those factors into account.

In a sense it’s an everyday “fly to work, deliver the goods” kind of mission. But it’s also momentous. It’s the last time Discovery flies to the space station.  It’s the last mission for this venerable orbiter, which will return to Earth in a few days’ time and probably take up residence as an exhibit somewhere. And, for those of us who grew up in its era, it’s a surreal and unreal time — we know that this is all coming to an end. And, at least some of us are eagerly awaiting the next level of exploration.  Space travel is inevitable; the idea has mass and it’s gaining momentum. Now, how do we take them into account as we plan our next steps to space?