Category Archives: space flight

astronomy, discovery, NASA, space flight, space imagery, space shuttle

We Still Have a Space Program

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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.

NASA, space flight, space shuttle

It’s Not The End of the Space Program

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It’s the End of the Shuttle Program

And WE Are Responsible For Our Scientific Future

I’ve seen a lot of bemoaning the fate of NASA the past few days in various places online, now that the end of the Shuttle Program is nigh. It’s natural, I suppose, to be sentimental about the passing of a very visible part of NASA’s many projects. The shuttles are proud reminders of what CAN be done if we stick our minds to the idea and work of getting humans to space. But, as many of us who have grown up watching this program mature, the seeds of the end of the shuttle program were planted decades ago, with the idea that while that program grew and bore fruit, NASA would be funded enough to start working on replacement programs (like the space plane and others).We all knew that this was one step of many that it would take to explore space and the near-Earth environment — and to reap the scientific rewards that always benefit any such endeavor. And, many of us know today that the next steps are going to involve not just NASA, but the private sector working WITH the space agency, and even some overseas partners.  But, it still takes funding for each leg of the tripod that holds up space science and other science research.

Well, that funding hasn’t exactly materialized. NASA’s budget is under attack from the anti-science crowd in Congress (particularly among the extremists of the right).  In fact, much of the funding for science programs in our country (NOAA and others, as well as science education) is under attack from what I can only observe is an ignorant bunch intent on gutting science in favor of lower taxes for wealthy people and bailouts for Wall Street bankers who may or may not pay those back. Some of that attack is politically motivated, under the rubric of “We don’t like what the science data are telling us about global warming (or some other science), so we’re going to vote to defund weather satellites and NASA and all them other things that give us inconvenient truths.”

That’s really short-sighted and ignorant, but the folks who vote and think like this are proud of their ignorance. The rest of us are ashamed of it.  Those of us who know that investments in R&D and basic science research all know that these things pay the country back in increased employment and higher standards of  living for many citizens.

Voting down science research and choking the rest of its funding is a very risky strategy that will only serve to put the U.S. further back in some very important areas of science. And, it may serve to endanger U.S. citizens.  The vote to defund NOAA weather satellites came just as Joplin, MO was ravaged by tornadoes. Without the satellites we have, MORE people in Joplin and surrounding areas would have died or been injured due to lack of warnings provided by our aging fleet of weather satellites. It takes a spectacular kind of science-hater and cynic to vote against something that saves lives. I hope that the congressional Republicans who voted against the satellites are in Joplin to explain their vote to the folks who suffered so much. I’d just about pay cash money to be there and watch as they try to tell the people who lost their loved ones just why predicting bad weather is something they don’t think is important, but funding tax cuts is.  A tax cut benefits a few wealthy folks who probably just bank the money. A weather satellite benefits millions of people who depend on it for accurate forecasts so they can protect their lives and property. Sure seems sensible to me.

In the international arena, the votes to defund science research are hurting our standing in international-cooperation science projects. Already, some U.S. scientists have had to pull out of some vitally interesting and important projects due to lack of funding, after the U.S. promised to be a part of them. The defunding, again led by Congressional extremists, amounts to a sort of bait-and-switch action that will further erode our prestige in the world.  And, I suspect that when the hue and cry FINALLY raises in the U.S. over our scientists being shut out of discoveries they worked on in the early stages, only to be yanked out of them when the going got tough, the people who voted to rescind their funding will be nowhere to be found. Or, more likely will be sitting on their verandahs sipping gin and appreciating the good money they got from lobbying against science research.

That’s what I think on my cynical days. Other days, I sigh and think that we’ve got to find people to represent us who have an ounce of sense when it comes to science and reality.  I say this because, ultimately it comes down to who WE send to Washington, D.C. to represent us. And, if WE don’t care to find and send people with brains and an understanding of science and how it works, then WE are ultimately responsible for the cuts to NASA and other vitally important science and technical programs (and science education). It isn’t one president or another that has gutted our space program and funding for increased weather satellites and so forth. It’s the people WE elected to represent us, and by extension — US.  Therefore, in a very real sense, it’s WE the PEOPLE who have failed our science and technological dreams, hopes and aspirations. And our children.

And so, WE have brought ourselves to this point in history where one important and special part of our space program is ramping down.  We should be sentimental about it, and praise the people who built, flew, and maintained these shuttles for longer than the program was originally thought to last. But, we should also look to the future, to newer vehicles and better chances to explore our environment.  It’s OUR job as voters to bring that about. If we don’t, then we get the space program we deserve.

In the meantime, I want to thank the shuttle teams and astronauts. They represent the best and brightest among us, a shining example of what Americans CAN do when we want to do it.