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Shuttling into History

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The Last Flights of the STS Fleet

A tribute image to the space shuttle Endeavour, set to launch on April 29, 2011 on its last mission. Courtesy NASA.

As NASA winds down its space shuttle missions — Endeavour launches on April 29 and Atlantis is scheduled for late June — it’s kind of hard to think that after those flights, there will be no direct access to space via NASA. The shuttles, like the Apollo spacecraft before them and the Gemini before those, have cemented themselves into the world’s consciousness and the U.S. national psyche.

They’ve made the ISS possible, they’ve carried many important science experiments into space, and they’ve proved that people can return to low-earth orbit again and again. It’s an honorable history and even though I won’t get a chance to ride a shuttle into orbit (that was once a dream of mine), I’m still proud of it and what it stands for.

Of course, the honor comes at the price of two sets of shuttle crews’ lives. As Gus Grissom once said, “The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”  I don’t think he thought his own life was to end so soon, and neither did the people aboard Challenger and Columbia have an inkling that theirs would end so spectacularly. But, they would have wanted the flights to continue; to do anything less would have detracted from the scientific cause to which they dedicated their lives.

I remember getting up well before dawn to see the first shuttle launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981. It seemed to us (after watching the much slower Saturn V launches of the Apollo era) that the shuttle was an agile system. It cleared the tower in just a few seconds and less than a minute later was arcing out over the ocean and into history. The first shuttle launch I saw in person was in the summer of 1993. As luck would have it, I was working on an HST instrument team, and so got a chance to see a second shuttle launch later that year when STS-61, flown by Endeavour, took off on the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. That was an early morning launch and after it was over, we also had the chance to see HST fly over, giving us a first-hand feel for the orbital configuration the shuttle had to achieve in order to rendezvous with the telescope.

Watching a shuttle launch is an amazing experience. The sound comes well after the sight of the launch, and it hits you like a wall of “sensation”.  I remember car alarms going off in the nearby parking lot at Press Site, and people were yelling in amazement.

Watching a shuttle land — as we did at White Sands in New Mexico in 1982 — was like watching an aerodynamic brick drop out of the sky and achieve a smooth landing.  I still remember watching it glide to a soft landing, accompanied by T-38 chase jets. I can imagine it was pretty exciting for the folks onboard the shuttle and NOTHING like a landing that you or I might experience at an airport.

As I watch the preparations for the final flights, I can’t help but feel this palpable sense of history passing in front of our eyes. The shuttles have been part of our lives for some 30 years now. It’s tough to imagine that the last launches are coming up fast — and that soon NASA will have no home-grown access to space for its astronauts. They will, instead, be relying on the Russians to get them to and from low-earth orbit. And that, in the final analysis, is one of the most historically intriguing outcomes of the end of the shuttles. Our space program was spurred in large part in the late 1950s and 1960s by an incredibly rancorous competition with the then-Soviet Union. I often wonder what those early spacefarers at NASA and the Soviet space program would say if they knew today that NASA and Roscosmos were cooperating to get people to and from space together!

If you have a chance, be sure and watch the final launches of the space shuttles — either via NASA TV online, on TV, or if you can–in person. They’re incredibly powerful experiences.  I hope that the next generation of space travelers will once again have a vehicle that can easily take them to orbit.  I know that some are on the drawing boards and in testing.  Hopefully, the historical changing of the guard from shuttles to those craft won’t take too long. I still want my ride!

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As the Shuttle Missions Wind Down

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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?