Today, I watched the final Space Shuttle lift off, riding a plume of fire and thunder into the heavens. The news coverage was all quite positive; reflections on the many milestones in the Shuttle's history, acknowledgement of the many men and women who made the program possible, that sort of thing. There was some discussion about the jobs that would be lost in the Houston area, but that was the limit of the pessimistic comments that I heard.
For me, watching the Shuttle launch -- the last Shuttle launch -- prompted a mix of childhood wonder and adult cynicism. As a kid, I had tons of Space Shuttle toys, shirts, and posters. I knew all about the spacecraft (well, as much as a 2nd grader could know about areospace engineering), how it worked, and the men and women who flew it into space. It was something that was just totally cool. As an adult, my appreciation for the Shuttle program (and manned spaceflight in general) has only grown. To me, it symbolizes some of the best of humanity; how clever, how crazy, how utterly fearless we can be.
Take a moment to think about what space flight involves. What if someone came to you and said, "Hey, see this enormous metal tube? Yeah, I'm gonna fill it full of explosives. Then, I'm going to strap this little, sealed can onto it, and climb inside. And then -- and this is the best part -- you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to set it on fire! Dude, it's going to totally blow me so high into the air, that when I fall back down, I'm going to miss the ground!" This is spaceflight. And the hell of it is, we're clever enough as a species to actually make such a crazy plan work! Cosmonauts, astronauts, and taikonauts (as well as all of the engineers and support staff who work alongside them) will always remain heroes to me; men and women of such courage and skill that they can travel the heavens. It gives me chills just thinking about it, even as I write this.
But as I watched STS-135, that boyhood wonder, that admiration and awe at the fact that humans can travel in space was colored by the knowledge that this is the last Shuttle mission; after these four astronauts come home, my country will no longer have the capability for manned spaceflight. That's a depressing thought. My parents got to watch Americans walk on the Moon, I got to grow up being thrilled every time the Shuttle launched and returned home. What will my children have in its place?
I know how politics and budget concerns and the pressures of the age in which we live can make NASA, and the Shuttle program in particular, seem like a waste of resources. I've seen first-hand how inept and inefficient NASA can be. I can see the soundness of the argument that even when space exploration and research is made a priority, those missions are best suited to robots that are both cheaper and less risky than flying people in space.
But that's just it; I want to have people in space. Last summer, I remember holding my infant son outside at night, looking up at the stars. He'd been cranky and fussy with teething, and I took him outside in the faint hope of getting him to quiet down; failing that, at least I'd have a change of scenery. As soon as we got outside, he became calm, staring up at the full moon completely enraptured. I sat down with him, and started to softly explain things; how far away the moon was, how it reflected light from the Sun, how it changed in appearance as it went around our planet. I told him that people, human beings just like him, had went from hunting with simple stone tools to walking on that big bright ball in the sky. I told him someday we might go back. Of course, being under a year old, he didn't understand everything I was saying to him. But looking in his eyes, I could see that spark, that sense of wonder at looking at the night sky.
Unfortunately, I now have to tell him that a few months before he turned two, his nation lost the ability to fly humans into space. I want to be able to watch men and women leave my planet; I want to tell my sons that they, too, can go to space, if they work hard and are clever and very, very, very brave. Manned space flight is a marvel, a source of pride, an inspiration unlike anything else. I hope my country regains that inspiration again soon. I don't want to tell my sons, "Well, when I was your age, we could send people into space." No; I want to lie in my back yard at night with my boys, looking up at at the night sky, and say, "You know what's awesome? There are people living up there, right now. On the Moon! How cool is that?"
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