Farewell to the Space Shuttle

America's vehicle to space, the space shuttle, will soon be retired.  The just launched STS-135 involving the orbiter Atlantis will be the fleet's final mission.  The shuttle program spans a near lifetime of memories, good and bad, for me.

In the 1970's, for those old enough to remember, the concept of a "space shuttle" seemed like science fiction.  The astronauts we knew flew in small capsules perched atop giant rockets, not in gleaming white, winged space planes.  The fact that the experimental shuttle, the Enterprise, shared the name of Captain Kirk's TV spaceship and looked like a prop from the film 2001, only solidified the sci-fi notion.

And yet there it was, gliding in from outer space in April of 1981.  My 9th grade Industrial Arts teacher, Mr. Smith, set up a TV so we could watch the first space shuttle landing during class.  Mr. Smith was as awed as we were.

Life on a college campus in the 1980's was one of isolation.  In the years before the Internet and cell phones, a college campus became its own closed universe; we were largely ignorant of the outside world.  So in January of 1986, when word began filtering through the Longwood College dining hall that the shuttle had "crashed," we knew something really bad had happened.  We watched the Challenger's final moments over and over again on a 10-inch black and white TV in my dorm room.

When legendary Mercury astronaut John Glenn launched with the shuttle Discovery in 1998, it had been years since I had watched a launch live on TV.  I was immediately reminded of the power of a space launch.  Watching launch highlights on the evening news cannot convey the countdown, the anticipation, and the breath-catching glory of the shuttle, it's boosters and external fuel tank lifting off the pad and driving toward space.

On a Saturday morning in 2003, I felt chills when the Weather Channel's Bob Stokes told his audience that NASA had lost contact with the shuttle Columbia.  Flipping through the cable news channels, I found Fox News had video of debris streaking across the sky but its anchors couldn't explain what they were looking at.  CNN had no video but did have a space expert, who articulated what I feared...that the shuttle's crew was lost.


For all of the awe it has inspired, the shuttle was, quite simply, a workhorse, the Clydesdale of space.  In 135 missions, the shuttles have carried dozens of satellites, both commercial and military, into orbit.  They have lofted laboratories and housing modules, and served as construction platforms as the labs and housing modules were pieced together into the International Space Station.

In the end, the orbiters simply became too expensive to use (more than $1 billion per launch) and maintain. For now, American astronauts will rely on Russia's cramped Soyuz capsules to get to the ISS, at a cost of more than $50 million per trip.

President Bush announced the retirement date of the shuttle fleet in 2004 but NASA has still not settled on a design for a new launch vehicle.  Until then, we are left waiting for America's next journey that will awe and inspire.