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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Wednesday, March 09, 2011 at 00:19:11 :
In Reply to: OT: shuttle & space station pass posted by Grant in CO [64.234.252.6] on Tuesday, March 08, 2011 at 21:19:51 :
I remember going outside and looking up at the moon while the first astronauts were walking on it on TV inside. I think I watched every live moon walk there ever was, and most of the blast-offs and splash-downs on TV. I think my dad made it known to me that space travel was a really big deal. He was a rocket man at Boeing.
After that, everything started bogging down. The space shuttle is arguably the most complicated machine ever built, in terms of the number of parts. It was originally conceived to be like Boeing's old "Dyna-soar" space plane, which was never built. As the Shuttle design progressed, instead of saving money, it got to where it cost more per pound put in orbit than an ordinary rocket. Late in the design, they had to add the solid rocket boosters just to get it off the ground. They'd never been used on a manned rocket before, because of the danger. Once you light them, you can't throttle them back. In the end, the Shuttle worked, but it was a kludge.
We were supposed to have a new and improved Shuttle by now, but instead all we have is a program to build an ordinary rocket, which will probably end up about as good as what the Russians have, except more expensive. The public won't tolerate any casualties, which makes it hard to take any risks or do anything extraordinary. 40,000 American die in car wrecks every year, but when astronauts die, the great public outcry is that space travel isn't worth the risk (but driving to the video store and the beer mart is).
I know Bush told NASA to make plans to return to the moon and send men to Mars, but who really believes that's going to happen? Maybe the Chinese will send someone to the moon just to show off. Nobody is going to Mars, and it's doubtful anyone ever will.
It's really looking to me like the "space age" is over in terms of human travel. Even the Air Force's new super-secret space plane is a drone. The last Shuttle flight is the end of an era, not just in terms of Shuttle flights, but in terms of the idea of space exploration as something that's interesting to do in its own right. Even the Shuttle and the space station, which will probably get dumped into the ocean within the decade, accomplished very little in the end. Manned space flight peaked with the moon landings, and I don't see any sign that people want to do any more of it. It costs too much, it's not near as cool in real life as it is in the movies, people actually truly die sometimes, and ultimately, nobody cares any more.
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