Lack of replacement leaves US dreaming
Space Shuttle Discovery mesmerized Americans one last time Tuesday morning, although in a slightly different fashion. Atop a modified Boeing 747, Discovery swept through the clouds and made a low-pass flyover over the nation’s capital on the way to its final resting place at the Udvar-Hazy Center aeronautical museum. Its final flight represented the last hurrah for the shuttle program and the impending dark age for U.S. space exploration.
With the program’s first launch in 1981 and final landing this past summer, the shuttle program has captured the imaginations of a generation. While the Apollo missions were highlighted by moon landings, the Space Shuttle program’s pride and joy was Hubble. The telescope — launched with faulty sights resulting in blurry images — was privy to five shuttle missions to repair and update its mechanical pieces. With aid from the shuttle and its missions, Hubble literally opened its eye to the unimaginable imagery of deep space for all of us on Earth to enjoy.
The Space Shuttle program also played a critical role in the construction and resupplying of the International Space Station. In this case, the shuttle was the only vehicle large enough to put essential modules of the ISS up to orbit, allowing the crew to play Legos miles above Earth’s atmosphere.
The success of Hubble and the resulting trips back to it, along with the critical role it played in the ISS construction, were stories of space exploration at its finest. And yet moving forward, America by and large doesn’t have a plan for “the next big thing.” There’s no concrete replacement for the Space Shuttle program, and we’re more or less relying on the Russians to keep the ISS alive.
Shockingly, for the first time in a long time, America and NASA have stopped innovating. In an age of budget cuts and cutthroat politics, space exploration has fallen by the wayside. Since former President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 declaration to put a man on the moon, Americans have been able to look to the sky and imagine a world beyond our own, knowing we had people up there on the bleeding edge of science.
But now, we sit and wait. We wait until private corporations like SpaceX figure out a private sector replacement for the shuttle. We wait until Congress and the president decide America needs space exploration. We wait — quite literally — to see if America will decide to captivate minds across the globe with the idea of going where no man has gone before.
Until then, we’ll look back fondly on what the shuttle was able to do for us. We’ll mourn those lost in accidents in takeoff and landing. We’ll remember that without the shuttles, Hubble wouldn’t have taken our breath away with images of other galaxies, nor would the ISS orbit the earth today. For all of those things — and countless more — we should thank the Space Shuttle and all those involved with the program. And with that thanks, we’ll wait for another day when America decides to dream once again.
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