A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle

Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."

Comments

Bittersweet indeed

[flaming error]

If only we knew what comes next.

It seems every 4-8 years a new 20 year plan is given to NASA that may or may not have anything to do with the last 20 year plan. Between politics and NASA's own bureacracy, it seems that the US manned space program is stalled. Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.

While we are getting rides from Russia to install experiments from the EU and Japan, perhaps our private sector will advance enough to pick up where NASA left off. Here's to you, Burt Rutan.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[timeOday]

To hear him describe it, they have a serious brain drain issue where the lure of the private sector takes a lot of their best and brightest.

But I thought all government workers were spoiled, lazy, and overpaid? And there would be no consequences if we slash their salaries whenever we need to close a deficit?

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Beelzebud]

I get so tired of you pseudo intellectual libertarians constant whining about the IRS and taxes. Go live in a 3rd world country if you hate paying your damned taxes so much.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[Stenchwarrior]

I don't think taxes are the issue. It's all the stupid laws and loopholes that make it so you have to hire a tax expert at $250/hr so you can avoid having to pay out the ass every April and October.

Re:Bittersweet indeed

[shadowfaxcrx]

Huh. Imagine that! Every 4-8 years NASA gets new marching orders that force it to waste the money it spent on the last marching orders by axing those projects.

And every 4-8 years we get a new President.

What an astonishing coincidence!

What really needs to happen is that we need to somehow enact a law that says the President isn't in charge of NASA and can't order them to drop everything in favor of something else on a whim. The history of NASA from the shuttle onward is pretty tragic, and not because NASA or the idea of a national space agency sucks, but because idiots keep screwing with their budget. The shuttle itself was supposed to be a proof of concept - - Let's show that we can build a space plane with this prototype and then go build a production model that's cheaper and works better. But budget restraints canned that.

Then they got new budgets and were going to try for a good space plane again, and then W got into office and decided to go to Mars, so NASA had to drop everything and start working on the Mars trip. Then Obama took office and killed the Mars trip - not that I entirely fault Obama for doing that since the Mars trip was unworkable as ordered, but the point still stands. NASA has become a huge waste of taxpayer money not because of NASA mismanagement, but because of mismanagement of NASA. It really does need some independence, because we've progressed beyond the point where viable programs can be ordered and delivered in 8 years, so all we have is NASA working for at most 8 years on something and then being told to throw everything from that program away because the new President isn't interested in it.

Re:Don't worry...

[Grishnakh]

Don't be ridiculous. NASA rocket scientists will be able to get very well-paid jobs with the Chinese and Indian space programs.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[0123456]

We have lost our ambitions for spaceflight.

That seems like a bizarre claim when there's probably more commercial interest in spaceflight today than ever before in the history of the human race. Dozens of groups are building suborbital rockets, SpaceX has built and flown two new orbital launchers with new engines for less than the cost of NASA putting a dummy upper stage on top of a shuttle SRB, and at least some of those groups will come up with innovative ways of reducing the cost of spaceflight as a result.

Re:Don't worry...

[sconeu]

" Exciting satellite missions".

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:And so begins the American decline

[blair1q]

Lack of a cold war to rattle your sabers in will do that to a country.

Depressing.

[pclminion]

My three year old is fanatical about space, planets, the moon, astronauts, everything. How am I supposed to explain to him that our "great" country doesn't do any of that stuff any more? What sort of answer can I give him that doesn't sound a complete fucking cop-out? I have yet to think of one.