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The Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Mile (Video)
Timothy Lord was in the closest civilian parking lot to where the Space Shuttle Discovery touched down from her last flight -- as a passenger on top of a 747, but it was still a space shuttle flying... a flight that was the sad epitaph for an American era. Timothy's shots of the landing approach are much like all the others you've seen. What's interesting is the variety of people he talked with. One came all the way from Tokyo. And there was the young man who got a Master's in Aeronautical Engineering to work on the space program, which sadly shut down, and who is now looking for a job with SpaceX or one of the other private space-bound companies. We hope there are lots of opportunities in the near future for him, and for thousands if not millions of others who want to go into space or, ground-bound, help our efforts to go where only science fiction writers' imaginations have gone before.
After landing at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, the shuttle will undergo final preparations to go on display Thursday at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum annex near the airport.
Which means we'll see yet another last-mile-discovery-travels-story.
“We pledge to take care of her forever,” said retired Gen. John R. “Jack” Dailey, the museum’s director. The shuttle will show young visitors “what America is capable of.”
Not anymore!
I know the space shuttle was flawed, expensive, probably too dangerous, etc etc. But the lesson here is that it will be replaced by... not much.
The shuttle is the most visible sign of humanity in regression: mankind is slowing down - literally, it is more or less abandoning manned space exploration, science is giving way to obscurantism, governments are slowly tightening their grip on their populations, ...
I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, I used to think I might go into space myself, with any luck, before I'm old. I used to think people would be more and more educated, and we were seeing the last vestiges of religiosity clinging on. Technology and education would be victorious, and mankind was on its way to the stars. Bright days ahead I thought...
The exact opposite is happening today. I think it's the sign of the cost of energy: mankind is regressing as cheap energy is disappearing. The shuttle is just one of the things mankind is giving up on.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It really is hard to believe it's all over. I grew up as a schoolboy with the Space Shuttle "coming sometime in the next decade", and then watched the first launch avidly in 1981 - I still remember the exact details of that particular afternoon because it was one of those historic "remembered where you were" moments. I also queued for hours on the M11 to get to see the Shuttle on her UK visit (on the 747 carrier) to Stansted in 1983. Another historic moment was the '86 disaster but that seems strangely more remote in time than the first launch, somehow. I don't know where all those years went, but they did - I'm going to turn 50 this year. From a Brit, it's sad to see this era of early space travel come to an end with nothing much on its way to replace it. Truly historic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
http://www.youtube.com/user/UnitedLaunchAlliance
This is the future:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/smaller-quicker-secret-space/all/1
And by the way — if you believe the principles and ideals the US and the West stand for have any value whatsoever, then those principles are still worth defending against those who don't share them, and would desire to project their own...
We are not perfect, but before there is a chorus of responses decrying how the US is somehow "oppressing" its people, I genuinely hope those who believe that never see actual oppression...
just like we gave away our lead in nuclear engineering. oh, and physics, too.
and education.
and manufacturing.
and medicine.
is there anything we're the best at anymore, other than incarcerating our own people?
The way the article puts things you'd think we were all crawling back into caves now.
In fact the opposite is true. We are casting off an albatross around our necks and are at the dawn of a real golden age of space travel - one that does require whole governments bent to the singular task of getting a ship up a few times year.
No, instead we get multiple companies giving us more frequent space travel, for humans and cargo alike.
We humans land on Mars, it will not be a government that sends them there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Our modern world is very inward-focused. If it's not on the ego, it's on those social problems that never go away. These may be important, but I think space exploration is more important. Humanity does its best when it has a frontier, and some goal to shoot for. That fills us with a sense of hope and power. That in turn pushes us to be better than we were. When we stop exploring the stars and look inward, there's really nothing of interest left, just some intractable problems. The Romans couldn't fix them, the Greeks couldn't fix them, and we can't either. That kind of mentality could make people depressed and stubbornly selfish.
mankind is slowing down - literally, it is more or less abandoning manned space exploration, science is giving way to obscurantism, governments are slowly tightening their grip on their populations, ...
You seem to be confusing the USA with "mankind". Europe and Russia's space programs are still strong, China, India and Brazil are recent newcomers expanding their space programs, science is still strong in the civilized world and people in Europe are no less free than they were before 9/11.