Coming and going
There are really only two important stories today concerning space exploration. The story that is getting the most coverage is the big news that the space shuttle Discovery is making its last flight, flying over Washington, DC, as it is delivered to the Smithsonian for permanent display.
- CBS: Space shuttle Discovery viewing guide: Final flight Tuesday over DC.
- WTOP: Space shuttle Discovery salutes nation’s capital.
- Washington Times: Space shuttle Discovery ready for final flyover.
- Associated Press: Space shuttle Discovery ready for voyage to museum.
- Space.com: Space shuttle Discovery to take last-ever flight today.
- Discovery News: Shuttle Discovery begins new life as museum piece.
Of these stories, only Irene Klotz of Discovery News seems to really get it. This is not an event to celebrate or get excited about. It is the end of an American achievement, brought to a close probably three to five years prematurely so that the United States now cannot even send its own astronauts to its own space station.
The other news, actually far more important, has gotten far less coverage, and includes three different stories all really about the same thing.
- The first test flight of Dragon to ISS is now cleared for April 30 launch on April 30.
- Boeing’s commercial seven-seat spacecraft, the CST-100, is on public display in Colorado Springs.
- Virgin Galactic announces plans to build a commercial spaceport in Abu Dhabi.
Commercial space is moving forward. It will not be a monolithic government operation, but made up of competing companies building different spaceships with different capabilities. The competition will force costs down, while encouraging creative innovation.
It is just a shame that the people we elected to office in the past decade didn’t have the simple common sense to extend the shuttle program just a few short years so that our country would have always had the ability to put humans into space.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
An opinion article on CNN, of all places, seems to get it too – http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/opinion/seymour-space/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
The fact that you even see the three commercial stories as being significant relative to the ending on the shuttle program, and effectively US maned space capability boggles my mind. It’s like on 9-12 says well yeah we loft the towers – but on the plus side theirs opening a new Starbucks a couple blocks over. Switching the shuttle contracts to commercial would be a big plus. Vastly lower cost, and a real potential to fix them, improve them, and expand operations into new markets and activities. CST at best is just a taxi, the X-37C a much better taxi. Dragon at best isn’t a real contender, at worst is a major threat to the US retaining even shards of what it had.
The US ends its space program and scraps out al it had – adn the space advocates all applaud.
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When you don’t do anything anymore you go to museums to reminisce about what you used to do
Sad.