Talk politics.

The last flight of the shuttle program is now underway, with several former astronauts expressing outrage over the current lack of vision in the American space program. The first American in space and former U.S. senator John Glenn noted: "Because the shuttle's going down," Glenn said, "we will not have our own means of getting into space which I think is too bad. I don't like this at all. We'll actually have to go over and have our people go up on Soyuz out of Kazakhstan with Russian launch vehicles - which I don't like. I don't think that's very seemly for the world greatest space faring nation as President Kennedy termed us." The shuttle program was originally meant as a replacement for canceled programs after the Apollo missions (e.g. more exploratory trips to the Moon with the establishment of bases there, and long lead planning and design for manned trips to Mars by the end of the century).




The chevron used for the last shuttle mission


As a kid, I remember watching nearly every Mercury and Apollo launch, it seemed like the good aspects of the future of Star Trek portrayed would come to fruition within my own lifetime. But I also distinctly remember that by the last two Apollo missions, the networks were already bored with it as a news story: there wasn't any live coverage of the missions (and there wasn't anything like CNN or 24 news back then). Sagan commented several times through out his career the story of Zheng He, the great Chinese explorer who ventured on great merchant ships as far as Cape Town, Africa, bringing back exotic animals such as the giraffe to the Ming emperor, but eventually the xenophobic and Confucian bureaucracy of the Chinese culture won the day: within 50 years, all large ships were destroyed, and laws were passed preventing any new construction. Later royal court officials tried to obscure any references to the trips and their discoveries. Carl Sagan in the last yeasr of his life, wondered out loud about the American commitment space exploration too, and our place among the stars. Here is Sagan's own feflection on the end of the manned missions to the Moon and waxes philosophical about the future. There is some beautiful footage used in this HD clip.




I'm saddened to see the end of the shuttle. I think it's such a shame that our manned space program has languished for so long. The Obama administration has stated its commitment to expanding NASA-- despite its favoring commercial sub-space aviation as the "wave of the future, but last week, a House subcommittee voted to cut 1 billion dollars, and canceled the James Webb space based telescope outright.




For more please see these resources:

[1.] Space program retools for the 21st century. Detailing the impact of the shuttle program on Southern California's aero-space industry, and details the incredible technical beauty and ingenuity of designing one of the world's most sophisticated machines.

[2.] President Kennedy's address to Congress on May 25, 1961, declaring his wish that we land men on the Moon by the end of the decade.

[3.] NASA's HD broadcasts are available over the Internet, and also provided free of charge to your local cable provider. If your system doesn't have it, request it! ;)

[4.] Absolute must see: When we left Earth, the Discovery Channel's documentary series that uses remastered films of the early space program including Mercury and Apollo missions in STUNNING high definition.

Tip o' the hat to dwer who alerted me about the Sagan video clip via my Google + page ;)