Having grown up with the US space program (which celebrated the golden anniversary of Alan Shepard’s fight on May 5, 2011) and come of age when Apollo 11 touched the moon, I’m not sure how I feel about the final flight of Atlantis, which is writing the final chapter on the shuttle program and US spaceflight history.
In many ways it is like the final saddle-stitched (stapled) issue of Playboy. That was September 1985, and Madonna was on the cover. It appeared after Discovery launched several communications satellites in August on its next to last flight, and before the October flight of Atlantis, on the program’s second classified mission for the Department of Defense.
At the time I was ambivalent about the magazine’s change of bindery because not enough time had passed to see, understand, absorb, and appreciate its portent of coming changes in publishing technology, all of them driven by computers and their ability to communicate without paper. My feelings about the final shuttle flight are similar, but with a clearer focus on what the future likely holds.
Succinctly, human space flight for exploration is over. Like aviation before it, spaceflight is a victim of its own success. It is now a business all about the bottom line. We are a half century past Teflon and Tang technology trickle-downs. Return on investment is what matters. Sending humans to do technology’s job increases the cost exponentially. Tomorrow’s space travelers will buy a ticket on Virgin Galactic, the Russians, or one of the nascent companies vying for the International Space Station cargo contract.
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