Aero, the shuttle isn't going anywhere but around in circles. Despite what you saw in Armageddon, it ain't going to the moon. Ever. It can't. Its the wrong type of vehicle entirely. For the last 30 years, we've been blowing our manned spaceflight budget on a space-truck that will get us to low earth orbit, carrying enough shit to build and re-supply a space station. A space station that, if we're lucky, will *barely* be completed by the time the last shuttle flies in 2010. Know what happens then?
Do you give a shit or are you just flailing at the "teacher in space" thing?
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0708/28ares1x/
That's the shape of things to come. Goin' places costs money and time. The last president we had that gave the tiniest shit about human spaceflight was Johnson. Every one since then only gave it lip-service. Nixon approved the shuttle, and cut the remaining three scheduled moon launches (yes, there could've been an Apollo 20). Ford sat in for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, but was otherwise a non-factor for space. As was Carter for the most part, development on the shuttle was already well under way, and into doing un-powered drop-tests out at Edwards from the back of a 747 during his tenure.
Reagan... Reagan saw the first shuttle launch, the first shuttle disaster, and muddied the waters twice... once with his Strategic Defense Initiative (better known as Star Wars), and again with his grand proposal for "Space Station Alpha". Guess which one got funded? It made sense to the hawks at the time. Nobody wants to get nuked, right? Ah, but that Space Station Alpha press conference... that was good stuff. Grandiose plans, and no fucking money. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. Yeah, its a cliche, but its true.
Bush 1, same deal. Grand press conference, what some in the press began calling the "battlestar galactica" of manned spaceflight proposals. Same result. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. Ah, the Iron Curtain falls. So much for SDI.
Clinton's another ball of twine altogether. Working with the Russians in space after all those years. It looks like a great story on the surface, but it was a pretty bumpy road to get there. Okay, so the Russians have this bigass space station already, see? Why don't we just go THERE and save some money? So they did... until it fell out of the sky. Mir was good practice for working with the Russians while it lasted though. Showed us that, hey, maybe we aren't quite as incompatible as we were in the 70's. Work moved ahead on the beginnings of what we now know as the International Space Station (the Russians were averse to us calling it 'Alpha' again after all these years. Bad Reagan memories I guess. This work was begun with a host of international partners, to help split costs and to help build hardware on the ground, not to mention launch resupply ships.) We had a lot of growing pains, and many questioned what amounted to the US subsidizing the Russian aerospace industry for a number of years, but in the end it looks like it layed the groundwork for what we have today. The X-33 (VentureStar) got cancelled after some interesting results and even more impressive demo animations. Nothing actually flew though.
Bush 2 hasn't been a horrible steward of US manned spaceflight. He's said some pretty stupid shit (to the moon, mars, infinity, and beyooooond! But again with not quite enough money to back up the plan), but he's said the right things at other times too. Our second shuttle disaster occurs on his watch, and he handles it about as well as Reagan. He's not the orator the Gipper was, granted, but he handled it well. Somewhere in there, a few things were going on in the background. The Mars Society started gaining a little more traction. So did al Qaeda. So did the next generation of made-in-America manned spaceflight launch vehicles. See that link up above for more.
In the meantime? For reasons that escape me (beyond his level of budgetary give-a-damn), the shuttle is due to cease operations in 2010, thanks to orders from Bush 2. Folks inside the agency speak about like there's a stop-work order already on their desks with the date of 31 December 2010. Personally, I'd see it as more prudent if they'd say "its done when its done", rather than once again start to feel "deadline pressure" (what lies behind the Challenger launch decision that January day in '86). We've got a station to finish and one last trip out to Hubble before the three remaining flight-worthy shuttles are parked for good.
But what happens then? It'll be at least another FIVE YEARS after that before we launch our own people into space from our own soil. So we hitch rides with the Russians, paying as we go. We send cool shit to Mars every 18 months. Not all of it makes it there in one piece. The shape of US manned spaceflight still remains uncertain. That new launch vehicle they're working on? They're working on it without the aforementioned host of international partners.
How'd that "no bucks..." line go?
They can send Luke's saber up there. You were inspired by the movies as a kid. A lot of the current generation of Shuttle astronauts were indeed inspired by Star Trek growing up. They weren't just sci-fi geeks, they were science and engineering geeks, math geeks, physicians, geologists, robotics geeks, and more. They saw the future, on their tv screens, at the movies, and in their heads. And unlike us sitting here shooting each other with PEW PEW PEW imaginary lasers, they're out there building and designing shit to make the future HAPPEN. Teachers in space? I'm all FOR it. Inspiration for the next generation in the real world.
You can thank the first satellite geek, Arthur C. Clarke, for the tv you watch today. He's the one who came up with geo-stationary orbit, where all those communications satellites are parked. Yes, *that* Arthur C. Clarke. Pretty inspiring dude in his own right.
