Dear Anna,
In 1981, the first space shuttle was launched:
Columbia. Today, the final was launched:
Atlantis.The space shuttle was the symbol of a dream for me growing up: the huge orange external fuel tank next to the white solid rocket boosters and the unmistakable airplane-shaped orbiter. Huge backwards American flag on it. Today when it launched for the final time, I wasn't the only one who thought just for a split second, "damn, I really AM never going to know what it feels like to ride in one." And then a fleeting thought: how narcissistic, move on please. I watched from the place I wanted to be most: at work, with my coworkers in the International Space Station (ISS) office at Johnson Space Center. It was so fantastic to know I wasn't alone in saying goodbye. I wondered if there was anyone at JSC who wasn't tuned in to the launch today.
I wasn't compelled to travel to KSC to see the launch live like lots of others I knew. Today it seemed like every email I sent had an Out Of Office Reply stating that they'd return July 11. I could have gone myself or I could have hauled Paul and Anna out there, but none of us was compelled. It's kind of one of those things. These days I am all about being only where I want to be. And for real, JSC was where I wanted to be, second only to being with you real time (you got to watch it from your camp classroom at St. Thomas. Skip Hatfield's wife is your camp teacher). JSC is the place I always wanted to work, since I was a kid. It was good to be there today. I only got a little jealous when I heard Jimmy Buffett played live at the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building after the launch! AWWWWMANNN!!!...
I grew up with shuttle. It was my #1 love growing up (I had even memorized shuttle facts from the space shuttle's owner's manual), and then when I became an adult, it was the space station. Who knew that one day I'd be sitting there, an ISS civil servant at JSC, watching the end of the shuttle era? Even only 11 years ago I wouldn't have believed any of that statement. Who knew one day I'd be quoted on behalf of the ISS program the past few days in news articles, and according to some of Paul's clients who saw me on TV last night, a news brief regarding the end of the space shuttle era (
Huh? I was totally at home catching up on Jon Stewart's Daily Show re-runs last night in my PJ's. OH! I forgot that ABC had done a segment with me awhile back that they were holding for the final shuttle launch. Guess they aired it).
Seriously. The end of the space shuttle. There will be lots of drunk people tonight.
Anna, this is how NASA works. In all instances, we are at the mercy of the president. As in the US President. The President of the United States. This is because NASA is a part of the Executive Branch of US government. The president is basically my boss. We are at the mercy of each new incoming president, some may have bold new ideas for NASA. Others may choose to just let us keep our mission straight, continue to underfund us, and let us do our thing fantastically like we always have. In 2003, the
Columbia orbiter tragedy prompted then-president George W Bush to set a course for retiring the space shuttle, cutting funding of the space station and setting it to fall to the ocean in 2015, and beginning a new program called Constellation that would allow us to go to the moon and Mars. This was part of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration. Essentially, a "nice-to-know-ya" to space shuttle and space station, so diverting the money for those programs to build up Constellation. My engineering friends were happy because they were going to be able to design the next steps that go beyond Low Earth Orbit for NASA (a dream job for them because ISS was boring, as it was not a rocket). I was not happy with the curb kick that ISS got, and disheartened by the proposed retirement of the space shuttle, I was depressed. But even that seemed far off enough.
We are now at far off enough. We've had time to mourn the loss of shuttle. Here's what's changed since 2003: George W Bush's two term limit was up, and a new president, Barack Obama, was elected. Obama was an incoming president in 2009 to a nation in recession and hard decisions were being made against all of government spending. By this time Constellation had been chugging along, behind schedule and underfunded. The usual NASA way. Don't get me wrong, we still pull it off...wait...no wait, we weren't exactly heading for pulling this off, as a board of space appointees told the president. Constellation was not sustainable with the meager budget it was limping by on. NASA was doing its best because the people loved the program. But let's face it, it simply wasn't even the budget that Apollo had to go to the moon. And so our new president shockingly dismantled Constellation in 2010, eventually restructuring it so as to leave only the Orion crew launch vehicle to be built by NASA, and funneling dollars to a new commercial crew launch industry. This hurt lots of NASA people and was pretty controversial on so many levels. Change hurts. What do you expect when you vote for a president whose campaign mantra was all about CHANGE?
Also by 2010, the shuttle retirement plans had gone as planned so far under the Bush administration that technically it couldn't even be revived. The mom and pop shops that made the specialty parts had long gone out of business. To ramp up the effort to keep shuttle running would be fiscally sucky. Also, by now at least half of people you ask would have accepted the notion that the space shuttle really was expensive and difficult to maintain; more so than a simple rocket. And so the retirement plans rolled on.
Now at 2011, we saw the shuttle launch for the last time, and we have yet no Orion or shuttle replacement vehicle to launch our astronauts to the space station. We will rely on rides with our Russian partners like we've been doing for the past 10 years and nobody has paid attention to because it wasn't an actual SHUTTLE launch. I was walking back to my desk after watching the launch in a conference room with others, I actually heard an ISS coworker who I otherwise liked say, "well, there goes America's manned space program." Was he high? Delirious? How he could say that and simultaneously be a staff member of the International Space Program is a complete contradiction. Did he actually fall for the media scare tactics and hype? No way. Really? Wow. Score one for media. Big time.
Dear Anna, there are still people on the International Space Station orbiting above our heads around the clock. Some of them are NASA astronauts. Others are from around the world. There may be up to 6 of them at a time. Seriously, doesn't this constitute a manned space program? He must have been loopy on the space shuttle final launch celebratory cake we'd just eaten.
NASA is at the mercy of the US President. I don't blame either president I've worked for for making mistakes. There are many reasons for their decisions and I can see good and bad in all of them, and admittedly there's plenty I don't even understand. The hard part is switching gears potentially every 4 to 8 years. It's the history of NASA as a governmnet entity.
The symbol of the space shuttle may be gone. But the astronauts are still here, right here at JSC. The big white EVA suits that I grew up with are still in full use. The space station is still here in all its glory, which is something I watched NASA design, redesign, and build since high school. There have been launch vehicle gaps in NASA before. Changes in space programs (think Apollo to Skylab to shuttle to ISS). It's history repeating itself, another generation. Change is so hard. The previous generations can tell you that.
I wonder what yours will be like?
