The end of the Shuttle is so depressing
By Duganz
Well, here in a few short weeks the first of three final planned Space Shuttle missions will take place. This, admittedly, has little to do with Montana, but it is very much a part of all of us. After all, for 34 years the Shuttles have been bringing satellites into space, and pulling off what I think is one of the most incredible things man has done. 
A while ago I was talking to a younger kid about the Shuttle. I said that it was really cool. He said, “Why? It’s just a plane in space.” And me, I was like, IT’S A PLANE IN SPACE! Don’t you see?! That’s so incredible!!!!!He was not moved by my insistence of how amazing the Shuttle is–he’ll probably be an elected official someday since he can’t see why in the debate about space flight versus killing brown people, space flight should win.
Just think of how special the Space Shuttle is, just for a moment. It is the only vehicle ever created that can travel to space and back, and then back again to space. It is a vehicle that flies around the world faster than anything you’ve ever seen, or been inside of. It stays up THERE. (Look up…. do you see how far that is? No. You don’t. It’s THAT far.) It has delivered many of the things that give us technologies that even 20 years ago were unheard of (Like your GPS? Thanks Shuttle). And, yes, people have died in tragedies, but what we’ve gained is an inspiring symbol, a man-built vehicle that reaches where we cannot, that travels into the black of the vast unknown of our upper atmosphere (which is actually well known, but I’m trying to be poetic).
Without the Space Shuttle we wouldn’t have had the Hubble, which means we wouldn’t have seen this with such clarity (not until years later at least: 
I can’t imagine something more incredible. That’s another galaxy. Those are stars and worlds and… wow. There are other worlds beyond us that may have life. We may not be the only life in the vast expanse of space. Those images were brought to us because the good folks of NASA were able to think of, and build, things that 100 years ago would have scared civilization to death.
But that may just be the little boy in me, the one who remembers watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my Dad; the one who still remembers word-for-word those famous first lines, Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages… I would sit and watch this oddly cheesy, but wonderful show, and think, Someday. Someday they’ll let us up there and we’ll see more of what is beyond us.
Just knowing that in a few short months we’ll be grounding our Shuttle fleet breaks my heart. We’ve got billions to spend on supporting tyrants, killing people, and paying the salaries of 535 Senators and Representatives who represent us (House: $174,00-$223,500; Senate: $174,000-$193,400… average American salary: $26,036, but that’s a different post). We have money to burn when it comes to bailing out ShittyBank.
But when it comes to building something true, and wondrous… Well, our government has to tighten up those purse strings and talk about the deficit (makes us Proles feel like they care about our needs). So, they ground the Space Shuttle. They leave us here on the surface, our necks craned, our chance to be up there taken away, and probably never coming back.
And again, I know people die. But, well, it’s worth it. For this:
Anyway, I thought it appropriate to mention the Shuttle as Discovery makes its way to the launchpad for its final flight.
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February 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
You were doing fine with your essay until you were seized by leftist hysteria. What you need to consider is that “brown people” have not created this planet’s highest technological achievements, and they are not going to represent this planet in deep space. Maybe that is why the white people who built the Space Shuttle have spent so much time “killing brown people.” Hahaha. Only kidding.
As Yeats once said, “What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop, a greater, a more gracious time has gone.”
The demise of the Space Shuttle is like the demise of the sailing ship. Ah, they were beautiful with their sails so full, were they not? But coal and steam were the future. Likewise, the Space Shuttle will be superseded by higher and more efficient technologies, such as the X-37. And of course there are all sorts of private endeavors that show great promise, if not for science, certainly for tourism.
But this stuff about man going where no man has gone before is pretty much for kids. The space-time scale expands enormously once the local system is left behind. Even at the speed of light man would need millions of years to get anywhere. The idea of him leaving a happy, green planet and sailing off into space in search of asteroids to tow home for ore processing is typical of modern day science fiction writers and some utopian scientists, who ought to know better. An intergalactic star ship the size of a whole city is imagined, replete with vast greenhouses where generations of cheeky children frolic while their parents tend the helm. Otherwise, the ship is a mere pellet containing a few good human specimens who sleep and sleep and sleep. Suffice it to say, this is pure bunk. There is nothing but death in deep space. Only extinction awaits the biological organisms that venture there. And even if organic structures could hop from one warm moist spot to the next, starting from one Earth or many, as if life were a disease that planets catch, an unstable thermal gradient in the universe would eventually obliterate them all.
So I think we are left with flitting around the planet and the solar system. That might be entertaining for those who can afford it. And meanwhile, back on Earth, we are stuck in maintenance mode. Either we are going to have to shrink people to half their current size, or we are going to have to get rid of half of them.
February 1, 2011 at 6:18 am
overpopulation certainly is a problem
so do the world a favor and eat a bullet, Max.
February 1, 2011 at 9:11 am
I’m all for private companies investing in space, but NASA is the people’s investment. You and I (Max) do not have the endless wealth to invest in our own space program, but pool our funds with everyone’s and –pow– NASA.
You’re also correct that we don’t know what longterm-longdistance space flight would do (we know that zeroG flight over time destroys musclemass, thanks SkyLab–delivered to space by the Shuttle). But my issue is this: I fear we’ll never know. I wasn’t talking about any of the “Utopian” ideas you mocked, I was lamenting that our government’s drop of the Shuttle is a harbinger of further cuts. Remember that we transitioned form the Apollo to the Shuttle. We’re leaving the Shuttle for… Well, who knows?
One last thing, your racist intro was a decent slight if hand joke (“Whoa I’m being racist… Only kidding). But it’s worth pointing out that the “brown people” to which I refer, gave us the 0. Without 0, physics doesn’t exist. No physics, no modern technology. That’s why they get to come to space. When they invented 0 we were all still scared of the sun, and living in caves.
February 1, 2011 at 9:30 am
I’m nuttier about space than most people (I have Hubble images hanging on my walls) but the shuttle is a shining example of what has gone wrong with space policy.
It was supposed to be a safe, reliable and reusable space truck to deliver payloads. It turned out to be a truck made by Lamborghini with a 1 percent catastrophic failure rate — a little high when your sending people (including civilians) into space.
All its missions could have been performed better and cheaper with conventional unmanned rockets, and advances in computers and robotics have made human pilots unnecessary. (Look where the military’s going with drones.)
One of the shuttle’s prime reasons for being was to build and service the International Space Station. I haven’t seen much science come out of that, either, though it’s a nice motel for billionaires.
Granted, the moon landing was a tough act to follow, and we didn’t (and still don’t) have the technology to go to Mars “before the decade is out.”
But much of the billions that went into the shuttle and space station could have been spent on more and bigger space telescopes and unmanned missions to other planets if science — not public relations — had been the true goal.
February 1, 2011 at 10:56 am
Unmanned rockets do nothing to inspire us, at least to me. And as far as a failure rate, it’s 2:132. We’ve had two happen, and the people getting in the vehicles know the risk–they’re strapping a rocket to their ass and igniting it.
And we have done unmanned missions. And we will put a new telescope into orbit that is far superior to the Hubble.
Yes the Shuttle has been a PR thing, but we need PR sometimes. We need symbols that aren’t referred to as “swoosh.”
Also, research and science out of the ISS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_ISS
February 1, 2011 at 12:32 pm
If you want inspiration, try poetry or painting rather than taxpayer-funded space extravaganzas. This is not the Cold War era anymore, when every (successful) space flight was hailed as a proof of the superiority of capitalism over communism or vice versa.
I think JayBird has the right idea generally. Sending watery blobs of humans into space is unnecessary and wasteful. Machines are the answer. Ultimately, machines will represent the human race when we reach other stars and their planets, since it is fairly obvious no biological organisms can go there. So we might as well get started now by concentrating on unmanned space technology.
But, contra JayBird, I think the Space Shuttle program was a tremendous success. Yes, the shuttles seem clunky now, even scary, but they represented the best technology of their time when they were designed and built. It is better to see these obsolete hulks as transitional devices or bridge technology without which we might not have learned much about reusable space vehicles.
As for the militarization of space, that is nothing new. It might even be a positive, if political scores were settled in space rather than here. (And think of the spectacular fireworks display when all those military space vehicles explode above us and their debris burns up in the atmosphere!) Anyway, the first Portuguese explorers to round Africa and reach India had a little cannon mounted on the bow of their ship. So nothing is new on that count.
February 1, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Had Carl Sagan concluded human space travel was impossible, I might buy it. But your numbers are all off. The entire galaxy has a diameter of 100k light years. I see no reason to go to the other side of the galaxy. It’s probably impossible, anyway. However, there are plenty of solar systems within a few dozen light years. That’s still currently an impossible feat, but five hundred years ago, reaching moon seemed as insurmountable as reaching the stars does now. It’s uncertain what benefits space exploration may eventually bring, but if we hope to reap them we need to keep our investments current.
February 1, 2011 at 7:47 pm
1. I did not give any numbers.
2. I did not say, “human space travel was impossible.”
3. Read more closely.
February 2, 2011 at 6:11 pm
1. “Even at the speed of light man would need millions of years to get anywhere.”
I was responding to both your comments at once. At the speed of light you would need far less than a million years to get anywhere in the galaxy.
2. “it is fairly obvious no biological organisms can go there”
Sounds pretty close to what I was addressing.
3. Done
February 2, 2011 at 10:45 pm
1. I was referring to intergalactic travel, not intragalactic travel. (Let me know if you do not understand the difference.) The nearest galaxy is Andromeda at 2.5 million light years.
2. In context, “biological organisms” refers to human beings, but let me know if find any that can survive the trip to Andromeda.
3. Stop quibbling.
4. Done.
February 3, 2011 at 1:31 am
Ok, yes, intergalactic travel is outrageous – not even our best science fiction writers can make that sound reasonable. But there’s a whole lot between flitting around the solar system and intergalactic travel.
February 1, 2011 at 9:29 pm
I don’t want to rehash other comments here, so I’m just going to respond to your first graph: I do.
But poetry and paintings only inspire us to know art. Art is great, and wonderful. I love it. That said…
The Shuttle, ISS, the Apollo missions, the Gemini and Mercury missions, and even the test pilots like Chuck Yeager, are a separate inspiration from those arts. They are the art and wonder of science and adventure.
We no longer need to round Africa because we’ve done that. We’ve reached the poles. We’ve found “Lost Cities.” But space IS the final frontier. As a species we are wowed by adventure, and the danger therein. We honor and respect that idea. It inspires us.
Without man in the craft, it will never be as awe-inspiring as it should be, nor as inspiring as we deserve.
You speak in definite terms that science nary strays toward before an honest try. You say, “…it is fairly obvious no biological organisms can go there.” You have no idea what the future holds. We may find a way to travel to far off places. We may not. The TRY needs to be there though because…well, hell, we need something wonderful to give us hope.
I don’t know, maybe I’m rambling. All I know is that I want to be alive when man walks on another planet’s surface, I want to watch as a craft speeds away from this planet that does not want to let go. I want to see these things, because it’ll be beautiful.
I’ll gladly see some of my taxes go to something beautiful, something — as one man one said — for all mankind.
February 2, 2011 at 12:45 am
I do not think you are rambling. You are just trying to reconcile your romanticism with science. You are just thinking out loud.
I am not here to disabuse you of your dreams, and I am certainly not here to argue the aesthetics of space travel. What I meant to imply about art being inspirational is that it has the ability to lift man’s spirit. Religion serves the same purpose. And if your faith in science and technology can do that for you, fine.
But, getting back down to Earth, you must realize that whatever wondrous sights and sounds come back to you from deep space will be relayed technologically. It is doubtful you will have some astronaut taking you on a walking tour of the latest planet we have discovered. Rather, you will be looking through the eye of a very expensive camera controled by a very sophisticated computer. You will be experiencing the New World, so to speak, not as a man but as a machine. I am not so sure if that will be a spiritual experience.
Two concepts underpin my assumptions about man and space travel. The first is the speed of light, and I must say that I greatly dislike the idea that it cannot be exceeded. There is something vaguely medieval about the theory, but I accept it for the time being, mainly because I am in no position to dispute it. I remember some scientist saying that, when you consider the distances involved in the universe and the light speed limit, it is as if God deliberately designed things so no one could meet anyone else.
The second concept that drives me to the conclusion man is never going to travel too far from home is the thermal band in which biological organisms exist. Out there in deep space, temperatures range from two or three degrees Kelvin to almost infinite degrees Kelvin. Yet we, and most organic life forms we know of, can only live within a very narrow temperature range. The idea of finding a happy place where temperatures are to our liking is very remote. And that goes without considering radiation levels, gravitational forces, and a host of other necessary environmental ingredients that we need.
Unless there is a very drastic change in our current scientific understanding of physics and the universe, I rather doubt we are going anywhere too far away. We will have to send machines in our place and derive our dreams and inspiration from what they tell us.
February 2, 2011 at 1:49 am
Sweet zombie Jesus. Why don’t you always comment with such thought and care? That was truly a great comment to read.
Now, of course I’ll experience new worlds through a machine. I’m a romantic, but I’m not insane. I’d just like it more if some guy was in frame (Apollo 11-style). To me that is very spiritual inasmuch as it’s very uplifting. When I think of so many people tuned in as Armstrong sauntered down the ladder… wow. What a great shared experience for a generation. I’d like to have one similar, one that doesn’t involve zealotry and towers.
The temperature/radiation bit about life is extremely interesting because we’ve found life (bacteria) in boiling water, and we now know that arsenic can be a component of DNA. Those two bits will eventually open up new theories, and new hopes of finding life. However, we’ll never physically visit those worlds because of the whole “death” thing. So I’ll concede that space will be a place for machines for sometime, particularly long journey’s. But I hope we can find our way back up there, and that we can push our limits as intellectual beings. Because remember, mathematically speaking, we shouldn’t exist.
So, yeah, I’m a romantic about these things. I still lose myself in the stars on clear nights, and I probably am a bit of a dreamer. It’s because I want to know what’s out there. And I guess manned space flight will always hit me in the gut, in that place where science and the joy/adventure of life meet.
To be honest, in reading your comment, I think you’re with me at least part of the way. I’m betting you’d gladly be glued to the TV if we were about to set foot on Mars, for instance.
February 2, 2011 at 7:24 pm
I find your philosophy (if I understand it correctly) here to be interesting – you’re an atheist and clearly someone who is scientifically inclined. You see Life (the chemical process, not the abstract noun) for what it is – self replicating chemistry, not imbued with any metaphysical substance or holiness.
And yet, you’re not satisfied to have a machine made by humans do the exploring – you want to see LIFE there, you want to see PEOPLE there, because event though you know they are just carbon and water, you choose to allow them to have more meaning to you than that, and knowing what they are physically and not believing in their metaphysical existence doesn’t hinder your appreciation for them.
I’m not an atheist myself, and for a long time I wondered how atheists kept a sense of wonder and meaning. “The Varieties of Scientific Experience” by Carl Sagan answered that for me. If you haven’t read it, you should – I think it would complement very well how you think about the universe.
February 2, 2011 at 7:54 pm
I’ve actually just bought a few Carl Sagan books recently. But thanks for the suggestion.
It’s always weird to me that people think atheists are without appreciation for life (Hitler is often lumped in with us, as is Stalin, as if all atheists are evil).
For me, my atheism defines why I find life so important: It’s all we’ve got, and all we can have. That’s what makes it so special.
February 3, 2011 at 1:34 am
Yeah, that’s largely Sagan’s point in the book – that the universe is in fact more awe-inspiring to a scientist than to the religious person, because it is grander and more complicated than a theologian can imagine; and that Life is better appreciated from a scientific perspective because the objective truth about life, especially when observed on a cosmic scale, is more impressive than any imaginary imbued holiness.
I apologize for that somehow being all one sentence.
February 1, 2011 at 10:41 am
Carl Sagan made a point in his book “The Blue Dot” (I think that was the book): It appeared to him that the lunar missions of the late 60′s and 1970′s were disguised defense spending, that their purpose was to test and perfect the technology for our ICBM’s. Once that was a achieved, the program was dropped.
I have long suspected that the Shuttle program too is nothing more than disguised defense spending with some glamor up front – school teachers and scientific experiments, and Hubble sued to justify its real purpose – eyes in the sky, space weaponry … without the Pentagon, there’d be no Shuttle program, no matter the benefits.
You might say that it’s fair, a good tradeoff. Fine. If that’s the case, can we at least talk about it a bit?
February 1, 2011 at 11:04 am
Space weaponry? Really? That’s your argument against manned space flight.
But sure, if it takes defense money, I’m okay with that. Notice I said defense, and not offense. We’ve been doing a lot of offense spending the last 30 or so years, time to cut back on that.
February 1, 2011 at 12:11 pm
I am merely saying that the reason we had a shuttle program at all was as cover for military programs. Does it hurt you to know that?
February 1, 2011 at 6:01 pm
But by the same token, the satellites made possible by the space program made the Cold War much safer – by being fairly certain we could notice a soviet missile launch, panicky preemption was much less likely. Moreover, being able to monitor silos and facilities has made the implementation of the SALT treaties possible.
Lastly, it has made submarines a much more effective deterrent than land based ICBMs. This also makes an erroneous massive retaliation less likely because submarines can be expected to still be secure hours or days after the initial launch of an enemy missile, and so are not ‘use it or lose it’ assets. So the military purpose of the space program has in fact made things down here much safer. Sagan’s mortal fear of nuclear holocaust I think would lead him to appreciate these facts (I think he in fact wrote about them, but I could be remembering wrong).
February 1, 2011 at 9:16 pm
I find your comments very boring.
February 3, 2011 at 8:12 am
Funny, I find American journalists very boring. You are so incurious, so housebroken, as to be useless.
February 3, 2011 at 4:59 pm
“useless”
What useful thing have you ever done?
February 3, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Matt Damon.
February 5, 2011 at 12:41 am
How about inner space for a little romanticizing and spiritual uplift?
Try reading, “Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic lake” (Reuters, link below).
Hey, this could be like lost-worlds stuff. You know, like Journey to the Center of the Earth?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-russia-antarctica-lake-idINTRE7135MB20110204?pageNumber=1