Atlantis and Beyond

Tonight I’d like to muse on the future a bit. If one turns on the news, it is easy to see why I wonder if I made a mistake bringing two adorable children into this world. With all of the negative things we face, sometimes it is hard to remember that we live in a very special time indeed. Today however we had a brilliant reminder of just that. NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS 135) blasted off from launch pad 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Inside were the shuttle’s crew, 4 extraordinary people who carried with them the hopes and dreams of so many. Also aboard were supplies and provisions for the astronauts living on the International Space Station. But more important perhaps was the intangible. The ability to look up when one is having a bad day and know that despite all the problems we encounter, (and many we create!) here on Earth, we are still capable of great things. We are living in space. Go back a hundred years or so and most people would have thought that impossible. And yet, it orbits. The very proof of what we can do when we put our minds to achieving a common dream, irrefutable in the night sky.

Ah, you say, that dream is dying. Funds are miniscule, public interest is flagging, and our glorious shuttles are retiring. What’s left? Plenty my friends. Plenty. A future where spaceflight is as ubiquitous as travel by aircraft today. A future where we harvest asteroids for resources and use those resources to fuel our exploration and colonization of other worlds. A future filled with a glorious fusion of science, discovery and ingenuity. It is closer than you think. Even now, as many heavy hearts bid a fond farewell to our beloved shuttles, private companies turn their eyes to new and innovative ways of getting us into space cheaper and safer than ever before. To be sure, there will be a gap in coverage. But what comes rushing in to fill that gap will be worth the wait. And it may not be so large a gap as we initially feared. Space X has already tested their Dragon Spacecraft successfully on both orbit insertion and reentry. And SpaceX isn’t stopping there, with plans for manned spaceflight and a visit to the ISS by the end of the year.

So what’s NASA going to do now? Well, science of course! From the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to the Mars Science Laboratory, from exoplanets to dark matter, there are plenty of questions left unanswered, and I hereby charge NASA with doing so. Good luck kiddo. I for one am still cheering for you.

Atlantis my dearest, thank you so much for STS 132 (which I had the priveledge of witnessing the launch of), for Hubble, for everything. Safe journey old friend.

See you later Space Cowboy…