So the space shuttle Discovery has flown its last mission; it’s been towed over the nation’s capital like a bruised Chevy after a demolition derby before being deposited at the Udvar-Hazy air and space museum in northern Virginia.
Other space junkers — Atlantis and Endeavour — are being retired like Brett Favre in a pair of Crocs, too, bringing to end an underwhelming three decades of fruitless and tragic exploration of low-earth orbiting patterns.
Let’s face it: Once we beat the Russians to the moon, the national rocket grew limper than Liberace at a speculum convention. NASA has been dining out on a single 1969 hit longer than Zager and Evans.
The good news is that amateur hour is now over and the private space race has begun. Where two Cold War superpowers failed, let a thousand business plans bloom!
April 18, 2012
Reason.tv: The Space Shuttle Era is Over (Thank God!)
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let a thousand business plans bloom!
Well, yeah. Still ..
Shuttle was a compromise, an expensive space truck that justified a space station that justified the space truck. And those useless wings! Still ..
She was a sight to see, all thunder and lighting and elephantine grace coming home with the glide angle of a thrown brick.
They’ll never fly anything that big, that complicated, that magnificent, again.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — April 18, 2012 @ 11:50