In his weekly column at Vice, Warren Ellis “celebrates” the end of the Space Shuttle era:
…and here, dearly beloved, down here in the deep valley of expectations – over whose sides The Future slides like a slab-avalanche of flaming diarrhoea – is where we sit and look up overhead to see the grand dame of the Promised World Of Tomorrow being toured around like an incontinent dowager getting a last viewing from the relatives before being locked away in the old people’s home to drown in her own piss. And not one of us, dearly beloved, not one of us points up at that thing, that Space Shuttle, and calls it out for what it really is: NASA’s crucifix pendant.
Five cosmonauts died in the Russian space programme. A programme of largely unsteerable launch vehicles made to much the same standard as tractors and fuelled with terrifying muck that you’d think was too good to spray on scorpions. The American Space Shuttle alone killed 14. That’s what everyone’s been applauding, by the way – a flying death box that killed 14 people, seven of whom died for the noble and future-facing cause of a good media window.
This leaking thing, paraded across America to joy and applause from a people who don’t even see the lie to them that it represents, will have no eventual museum information board explaining that the Shuttle was the first and only crewed American space vehicle to have no launch escape system. That a limited bailout system was added only after Challenger exploded. There will be no guides reciting the story of how Shuttle killed human spaceflight in America. Also, of course, there will be no large plaque proclaiming that This Isn’t The Real Story.
The Shuttle was sold on the lie that it was the Future, when it was no such thing and never intended for that purpose. It was a domestic political tool for the most part. But it’s also a great object lesson.
