Discovery’s final flight

I found out only this morning that the space shuttle Discovery would be making its final “flight” today, strapped to the back of its 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for delivery to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. I quickly tuned in the NASA channels on my FTA satellite and soon I saw the shuttle appear on the horizon.

Then something unexpected happened. Watching the shuttle and its carrier pass low over Dulles gave me chills. I did not expect to be so moved by this aging spaceship taking its victory lap, but I was. Suddenly I was a 12 year old kid again, cheering as the very first shuttle, Columbia, made its maiden flight. The thought occurred to me, am I watching the end of manned spaceflight?

Of course the answer is no as SpaceX, the commercial space company, will be launching its first rocket to the ISS in a few weeks. SpaceX will be a return to tried-and-true technology, disposable rockets, which is certainly more prudent than a reusable space plane and certainly far less expensive.

There is something compelling about a plane-shaped spacecraft, though. It’s the fantasy that the shuttle a big bus to orbit that anyone can ride. So what if the shuttle never lived up to its hype? The plane-shaped shuttle gave the rest of us hope that one day we, too, could go to space.

NASA will continue to evolve, and our space ambitions will evolve as well. That’s the right thing to do, because there is still so much to learn about spaceflight. I hope that Discovery’s sad retirement flight will remind us that we’re not done with space exploration.