Space Shuttle

This is the end of an era. The final space shuttle launch takes place in less than a week, when Atlantis roars from the pad at Cape Canaveral, and I for one will watch this final flight with mixed emotions.

After more than 30 years and 135 missions, NASA is under presidential direction to retire the remaining shuttle fleet due to high operational costs and to free up revenue for other projects. Private enterprise will have to continue the dream past the space station’s orbit and focus on getting astronauts to asteroids and the outer planets in the coming decades.

Has the shuttle program been a success? Was it worth the fiscal cost and the loss of 14 lives in two separate accidents? History will be the judge, I guess, but it’s sad for this 60-something space nut to look back at the space program and think that since 1972, no human being has been any further than 600 kilometres from planet Earth.

Continue reading "Planet earth is blue and the space shuttle is through" »

I have a theory that about 90 per cent of the viewer interest in motor sport of any kind is the potential to watch serious crashes.

Just look at what they show from the “highlights” of the Daytona series on Sports Tonight – it’s 40 cars doing quadruple flips over each other at 200 kilometres with the commentator yelling “whoa mamma!”

As space shuttle Endeavour waits on the Florida tarmac like so many QANTAS “express” flights, any interest we maintain in the NASA space program has similarly boiled down to the initial take-off explosion and whether or not the shuttle will blow-up before it touches back home. This is a shame because space exploration is an amazing and important human achievement.

Continue reading "Let’s go to Mars, I’ll explain on the way" »