42 years ago today, Neil Armstrong made man's first step on the moon. Now, with today's landing of STS-135, the final Shuttle mission, I worry this is the end of America's leadership in space.
From nasa.com:
"Since STS-1 launched on April 12, 1981, 355 individuals from 16 countries flew 852 times aboard the shuttle. The five shuttles traveled more than 542 million miles and hosted more than 2,000 experiments in the fields of Earth, astronomy, biological and materials sciences. The shuttles docked with two space stations, the Russian Mir and the International Space Station. Shuttles deployed 180 payloads, including satellites, returned 52 from space and retrieved, repaired and redeployed seven spacecraft. STS-135 was the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, which spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles."
As reported in today's Wall Street Journal, we've outsourced our future space travel to the Russians:
"NASA officials have repeatedly emphasized in recent months that the U.S. will continue venturing into the cosmos. "There's a lot of emotion today," said Mr. Ferguson, moments after bringing Atlantis to a stop on the runway. "But one thing is indisputable. America is not going to stop exploring.
"NASA plans to replace its shuttle fleet with a commercial space-taxi service developed and operated by the private sector, but it won't be ready before 2016 at the earliest, experts said.
"In the interim, the U.S. and other nations will have to rely on the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos to ferry crews to and from the space station aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. So far, NASA has purchased 46 seats for astronauts on missions scheduled through 2016."
Great, we'll be flying coach with Russians at the helm. Somewhere, Khrushchev is smiling.
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