Space Nut - 25 Years Later
I stayed home in the early morning, called in late to work. I wanted to see the Challenger launch. I was still watching every space launch available. I was really torn, I thought it was super cool that a "civilian" was on the flight, but I was unsure that was such a good idea. That nagging doubt was realized in the most catastrophic way.
The Challenger explosion signaled the end of the shuttle program in many ways. The politicians and NASA managers lost confidence in the shuttles. They are what they are. They are fragile, but they work well if treated with care.
Now, we are without manned space capability. Our next great leap backwards is on life support amidst fresh budget cuts and destroying deficits. It doesn't matter much, we have lost the human knowledge of the Saturn launch vehicles, all we have is the blueprints. Anything we do will basically be from scratch. It looks more and more like we will be doing nothing.
The disaster of 25 years ago is writ much larger today. A failure of political will. A failure of information about what Apollo actually gave us. The failure of a dream, the most fatal of all failures. We have lost our vision of the future, all we have is finding a way to muddle through today. Not the change I was hoping for.
The Challenger explosion signaled the end of the shuttle program in many ways. The politicians and NASA managers lost confidence in the shuttles. They are what they are. They are fragile, but they work well if treated with care.
Now, we are without manned space capability. Our next great leap backwards is on life support amidst fresh budget cuts and destroying deficits. It doesn't matter much, we have lost the human knowledge of the Saturn launch vehicles, all we have is the blueprints. Anything we do will basically be from scratch. It looks more and more like we will be doing nothing.
The disaster of 25 years ago is writ much larger today. A failure of political will. A failure of information about what Apollo actually gave us. The failure of a dream, the most fatal of all failures. We have lost our vision of the future, all we have is finding a way to muddle through today. Not the change I was hoping for.