The Spirit of the Spacesuit
With the final space shuttle mission scheduled to end this morning when Atlantis glides to earth, and with only uncertainty to follow for NASA’s manned spaceflight program, this may seem like the moment to weep for the lost promise of the space age.
It is not. I have shed tears of wonder and awe at the scale and achievement of NASA’s manned spaceflight program, but not for its inexorable end. The close of this phase of space exploration is long overdue. And what appears to be an epic conclusion is, like much of NASA’s history, an elegant mirage.
In 2005 and 2006, I regularly took a long, slow bus ride from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.,… Seguir leyendo »