The End of the Line

A year or so after I first found the NASA website, I often go back and search for when the next viewing of the Space Shuttle will be possible. Yes, that's right, you can actually see the orbiting Shuttle fly overhead on clear nights when it's circling the earth 250 miles up. You certainly can't see any detail from that distance, but for a short two or three minutes it becomes the brightest spot in the sky. Silent, and with no blinking lights, it's easily distinguished from stars and airplane lights. What you're actually seeing is sunlight reflected off of it's bright white surface. That's why the viewing opportunities are always just before dawn, or just after sunset.

Saturday night, the clouds cleared just in time for a real nice viewing. First, the International Space Station zipped by, looking much the same as the Shuttle light, and then 14 minutes later the Shuttle came by on the same trajectory. On that particular orbit, the Shuttle was literally chasing the Space Station down in preparation for docking. What we saw, my wife and I, was the very last Shuttle mission, heading to it's usual destination for the very last time. Special and kind of sad.

The Shuttle has been expensive and even deadly over it's three decades of service. But it's also been a magnificent scientific tool and an impressive symbol of American ingenuity and capability. Sadly, there is no immediate replacement for it's unique abilities to ferry human beings to and from space.

There are many who argue that we can accomplish a whole lot without the need to have a human physical presence with it. It's cheaper by far, and of course safer. In other words, unmanned space exploration. Perhaps that is the foreseeable future for our programs. But still, something is lost without direct human interface. The most powerful computers in the world cannot relate the emotional aspect of space flight. And for us on the ground, what excitement is there in a bright light in the sky on a starry night, if you can't look up and fascinate on the fact that there are people inside looking back at you?