The kids and I took a few minutes out during the bedtime ritual the other night to gaze up and watch the Space Shuttle Discovery’s last visible flyover of our area. It was followed about two minutes (and about 500 miles!) later by the ISS. This is the second time that Chloe and Gabriel saw the ISS – the first time was the night of their 4th birthday party. They seemed to be a bit more interested tonight – probably because they understand a little bit about planets and space (thanks to Chloe’s new favorite TV show called “Bubble Guppies”). After the flyover we spent about 30 minutes looking at photos of the shuttle and space station. Their excitement and amazement when I told them there were astronauts who were sleeping and eating and working up there was so obvious and they wanted to know more.
The next afternoon I watched STS-133 come to an end as Discovery landed safely at Kennedy Space Center for the last time.
Space Shuttle Discovery touches down for the last time on March 9, 2011
The moment was bittersweet for me because it seemed just as my children were old enough to show an interest in manned space exploration we in the US are on the verge of cutting our manned programs to a minimum due to a lack of clear direction.
I am not one of those people who ask “why are we spending billions on space exploration when we have so many problems here in our own country?” but I can understand why some have that opinion – they think that manned space exploration has no tangible benefit to our lives here on Earth. They don’t realize that without the past programs they wouldn’t have their GPS, home water filters, laptop and cell phone batteries and a lot of other things that we now take for granted. If space exploration doesn’t get the kind of attention is deserves, I think a lot of kids who would have been motivated to study science won’t take it up and that’s only going to push our country further back in the pack of nations who do have active space programs.
NASA will continue to make advances and there is a lot of potential in the private companies who are taking up the challenges of getting people and cargo into orbit and eventually to the Moon but it’s very sad to me that we don’t have a clear path for the continuation of manned space exploration.
