SHUTTLING OFF

Of course, the “piggy back” fly-pasts were impressive, invoking the image of those very similar test flights with dear old “Enterprise” in its own Jumbo Jet Combo back in the 70s, and I’m sure that the exhibits at each of the three - or is it four? - destination museums will be suitably impressive and awe-inspiring, but there was something quite sad about the transportation to their final resting places of the remains of the once rather glorious fleet of Space Shuttle Orbiters.

The Space Shuttle Discovery’s last flight, and the similar one made by Enterprise to New York a few days later, really felt like they marked the very end of an era, or at least, the beginning of the end of an era, as the remaining shuttles have yet to be transported.

After its 39 missions in space, a short hop on the back of a jumbo jet to take it to its final resting place at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. was never really going to be quite as impressive or spectacular as any of its previous flights, of course, but still the crowds came out to see what was, in the end, at least in part the final act of a programme which, whilst it might not exactly have “thrilled” the majority of us, was part of life for over thirty years.

It was also, I suppose, likely to have been one of those “last chance to see” moments in life as, seeing as there are a limited number of Orbiters and a finite number of places to which they are likely to be taken, it’s fairly unlikely that anyone will get that many chances in life to see one of them actually in the air, albeit hitching a ride atop another aircraft and not travelling under their own steam.

Well, not unless a bloody great asteroid turns up on a collision course and a maverick group of Space Jockeys are needed to blow the thing to kingdom come and one of the retired shuttles is the only thing available, and, I suspect that’s a fairly unlikely scenario.

Well, getting the shuttle out of mothballs and making it airworthy again, that is. Give or take a decade and I’m not sure anyone will have the knowledge and experience to actually manage that. 

However, I’m not quite as convinced about the unlikelihood of the asteroid...

It used to be all so different. The shuttle program(me) once represented the great hope for cheap, efficient reusable space travel in the days when we all thought we’d grow up to see hover-cars and personal jet packs and clothes made out of tin foil.

I wonder what happened to all of those dreams?

When I was younger, I seem to remember (although I am willing to be persuaded that this is an instance of my increasing susceptibility to “false memory syndrome”) that the Space Shuttle “Enterprise” did indeed once do, at the very least, a “fly-past” of the Manchester area on one of those Jumbo Jets during the years it was being tested. It may very well have even touched down at Manchester Airport, but I’m less sure of my “facts” about that.

In some ways they were always slightly disappointing from a certain point of view. After all, didn’t evil  zillionaire Hugo Drax build his own fleet of space shuttles to assist him in his plans for world domination in 1979’s “Moonraker”...? Where’s a bit of private enterprise when you need it, eh? Obviously, the whole “wiping out most of the world’s population” part of the plan might meet with a certain amount of customer resistance, but somebody building a private shuttle fleet does have its plus points. In fact, just to show that I’m not as averse to appreciating the march of capitalism and the power of market forces as some might have you believe, I think that the shuttles he built in the “private sector” were far better than the ones which NASA were building with public funding. Drax’s did, at least have working engines which made the whole opening scene a possibility, otherwise that entire James Bond film would have to be dismissed as a lot of old tosh...!

Oh, right... I see where you’re coming from now...

Still, back in the real world, I’ve written at some considerable length about the “Space Shuttle Program” before, of course, so I’m not planning (you might be surprised to hear...) to go over any more of that well-trodden old ground today. I merely wanted to take a moment to mark the perhaps final passing into history of one of the greatest engineering and scientific projects of the age.

As a post-script, the link below will take you, if you are so inclined, to an article I found online about the various final resting places of all of the surviving shuttles, which I hope that you will appreciate, and it may very well persuade you to take a trip to go and see one or more of them some day.

I know that I would like to...

Enjoy!

http://www.collectspace.com/shuttles/