The final flight of the iconic Space Shuttle signals more than the end of the world's most advanced spacecraft. Due to the Obama Administration's decision to kill the planned successor to the STS, it marks the complete end of America's ability to put men in space. Stunningly, the United States' only means to place astronauts in orbit is by renting a seat--at $51 million per trip-- on Russian craft. Every asset in orbit--including the Space Station--that requires human attention is now under the complete control of Moscow. The move is totally unnecessary. Most experts believe the Shuttles still have years of use left in them. It's like throwing a car away after logging only 30,000 miles on the odometer.
To be clear, this not a mere interlude between the end of one manned program and the start of another. Obama's elimination of funding for any follow-up to the shuttle program means that there is no plan for American manned spaceships for the foreseeable future.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong (the first man on the moon, who rarely makes public comments) Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan recently wrote that "NASA's human spaceflight program is in substantial disarray with no clear-cut mission in the offing. We will have no rockets to carry humans...for an indeterminate number of years."
Russia's only viable rival for manned space flight is not the US--it is China. While the White House has surrendered the Final Frontier to the Kremlin, Bejing has major plans to construct its own space station and to send men to the moon, where it will be able to claim the unlimited riches to be found in abundance there, including Helium 3, a potential and affordable power source that may be the major source of future energy. American plans to build on past successes to return to the moon and stake claim to its resources are now officially dead--a historical mistake that may someday be compared to the Viking retreat from North America, leaving the New World to be claimed by successors England and Spain.
The Obama administration won't accept responsibility for the consequences for its own decision. Questions about its destruction of America's greatest scientific and engineering legacy, and the key to its future, are met with vague responses about potential programs in the years after even a potential second Obama administration is over, and hopes that somehow the private sector can develop manned spaceflight capabilities. Indeed, the private sector is developing capabilities in this area, but without any human program goals by NASA, and without a definite budget commitment, there is no assurance and very little possibility that much significant use will be made of those capabilities. Ironically, the very tool America needed to access the Lunar surface, the Ares rocket, has passed preliminary tests, along with the design of the crew capsule. The key part of the work has been done and paid for; Obama has just decided to throw it in the waste bin of history.
Major endeavors cannot be turned on and off . The huge loss of personnel that is now underway will mean that the decades of experience and knowledge will be lost forever, a true "brain drain" that will be difficult to replace. When the Apollo program ended, experts at least had the Shuttle program to look forward to; however, even that more benign gap in our manned spaceflight capability resulted in a loss of expertise that took a decade to recover from.
At a time when jobs, particularly skilled jobs, are fleeing the nation in the midst of the Obama depression, the decision to kill the American manned space program is incomprehensible. Almost 7,000 skilled positions have been lost. Estimates place the total number of skilled and related positions that will be eliminated at 27,000--at time when the unemployment rate has increased to 9.2%, and amidst fears that the best and brightest scientific minds are no longer being attracted to the USA.
Serious issues, not just related to space, must be asked about Obama's decision. This is not a budget saving move; other NASA programs, particularly those involving international cooperation, will actually receive increased funds. Manned spaceflight is the area where the future well being of the nation is most affected. But that future lays outside of the lifespan of the current administration, marking this move one of the most selfish in presidential history. It is also one of the most important elements in American prestige--an area that the current White House seems to care little and know less about.
