Such a Timeless Flight: the Retirement of the Space Shuttle

It’s enforced awe, engineered wonder. Too big to bore – NASA’s launch vehicles and orbiters are massive creations that starkly contrast with both the landscape and outer space in their bold WHITE and BLACK liveries (with USA, UNITED STATES and American flags on every separating part, branded like a Henleys T-shirt). Seen stood on end, as before launching, they are as arresting as seeing an ocean liner placed likewise vertically – does it look longer/taller, will it topple? They give you vertigo from the ground; they give you vertigo from the Wikimedia Commons image. They are paused chaos. When they are launched the most befuddling thing is how calculated, planned, anticipated and allowed for that chaos is as it rises through the air.

Building something so impossibly big, so complicated, or so advanced technologically guarantees the reaction. It had (had!) to be done, or at least if it was going to be done it had to be that big, complex and technical. Knowing that, and reconciling this necessity with machinery and vital statistics so gargantuan and over the top (the Saturn V rocket had already used and abandoned two thirds of its St Paul’s Cathedral height within nine minutes of lifting off) boggles the layperson’s mind – most people’s minds. 17,000 mph, what does that look like?

For those watching America, the Space Shuttle is space travel. The Space Shuttle was space travel - that situation is not planned to last past this June. The oldest shuttle in service, Discovery, is currently on its last mission, its 39^th since 1984. As the BBC pointed out, that’s a cumulative career distance of 143 million miles, ‘further than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.’ More food for thought comes from CNN: ‘Prior to Thursday's launch, Discovery had spent 352 days in orbit, circling the Earth 5,628 times. It has also carried 246 crew members, more than any space vehicle in history.’

I was always more of a rocket man, firstly because of the influence of Elton John when I was a lot younger, and secondly because size matters and those Saturn V rockets are impressive. Still, the Space Shuttle was modern and confident; it had a flight deck. For all the rocket’s size and brashness, the habitable Command Module atop the Saturn V was apologetic (Apollogetic?). It looked about as spacious as the submersibles exploring the Titanic in the Cameron movie, all homo-social leaning over each other and space cohabitation (also…Apollo 13 is surely Titanic inverted; ‘90s cinema retold a great loss to the depths and a great rescue from the heights).

The current orbiter mission, STS-133, delivers a module and logistics carrier to the International Space Station. For Star Wars fans, Discovery took R2 along for this mission. ‘Robonaut 2’ is now the first dexterous humanoid robot in space. More importantly, it’s tweeting. Houston, we’re getting too cutesy here.

Foam insulation broke off of the external fuel tank and struck Discovery’s underside during the ascent on Thursday. NASA has said that this poses no threat; it’s unavoidable and a limited risk, though it always merits attention since the loss of Columbia in 2003. Thursday’s launch was also the sixth attempt. A mix of leaks, an electrical fault and weather scrubbed the others. This is not the norm, though it’s hardly unprecedented; it took Endeavour the same number of launch attempts in 2009 and Columbia needed seven in 1986 and 1995.

Discovery is planned to land at the Kennedy Space Centre in a week. The orbiter may then replace the Enterprise (the Space Shuttle prototype, named after William Shatner’s place of work) as the display at the Smithsonian's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Centre. Wherever they all end up, the Space Shuttle orbiters will be having a few of those exciting piggyback flights on modified 747s this year. The last planned launches for Endeavour and Atlantis are April and June respectively.

There’s something rather different about the interim solution of having US astronauts use Russian Soyuz rockets until the replacement for the Space Shuttle arrives. Although Russian rockets have taken American astronauts into space for years, the reliance on Russia while America has no alternative vehicle bothers some. The Cold War Space Race (facile cash splashing in the context of mutual assured destruction?) is another world. Having private companies responsible for building America’s next space vehicle will be pretty different too.

Well, folks, the next bit of technology that made you go ‘oooo’ is headed for the museums and the past tense in encyclopaedias. It feels like we’re reaching an incredible speed in some ways. I don’t know if it’s me getting older or the retirement age for gadgets and governments getting younger. It’s probably both.