Sailing to the stars. Only slowly.

[desperance]

Just a quick 'bon voyage' to Discovery. My first real memory of any space programme is the moon landings, which just felt like an absolutely right and proper thing to be happening, and next stop Mars; and it seems like we've been going backwards ever since. Be nice to think that reversal had stopped, and we were starting to go forward again. Not that the shuttle has ever been a substitute for real rockets and real exploration beyond Earth orbit (me, I'm just a bug-eyed spaceboy at heart; my cousin is a big-shot astronomer - Roger Griffin, look him up - and when I was a kid he sent me a commemorative silver dollar from the States, struck with an eagle landing on the moon with an olive branch in its beak, which I still carry thirty-five years later), but at least it's better than nothing.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The shuttle is not "better than nothing" -- it's a vile turkey, a kluge of a space transportation system that leeches money from more effective projects while convincing the ignorant that it's the only way to do it.

The cost of a single shuttle launch could put a hundred astronauts into orbit if used to buy Soyuz-TM launches. It could put five times the cargo into orbit if used to buy Ariane-5ECMA payloads. And as a system, the shuttle has killed more astronauts than every other manned space launch system put together.

(Sorry, you just pushed one of my buttons ... yes, I'm a bug-eyed spaceboy at heart, too, but if I had a dart-board it'd be a toss-up between whether the photograph pasted over the bullseye would be Tony Blair or the space shuttle.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey - don't apologise for putting me straight. See, I didn't know that stuff (except about the deaths, obviously), and am always willing to learn. I like pushing buttons, it generates unpredictable feedback.

Tho' - being a bug-eyed spaceboy - I am still romantically vulnerable to TV shots of big white things blasting into orbit, and I can't remember the last time I saw a Soyuz take-off, and the only times I've ever seen an Ariane are those times they exploded.

So you'll 'scuse me if my soul still sings a bit, and I wish Discovery well, while I'm happy to adopt what you say into my whole we-should-be-doing-better-than-this position.

Oh, and personally I'd have Bill Gates on my dartboard. But that's not for the welfare of the world, particularly, it's just personal loathing of him and all his works...