The Space Shuttles are making their last flights and will soon be safely stuffed and mounted for all to see in museums. Many people look back at them with disappointment. They turned out to be a good bit more expensive, unsafe, and difficult to use than advertised. Most of the experts agree that America’s future in manned spaceflight, if and when there is such a future, will not utilize the airplane-like “space truck” design of the Shuttle. Although the Orion successor program was recently halted, it boldly went back to past designs, i.e. Apollo-like capsules on top of tall rockets. The Russians also experimented with something like the Shuttle, but took a pass and stuck with their old-fashioned Soyuz capsule (which is now the only way to get a human being into space and back).
But I wonder if some of the disdain for the Shuttle is over-reaction. Yes, the Shuttle was not designed for deep spaceflight, it couldn’t go to the moon or to an asteroid, nor could it form the keystone for an eventual Mars mission. But it was a pretty useful tool when it worked; it allowed Americans to place and repair important satellites (including the Hubble telescope), was a mobile space science lab, and made a pretty good delivery and assembly vehicle for the International Space Station. Had it worked better it may well have had important military applications, such as inspecting suspicious space vehicles sent up by not-so-friendly humans. We are probably going to miss it.
So let’s pretend that the USA was still flush with cash, and not tipping on the edge of insolvency. Let’s pretend that we are with NASA, to which Congress has given a blank check » continue reading …
The deliverance is called Nirvana, and is not explained or described other than that the cycle of birth, death and karma are ended permanently once Nirvana is reached.