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STS-107

Ken Ross

In the ICPUG postings Mr Grainger has found various items to amuse us about NASA, but yesterday amusement was swept away by tragedy.

We turned the telly on last night to find a NASA chap delivering news about the shuttle explosion - whilst he was talking I could hear the sound of NASA's opponents sharpening knives. This'll be the effective end of manned space travel.

Back in the 70s, when I used to get Analog, (the American SF mag), as soon as it arrived in the country, I used to read of Senator Proxmire's opposition to any funding to NASA. For a while in the 70s his name was used as an expression for budget cuts ending things.

The original concept for the shuttle was a far grander affair, involving an air launched orbiter that even featured on a PG tips tea card. Thanks to Proxmire and his ilk NASA ended up sticking two firework rockets and an external fuel tank onto what they got left with.

The fact that the fledgling International Space Station has to be kept being pushed back up into orbit is due to the the fact that the shuttle can only get up into a low Earth orbit. There are only 3 shuttles left now and the Shuttles were a key part of building the ISS. Even rough sums on the back of an envelope points towards it's demise.

So light a candle in memory of the 7 astronauts who died. Look to the future as a new version of the dark ages beckons, as science suffers its funding whittled away by the Neo-Luddites. Mankind's greatest adventure is now going to fizzle out unless a miracle happens.

I don't know where Senator Proxmire is now, but those of us with long memories know that he was one of the underlying causes of the way things turned out.

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