EDITORIAL: Shuttle end means it's time for America to define our new space goals

on June 09, 2011 at 11:14 AM, updated June 09, 2011 at 11:20 AM

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama _ And now there's just one.

The final space shuttle flight is set for July 8, after which the Russian space agency will be America's sole means to travel into space.

As the U.S. bids farewell to a reliable space vehicle, it will be up to NASA and the broader science community to lobby Congress for an aggressive space policy - one that will invigorate America to stand behind it.

President Obama has yet to be that cheerleader. He's got other pressing challenges. Given the past few years of economic struggles, space advocates could see America's wanderlust for cosmic adventure come to an end - especially with a gap in U.S. space flights until a next generation heavy-lift rocket is designed.

But for now, it is right to celebrate the shuttle's 30-year history. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and a who's-who gathering of space experts - including many from Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center - met in Atlanta this week for a retrospective of the shuttle era.

NASA's five orbiters flew more than 130 times, carrying more than 360 people into space and traveling over 500 million miles.

Throughout that time, two orbiters were lost along with their respective seven-member crews - the 1986 Challenger explosion shortly after launch and Columbia's fiery re-entry breakup in 2003. The conference was held at Georgia Tech and featured international scientists, technologists, engineers, mission designers and policymakers.

They discussed the shuttle era's major contributions and exchanged ideas about future space transportation. They highlighted discoveries about Earth, the solar system and universe and how those have advanced human life across the globe through discoveries in pharmaceuticals, communications, materials processing, climatology and crucial understandings about the ozone.

It remains unknown whether the shuttle's role in advancing new knowledge about the composition of the universe will have any practical application for improving life on Earth.

But that uncertainty is part of any pathfinding discoveries. It's true with the biotechnology research going on at places like Huntsville's HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. And it can be true with NASA.

The space shuttle was an engineering accomplishment no other country has been able to match. Its cargo delivery and retrieving capability enabled it to deploy sophisticated satellites, repair them during space walks, and bring them home if necessary.

Times aerospace writer Lee Roop wrote that Bolden and other participants acknowledged that one of the program's missions is to persuade today's students there will be a future space program. Bolden noted last year's NASA Authorization Act extends the space program until at least 2020 and orders up a new heavy-lift rocket to be developed in Huntsville and a crew capsule for deep-space travel.

Let's hope the next generation of Americans can rekindle the exploratory spirit that led America to the moon and kept U.S. preeminence in space.

"Human spaceflight survived in great part because of the space shuttle program," Bolden said, "and we're in a good position today as a result to continue the innovations we started with the shuttle and take them to the next level."

It's time now for Americans to chart a course for that next level.

By John Peck for the editorial board. Email: