Replies

First: Kudos for a Canadian newspaper for telling it like it is.

Um, not exactly. The shuttle program was really ended by George W. Bush after the loss of Columbia. But Bush was also the one who initiated the Constellation/Ares/Orion/etc program to get American BACK into space, back to the Moon and beyond.

And to be more accurate, while the shuttle was ended by Bush, it was really killed before metal was even cut for Enterprise by poor design choices that drove overambitious expectations and major engineering flaws. The two key among many were the need to make the payload bay large enough to handle the biggest USAF/NRO spy satellites (NASA wanted a smaller, simpler shuttle) and the decision to mount the return vehicle on the SIDE of the launch stack rather than on the top (see how the USAF's X-37 mini-shuttles are launched compared to the shuttle).

I've had a lot of sadness over seeing the end of the shuttle program and seeing the surviving shuttles retired, cannibalized and sent of to be museum displays. But I also recognize that, as someone who watched Enterprise's ALTs on a B&W TV and got to stay home (several times) to watch the first spaceflight of Columbia (this time on a color TV), those emotions are driven more by nostalgic remembrance of what the shuttle promised to be rather than what it actually was.

...., those emotions are driven more by nostalgic remembrance of what the shuttle promised to be rather than what it actually was.

No it's driven by knowledge and an understanding of what has happened.

There was a program in place to move beyond Shuttle and it was delayed. This provided the anti-America crowd their opening to "re-evaluate the program, pronounce it dead and offer no plan to replace it.

Programs were submitted that would fit in under the budget cap given but they were ignored.

It was set up to die on the vine.

The shuttle was old and it wasnt really designed to last as long as it did. NASA really got its moneys worth.
But Obama took a knife to the whole manned space program and with it killed a lot of American jobs.
Now we have to hitch rides with the Soviets. Thats a disgrace IMHO.