So farewell then Atlantis.....

After 30 years of service to the American space program and to the International space exploration effort, today sees the final touchdown of the final shuttle in Service. There can be no doubt that the Space Shuttle programme has been a triumph of mans ingenuity and our commitment to progress. There have been errors along the way, as there will always be at the cutting edge of technology, but in terms of providing a low earth orbit delivery system for satellites, people and components for the International Space Station it has achieved. Without the shuttle there would have been no way to get astronauts to the Hubble space telescope to effect the necessary repairs that have kept Hubble working and making new discoveries about the Universe. Without the shuttle, the ISS would not have been built. Sure we can launch satellites into orbit using unmanned rockets favoured by European and Chinese space agencies, and the Russians are still running manned missions to the ISS but there really is nothing to match the shuttle in terms of flexibility and operational efficiency.

The end of the shuttle programme is being blamed on budget cuts, and yes, that is, in large part, the reason for todays final mission and the end of an era, but in reality the shuttle is a 30 year old programme and is due for retirement anyway. Personally, I shall be celebrating this last safe landing. However, what I am not celebrating is that we currently have nothing to replace it. It appears that we are moving into an era where there will be increasing reliance on private companies to provide space services, following the success of the X prize and the late Burt Rutans company Scaled Composites, and that is all well and good, but I do feel that NASA have let themselves down somewhat. I can't get away from the feeling that if NASA had been a little more aggressive in terms of developing the successor to the shuttle programme at an earlier stage and come up with something truly spectacular, and ideally something that was properly reusable, the funding would have been found to replace rather than remove manned space flight.

It would be wonderful to think that America can rediscover their way in terms of extra-terrestrial exploration, they seem a little lost currently, but without real direction and leadership from the very top, this is unlikely. Personally I dont class planing to land on an asteroid by 2015 and Mars by 2025 to be anything like ambitious enough to provide the drive that is needed, but we shall see.