NASA trades shuttles for - what?

I still see her so vividly: NASA's shuttle Discovery, riding weary on the back of a jumbo jet to her Johnson Space Center home more than two decades ago. Like a wide-eyed child I stared in awe, pressed against the 53rd floor window and so close I could see her wear and tear, black smears proudly proving the distances she'd just flown. It was the best part of that boring office job - the wonder of this memory.

Bye-bye, baby.

Friday's Endeavour launch may well prove to be the last flight of the shuttle program. Only one more flight by Atlantis is scheduled for June, although funding threatens to cancel it. After that shuttles will head to their final resting places in museums around the country. NASA is undergoing a transformation, from butterfly to ostensible caterpillar.

The reality of budgeting has hit. With 133 shuttle missions traveling 500 million miles and costing a mere $1.5 billion each (radically beyond initial projections), change is inevitable. Gone are the days of deifying test-pilot astronauts; coming are fleets of privatized space jockeys and International Space Station scientists who won't see the limelight.

NASA's focus, though still undefined pending budgeting and elusive guidance from Washington, shifts now to a downsized astronaut corps, multinational ISS missions, and the development of new rockets which can orbit Earth and take crews to Mars. In the old days astronauts were hot-shot pilots, often military-trained. Modern astronauts are not just scientists with one focus, but are skilled in multiple disciplines (including piloting and plumbing). NASA's streamlined astronaut corps are more skilled and more educated. They are fewer in number and work more missions.

Meanwhile private space industry is gaining ground. SpaceX is a California company under contract with NASA to provide unmanned supply flights to the ISS. Virgin Galactic is well under way to offer suborbital flights from New Mexico to private customers who can afford rocket rides in Spaceship 2 and White Knight 2. XCOR Aerospace, another California enterprise, plans 17 launches for scientific research.

Space has done far more for man than moonwalks. NASA missions and research have improved cancer treatments and led to many medical innovations, such as artificial hearts. Technology imitating that used to separate the shuttle from booster rockets is now used to cut accident victims from wreckage at 30 percent of the previous cost. Infrared cameras used by firefighters were first developed for astronauts.

The list is endless. NASA must undoubtedly adapt to changing times, but the usefulness of space activity continues to prove itself exponentially. To let it lag is to keep man stagnant.

Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email [email protected]