If you’re a space nerd like me, watching the final launch of the space shuttle this morning was weirdly emotional. I’ve been watching this thing fly since I was a kid, and it’s always been awesome. Bye, bye, space shuttle.
Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys. More by Anthony Hecht
Yep.
Thank Jesus that we can kill of this part of govmit funded science!! PRAISE THE LORD AND GIVE THAT MONEY TO THE RICH!!!
Can I get an Amen up in here?
That’s ok though, the free market will swiftly take over and start building spaceships. Because as everyone knows, the space program was hugely profitable.
This makes me terribly sad and kind of angry. I grew up watching the Apollo missions – one of my earliest memories was getting up early one Saturday in December to watch Uncle Walter cover the launch of Apollo 8. I’m sad that this is the last one, money pit the shuttle was, and I’m angry we have absolutely nothing lined up to replace it — just some strange faith that the free market will pick up the slack. Bullshit.
We’ve barely dipped our toe in the swimming pool of exploration and found it too cold. When did we turn into a bunch of wussies?
Look, if we can’t afford the basics, like new sports stadiums every ten years, we certainly can’t afford some science-fluff like the ‘Space Program’. Gotta prioritize.
I just cannot be cynical right after watching the last space shuttle launch.
Just because there are a lot of cool movies and books about space does not mean that we have to mortgage our futures to find out none of them are true.
Just because the space program fostered many new innovations and discoveries does not mean they would not have happened if that same money was spent even more efficiently.
NASA – the biggest pork project in US history.
@7 *AHEM* sorry, that would be the military by a couple orders of magnitude.
I always find it amusing to read Luddites whine about what a “boondoggle” the space program has been, while they furiously type away on one of the most glaringly obvious examples of how we’ve benefited from said “boondoggle”.
Bon voyage, Atlantis…
@3, actually it’s happening. Elon Musk took his PayPal money and started SpaceX. They even took a wheel of cheese to low earth orbit on their heavy lifter.
Man, 8 minutes to orbit, that is one sweeeeet ride.
Well thank fucking god it’s over. We have spent gajillions simply to satisfy the desires of the space nerds and their Star Trek imaginations when all that money could have done SO MUCH GOOD to help actual PEOPLE IN NEED here on earth. People are dying of diseases all over the place, lacking education and adequate medical care, the environment is quickly degrading due to our excessive consumption, etc, etc, … and we choose to spend shit tons of $$ so the science nerds can play Star Trek??
Fuck you, space program! You will not be missed.
@11 – You’re right. That’s all they’ve been doing up there: sending nerds into space so they can look out the window and giggle.
Dumbass.
@11 You are a moron. That is not how government works. Government funding is not a zero sum game betwixt space science and say, international aide or food programs. Also, the annual budget of NASA is around $20 billion dollars. Compare that to the Defense Department’s budget and go fuck yourself.
Wow I just had a great experience with this video. I didn’t realize that in the background on my computer, the track “Angelus” from the Monks of Notre Dame album was playing, I thought it was a soundtrack that had been set to the video. It’s just all bells, and so it made the vid seem very ceremonial. Nice way to bid bye-bye.
Like Anthony said, I also grew up watching this thing, so it will definitely be missed. Canceling the program for me has the feel of making a decision that you know is smart but is nevertheless unsatisfying.
@13 is right. The idea that if the shuttle program hadn’t been funded the money would have gone to [insert your favorite use for money here] is not even close to how government funding works. And the idea that all the innovations that have come from the space program would have happened anyway is just alternate-universe nonsense. To my mind, the railing against the space program as a “boondoggle” is no different than the GOP railing against Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. The funding for these programs is small by comparison and the returns are obvious. It’s just an easy target for people who like to be contrary and/or are liars.
@8 NASA is purely optional, and only saves the lives of the astronauts they strand in space. They’ve killed more of their own, often because of contractor fraud, than they’ll ever save. A single airlift mission by a single USAF group has saved more lives than NASA.
The point is, we didn’t need to pave the streets of Houston & Cape Canaveral with gold to get kids to study science. Most of the money spent on NASA projects simply lined the pockets of LBJ cronies and their connected decendants. The ROI was horrible, as we’ve still been bested by the Japanese & Chinese, among others, in technological advancements. Money not well spent, despite the pretty pictures we took.
There’s an old joke: NASA spent a million dollars to design a pen that would write in space; the Russians brought a pencil.
@12, 13, 15
Fact is, you people support the space program because all your life all of your basic needs have been met – health care, education, roof over your head, food. Life sure is swell for YOU. So money diverted in that direction is a-okay, it’s “cool” even. But if you happened to step outside of your comfortable middle class first world existence, you’d see the INSANE NEED that much of the world experiences on a daily basis. Ya know, like the need to STAY ALIVE. But you? You don’t give a fuck. That’s other-peoples-problems. You comfortably enjoy your little electronic devices, cars, creature comforts, and stories of cool rockets headed to space to look for alien worlds – neato!
Fuck you, bubbleheads! I hope you get hit by a bus.
@16 That old joke? It’s also completely false btw.
@17 I support drastic cuts to military spending and drastic tax raises to enable us to better invest in health and education. NASA funding is a fucking pittance in comparison to what we give away in tax breaks to the rich or contracts to various aspects of the military-industrial complex or are never ending wars of imperialism. But you know what has saved millions from starvation? Better climate modeling. Guess where that came from, you fucking moron.
*Hint, helps if you can study the Earth from high up.
@18
I’ll be sure to let all the (still) starving Africans, the sex slaves in Southeast Asia, the favela dwellers in Brasil, the women being sexually abused in the Middle East, the child laborers in Asia, the Burmese refugees living in war camps in Thailand, etc, etc, all know how grateful they should be for all that “climate modeling.” Thanks for that! Dipshit.
@17 – Really? Seems a bit extreme, but ok. Again, money for NASA was not “diverted” from anything. If NASA hadn’t existed, the money wouldn’t have been freed up for other uses (and certainly not for humanitarian uses). As OuterCow has explained, government funding isn’t a zero-sum game. And then equating support for the space program with a lack of caring for other humans’ survival is more than a little bit ridiculous.
@18 Better climate modeling means more accurate information for farmers, which leads to higher crop yields, which means more food, which means less starvation, you close minded imbecile.
@21: Well said, but Confluence is a moron.