Goodbye to a dated dream

Atlantis takes off on Friday (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Dave Ross Commentary – Listen: Goodbye to a dated dream

The space shuttle program is almost done.

Which is sad for someone like me — as a kid I was captivated by that first space flight; I wanted to be a scientist, I wanted to manipulate physics to my will, build robots that could explore planets — until the reality of higher order mathematics sent me to the English department.

But even then there was hope, because the Space Shuttle was going to lead to routine space flight.

NASA once even had a journalist in space program. I applied for it.

The idea was that ordinary people would become space travelers — but in fact only one ordinary person flew aboard the shuttle — school teacher Christa McAuliffe, aboard the ill-fated Challenger.

It was the Soviets who sold seats to ordinary people — but at $20 million per flight, that doesn’t qualify as routine.

So what did we get out of it besides Tang and pretty space pictures.

We got the group of people who worked on it.

Those scientists and engineers, who were the daredevils of technology. When they screwed up, people died. But when they got it right, people landed on the moon. Robots landed on Mars. We peeked into the origins of the universe.

The space program gave a lot of our smartest people a reason to stay smart and to stay motivated. When you talk to these people they have a pinch-me enthusiasm that you just don’t find around most offices.

And many of them are now going to be out of work. They’ll land on their feet, Making solar panels, or light rail cars, or iPhone apps.

Somehow it’s just not the same.

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