Space Shuttle Atlantis landed from its final mission on Thursday morning, bringing the United States Space Shuttle missions to a close. If you listen to the media, and the President, and any lackie trying to keep good with the boss, it is merely the dawn of a new era, a period of transition, a time of change and redefined purpose.
Bull.
Tell that to the bill collectors that are going to be asking for money from the thousands of people that no longer have a job, thanks to the ray of sunshine on the glimmer of hope that one day, politicians will remove their cranium from their rectum, and give adequate funding to an agency that gives more back to the public than any other for the dollars spent in it. The layoffs began long ago, you see, because every Shuttle mission doesn't just last for the 16 days that they are in space. It starts WAY before that.
If you listen to the press packet, and the cute little film that they have playing at the Observation Gantry at KSC, the mission begins as soon as the Shuttle lands from its previous mission, but this is hardly true either. Sure, all of the prep-work for the next mission for that orbiter begins as soon as it lands. It needs to be checked out, and refitted for the equipment that it will carry on its next mission, etc. Sometimes, special software or hardware must be installed for experiments or procedures expected during the flight. But before anyone knows anything about what is going to be needed in the orbiter, the mission must be trained for.
Training occurs in various facilities from stationary simulators to full-motion simulators in which fully-suited astronauts-to-be go through various duration simulations proposing differing situations, operational difficulties, and failure modes. They train on mockups of the real thing for emergency egress and crash situations. Flight training includes piloting a Grumman Gulfstream Jet that has been modified with a full Shuttle cockpit, which actually behaves and feels like a Shuttle.
Most of the time, the mission includes the handling of some sort of hardware, transferring it from the Shuttle to the ISS, or vice-versa. Training for space walks during these missions is done in the Neutral Buoyancy lab near Houston Tx. This is the largest indoor swimming pool in the world, and their tubby-toy is a full-sized replica of the ISS, and whatever module they will be adding to the station.
All of this is done, often and repeatedly, at times, two years in advance. It takes people to do all of this. Divers to help the astronauts in and out of the pool. People help them suit up, and get out of their suits. Someone needs to know what they are going to be doing, and how they are supposed to be doing it, and practice with them until they get it right. They work through checklists, and develop them to improve workflow, and time management. They work with contractors, and the engineers that build the satellites, hardware and modules that will be flying on their mission. They work with flight directors to make sure that mission goals are set and can be accomplished. And then there's the people that they don't work with.
Astronauts are the rock stars of the space agency. They are the public figures that get all of the attention. It is well deserved, don't get me wrong, but there are thousands of people that work administration and support, and support for the support. Every industry that you can think of has a place in the space program. Contractors make hardware, equipment, tools, expendables, food, waste management, construction, manufacturing, communications, transportation, land management, maintenance - everything. These positions are all filled with high-quality, hard-working people that have in many--most cases given their lives to this program. Keep in mind the current mentality of seeking employees, compared to what it was when many of these people were hired in. You think that in order to "work for NASA", you have to have a degree, and be the best in your class, etc., but it wasn't always that way. Hundreds of people working in the program quite literally are the best in the business, and their education may not formally reach beyond primary school, or a little bit of college. These people are going to be looking for work, competing against the freshest, greenest college graduates this nation (or this world) for the few jobs there will be in whatever new program is coming over the bright and sunny horizon that everyone seems to be talking about.
Beyond all of this, there are the people across the country that make parts, small assemblies or full-on structures that go into the system. The Solid Rocket Boosters are made in segments, and after they are recovered from the ocean, they are disassembled, cleaned, and shipped back to Utah for refurbishment and reloading. The hardware is cleaned, inspected, painted, filled with propellant, matched to an identical mate, and then sent back to KSC for use on the next mission. Shuttle contractors exist in 48 states. The decommission of the Shuttle program is going to affect each of these contractors in a significant way.
To each and every one of these people, I thank you, for being involved, for being some small part of the greater whole. For creating the atmosphere in which the brave souls that travel into space can concentrate on the mission given them, and perform it to the best of their substantial ability. Thank you for creating from imagination and inspiration, the icon of the American space industry; the dreams come reality of several generations. Thank you for inspiring us, with your hard work, dedication, growing pains, strength in tragedy and struggle. Thank you for planting the seed of what can be if we can collectively get our crap together, and work toward a common goal. Thank you for showing us just what kinds of obstacles we can not only conquer, but show who is boss by thinking about a better way to do things.
Selfishly, I am sad to see the program go. While I have been a fan of the program for as long as I can possibly remember, I have never actually seen a Space Shuttle. Even after my cross-country road trip to watch Discovery launch for STS-133, which didn't happen until two months after I got back home, I didn't get to actually see the Shuttle. I wanted to see a launch before the program ended, and I never did get to see one. Actually, I'm kind of pissed about it. Circumstances being what they were, it just didn't happen. But all of that pales in comparison to your situation. Many of you didn't get to see a Shuttle launch either, which sucks. But at the end of all of this, I still have a job to wake up to - you get to start all over somewhere else after who knows how long, working for the same company, with the same people; the family that you have grown to love since you started there. I wish you speedy discovery of the start of your next journey. To those that I know or interact with personally through Facebook, twitter, or Google+, I thank you for your contribution to the material and subject of my dreams since I was a wee little lad, and the most distinguishable space icon ever.
