I also wanted to add my two cents about the shuttle program.
I'm a huge space nerd - my husband and I both are. We actively use quotes from Apollo 13 on a daily basis, we were engaged in Cocoa Beach (and went to KSC later that day to celebrate) and I even wanted to make my license plate say
SCE2AUX, if only I could have 7 characters instead of 6. So naturally, the end of the shuttle program felt devastating to us. (And not to get political, but I wanted to clear up that it was the Bush Administration in 2004 that called for an end to the shuttle program,
not the Obama Administration like many people believe.) We were born in the early 80s, having missed out on the amazing events of the space race. Even my parents were too young to have remembered most of it.
However... while I don't think the shuttle program should have ended quite yet, I also don't believe it should have gone on much further. Those orbiters are old. They were only meant to fly for 10 years, and instead flew for upwards of 26. Former astronaut John Grunsfeld said it best: "There's a possibility we could have flown them for a little bit longer, or extended them at some cost. I'm actually extremely thankful that we are rolling Discovery into the Air and Space Museum, and not burying its parts. We flew out the space shuttle program gracefully. We didn't lose another one. It would have been tragic. The fact is that the space shuttle program was ended with dignity — it was an amazing accomplishment, and I'm just thankful for that."
The issue, in my mind, isn't so much that the shuttle program had to end - it's that it has ended without something coming up right behind it. We have a bit of a gap before our next manned space program (although this was true of the Apollo program as well). And with that gap, there's uncertainty whether or not something will change, be postponed, or worse, canceled, before it can happen. I can understand that the next goal is to explore further out than Earth orbit and the moon, and so allocating billions of dollars to keep the shuttle program going instead of toward our next explorations doesn't make sense. We can still get people to the ISS through other countries and private companies for less money than operating the shuttle. It's sad, of course, but it's also the reality. The shuttles can't fly forever. The end of space programs like Apollo and the Shuttles are a little bittersweet because it wasn't a natural end. NASA didn't say 'okay, we've achieved all of the goals we set out for and now we are ready to move on.' The last three Apollo missions were canceled for budget reasons - and to use that money for the Shuttle program. And now we're in a similar spot, with the shuttle program having been canceled about 8 years ago so that we can focus on our next goal - getting to Mars (and beyond).
So with the good comes the bad, and vice versa. Many people, myself included, have mixed feelings about it all. I love space travel and exploration and it's certainly sad that the next program isn't due to put humans into space until 2021. But then again, maybe this means that in my lifetime I'll actually get to see a human land on Mars, which could be almost as exciting as it was for people to see the first Moon landing, a feeling I've wanted to experience for a long time.
