At 8:26 a.m. Friday, weather permitting, space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center for the 135th and final shuttle mission.
Leaving a cloud of smoke, a spectacular tail of flame and the earth rumbling beneath the feet of a crowd expected to approach a million people, the final shuttle launch will be a bittersweet moment for the U.S. space program.
Born in the post-war era, a time of near boundless faith in the possibilities of science, the space program turned imagination into reality by putting men on the moon. It shouldn't succumb to economic woes or political rancor of the 21st century.
NASA created the world's first reusable orbiter and fed the dream of space travel. Yet when Atlantis completes its 14-day mission, the next phase of manned space exploration will be an open question.
The shuttle was envisioned as a step on the path to more ambitious missions. Shuttles would fly up to 50 times a year, ferrying material needed to build a space station that would serve as a launching pad for trips to Mars. But the space shuttle never flew more than nine times in any year. And, instead of supporting Martian exploration, shuttles supplied the international space station and carried out a variety of scientific, military and commercial missions, such as setting up satellites and the Hubble telescope.
Still, even as delivery trucks, NASA's fleet of squat, black-and-white orbiters stand as a triumph of technology and engineering. Over the past 30 years, shuttle passengers have included scientists, congressmen and the first women to travel in space. Along the way, 14 people, including a New Hampshire schoolteacher chosen to deliver lessons from space, died in two catastrophic accidents, the 1986 post-launch explosion of Challenger and the break up of Columbia upon re-entry in 2003.
The tragedies fed arguments that manned space travel is too dangerous. They ignore our innate curiosity and an urge to explore that predates history. Others say space exploration is too costly. But the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost almost as much in a month as NASA spends in a year.
When its last mission is complete, Atlantis, as with the rest of the shuttle fleet, is destined to become a museum piece. But the U.S. manned space program shouldn't be relegated to an exhibit or a chapter in a history book. There are new chapters to be written, and the first step is to give NASA a new challenge worthy of its accomplishments.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: