Space Shuttle
From Slackerpedia Galactica
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The Space Shuttle Program in 200 Words or Less
The intertwining of NASA's safety-zealous culture and need to appease geographically diverse legislators making its budget led to a beaurocratic compromise of epic and boring proportions - the Space Shuttle Program. A reusable self-landing space cruiser that could deploy payloads, conduct scientific experiments, and help build space stations was envisioned and for the most part, realized. The space shuttle fleet has conducted many great feats in space, including setting records for space walks, experiments, and rendezvous with the Russians holed up in Mir. Unfortunately, despite over 100 successful and safe missions, two ended in sobering and shocking tragedy causing the deaths of 14 astronauts, including the teacher Christa McAuliffe, Israeli colonel Ilan Ramon, and Indian scientist Kalpana Chalwa Ph.D.
Due to the aging of the fleet and these sad incidents, some critics are calling for a retiring of the space shuttle fleet and more meaningful missions aimed at the Moon, Mars, and other more far-off targets rather than, as Thomas Mallon of the New Yorker puts it, "...the bashful looping of the shuttle, its endless circumscription of the stay-at-home species that keeps launching it". [184 words]
What does all of this have to do with astronomy?
Without the contributions of the Space Shuttle, there would be no Hubble Space Telescope or Chandra X-Ray Observatory (among others) to provide astronomers with unprecedented and breathtaking data, including topics such as redshift, related to the Big Bang. The Space Shuttle program, despite its role as a "delivery van for space", was instrumental in the fine-tuning of manufacturing, repairing, and upgrading manned spacecraft which will make the next leg of space exploration easier, cheaper, and most of all, safer.
The reliable workhorse of NASA, its overall safety record compared to its Russian older stepbrother Soyuz and the Apollo program, when factoring for total number of missions and personnel deployed, is astounding. Most of all, the Space Shuttle proved that going into space could be more cost-effective than the original "Let's slap them on top of a roman candle and hope for the best" approach.
One can also hope that the two most visible legacies of the Space Shuttle Program, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station will bear further fruition and justify the immense cost, both financial and human.
