The last space shuttle landed safely this morning, and various headlines have announced that this is the end of the shuttle era. I think it may be more than that: the end of an age of which my generation saw the beginning. The term "space age," which for a long time meant whatever is newest and most technologically advanced, now has a somewhat antique flavor. I know the space station is still there, and this isn't the end of the American space program (to say nothing of the Russian, Chinese, et.al.). But there seems little reason to think (or hope, if that's the way you look at it), that manned space flight will ever reach much beyond these sorts of earth-orbit ventures. I wrote about this in one of the first Sunday Night Journals, back in 2004.
The End of the Space Age?
2 responses to “The End of the Space Age?”
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‘There is one world only and we are quaranteened on it’ – I see you were as depressed in 2004 as you are now! Can we recycle our comments too 🙂 I tried to read Tom Wolfe’s book about the astronauts a while back, but couldn’t get on. The idea that we must want to know where these heroes got their heroism just didn’t do it for me.
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Well, I was, but I don’t necessarily regard that particular fact (if it is a fact) as depressing. Misanthropic, maybe (which I guess is depressing). It may be a good thing, for us as well as the rest of the cosmos.
I saw the movie of that book and enjoyed it, but didn’t have much interest in reading the book. To tell you the truth, I never really understood that they were heroes until relatively recently. Growing up, when all that stuff was going on, I thought they were basically just passengers. Ever seen Apollo 13?
Light On Dark Water 
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