NASA / Tony Gray
WHY I’M GLAD THE SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM IS NO MORE... Earlier today, the orbiter Atlantis safely touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida...officially ending a 30-year-old program that resulted in the launch of great observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the creation of a giant orbiting research outpost known as the International Space Station (ISS). While there are lots of folks out there who think that the space shuttles could’ve safely flown for many more years to come (which they most likely could have), I’m glad the program has ended. I’d prefer if people debate on how many more useful years the shuttles have than actually risk losing another of these amazing vehicles in an accident that would obviously conclude the program in a tragic and disgraceful note. But there are other reasons why I’m glad the space shuttle is now fully retired.
I’ve been interested in the space program since 4th grade. I’ve been interested in movies for just as long—with me growing an interest in filmmaking after drawing storyboards for my own submarine thriller upon watching The Hunt for Red October at the theater in 1990 (when I was also in 4th grade). It was filmmaking I pursued in college...and it was between early 2003 and mid-2005 (from the time I was in film school at Cal State Long Beach to me starting a cool 1-year employment gig at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood) that my interest in the movie industry was at its strongest. I worked on various short films, wrote feature-length screenplays, edited videos (on Final Cut Pro, but mostly on Windows Movie Maker, heh) that I shot using my old Fujifilm still digital camera and even worked on another short film that starred a gangsta rapper one of my college classmates knew. I got my first real job in the entertainment industry in October 2004 before starting work at Paramount Pictures in July of 2005. (Sorry to toot my own horn like that...just trying to make a point.) The reason why I could completely focus on my work in the entertainment industry at this time is because there was nothing major happening in the space program between early 2003 and mid-2005—due to the 2-year hiatus caused by the space shuttle Columbia disaster.
Sure, there were the Spirit and Opportunity rovers launching towards Mars in 2003, me submitting my name that same year to fly on the Deep Impact spacecraft to Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, Spirit and Opportunity landing on Mars in early 2004 and the Cassini spacecraft entering orbit around Saturn in July of 2004...but these awesome unmanned missions still didn’t attract my interest as strongly as watching 7 astronauts suit up and soar to the ISS or HST on a technological marvel like the space shuttle. I was on the computer watching NASA TV when Cassini did its Saturn Orbit Insertion Maneuver, and cut out practically every newspaper article there was about the Mars rovers. But it's human spaceflight that had the greatest impact on me.
Slowly but surely, my interest in the space program started to outgrow my passion for moviemaking in mid-to-late 2005. The launch of space shuttle Discovery on STS-114 (the first flight since the Columbia accident) in July of 2005 was an exciting time—but I started my job at Paramount Pictures that same month and wasn’t totally distracted by the Return To Flight mission then. My interest in space exploration quadrupled upon learning in late September of 2005 that I could’ve had my name fly to Pluto onboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft [I missed the opportunity by about two weeks...and grew obsessed with searching for the next robotic space mission that I could have my moniker on (which would be the Dawn spacecraft before it traveled to asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres)]. But what really diverted my focus away from nurturing my film career was the space shuttle officially resuming flight operations in the summer of 2006...when Discovery flew on the STS-121 mission. The countdown clock at the very top of this Blog was born in the days leading up to the launch of STS-121...and if you visit my archive section for July 2006 and onward, then you’ll see that the number of posts I made about spaceflight exploded tremendously once NASA was back to work constructing the ISS (starting with STS-115).
So almost 6 years after Discovery’s launch on STS-114, the space shuttle program is now a thing of the past. After half a decade of keeping track of ISS assembly missions, now is the time to get back to focusing on my film career (which has stagnated considerably). Sure, I’ll still be distracted by upcoming robotic missions such as Juno (which launches to Jupiter next month), GRAIL (which launches to the Moon in September) and the Curiosity Mars rover (which launches to the Red Planet in November), but hopefully there won’t be anymore space-related events that preoccupied me as much as shuttle flights did. NASA’s Space Launch System is scheduled to lift off for the first time in 2016 (don’t hold your breath, though)...with the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle along with it. So for the next five years presumably, I can focus on pursuing and advancing my career in an industry I wanted to be part of since watching a Tom Clancy novel-inspired submarine thriller on the big screen in 1990. Hopefully. Not to sound selfish—but human spaceflight's uncertain future in this country may be a blessing for me, personally. That is all.
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