Final Shuttle Launch Occasions Anxiety about Future of U.S. in Space

There is a certain sense of unreality as I sit this morning at the Kennedy Space Center press site, with Atlantis on the launch pad just over three miles away awaiting its last mission (STS 135), NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver finishing a briefing on NASA’s ambitious plans for the future, a hundred enthusiastic young people from all over the country gathered for a “Tweetup” to communicate their impressions of being at a launch–while in Washington, D.C., the House Appropriations Committee apparently is intending today to cut almost $2 billion from NASA’s budget. There is a remarkable disconnect between the excitement surrounding the last shuttle launch, set to lift-off Friday, and the pervasive and merited anxiety about NASA’s future that is almost the first thing out of the mouths of any of the space veterans I have encountered in the past 24 hours. I commented to a reporter earlier today that the current level of uncertainty about the future of the NASA program is the greatest that I have seen in 45 years of close observation of the U.S.

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Final Shuttle Launch Occasions Anxiety about Future of U.S. in Space