We have now begun in earnest a new series in "The Explorers' Club's" ever-expanding exploration of human spaceflight: the Space Shuttle program. This will be a different experience than our previous series, for a great many reasons. I have much more mixed emotions about the Space Shuttle than I do our Projects Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, & Skylab. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, & Skylab are historical triumphs in which I revel unreservedly, marveling at the audacity & competence with which man first conquered space. By contrast, the Space Shuttle is part of my lived experience, not distant history. I grew up with news about Space Shuttle flights a routine part of life, taken for granted, even after the Challenger disaster—which I watched live on television at my elementary school, as a mention every January on the anniversary of the tragedy. I was saddened & angered by the end of the Shuttle program in 2011, in part because I'd only ever known a world of regular Space Shuttle flights & felt acutely the loss. Yet, because the Space Shuttle was part of the background of normal life, there is so very much I don't know about those missions, not only those that took place when I was a small child—I wasn't yet two years old when S.T.S.-1 flew—but the missions of my teenage years & twenties, too. There is much to explore.
Part of the story is the Challenger & Columbia disasters. The Space Shuttle directly killed fourteen astronauts, more persons than have died in all other fatal spaceflight incidents, from all nations, combined; more than all non-spaceflight fatalities involving astronauts & cosmonauts combined (deaths like those of Valentin Bondarenko, Ted Freeman, Elliot See, Charlie Bassett, & C.C. Williams). The horrifying & enraging part of those two disasters is that the Challenger seven died as a result of negligence & institutional arrogance, while the Columbia seven died of an inherent flaw in the conception & design of the Space Shuttle. Neither incident was truly an accident. The Space Shuttle was a magnificent flying machine, but it was also fundamentally flawed. I experience a smoldering anger when I think about the chains of events that led to the destruction of the Challenger & the Columbia & the deaths of their brave crews. Yet for all that anger & disillusionment with the Shuttle, my childhood fascination & reverence remains. Seeing the Space Shuttle Endeavour with my own eyes on a visit to Los Angeles was a transcendent experience, & largely responsible for rekindling my love for human spaceflight after the disillusionment of the Shuttle's retirement. I'm fascinated by the Space Shuttle as the vehicle for achieving our spaceflight dreams; I'm horrified by the Space Shuttle as a inherently flawed death trap for its crews. As I said, mixed emotions.
Another factor is the sheer scale of the Space Shuttle program: one hundred thirty-five flights, S.T.S.-1 through S.T.S.-135, across thirty years, 1981-2011. There were six manned Mercury flights, ten manned Gemini flights, & fifteen Apollo flights (Apollo proper, plus Skylab & Apollo-Soyuz); that's thirty-one flights, Mercury 3 through Apollo-Soyuz, across fourteen years, 1961-1975. Starting with the fortieth anniversary of S.T.S.-1 now, I highly doubt The Secret Base & "The Explorers' Club" will endure 'til the fortieth anniversary of S.T.S.-135 in 2051, but for the nonce I'm just looking forward to taking it one mission at a time. The future will come, ready or not, or it won't. Nothing I can do about it. As the Lord teaches us, be concerned with today, not tomorrow (Matthew, 6:34). We are unidirectional time travelers, moving ever forward in the eternal "now," the only moment we ever experience.
There's one more Space Shuttle fortieth anniversary to observe in 2021 (S.T.S.-2), & then three more in 2022 (S.T.S.-3, S.T.S.-4, & S.T.S.-5), by which time we ought to have wrapped up with the fiftieth anniversaries of Apollo 16 & Apollo 17 & will be looking forward in 2023 (& a little of 2024) to the fifteth anniversarys of Skylab 1, Skylab 2, Skylab 3, & Skylab 4. This year we also ought to wrap up the fifty-fifth anniversaries of Gemini IX-A, Gemini X, Gemini XI, & Gemini XII; we aren't aiming to finish with the fifty-ninth anniversaries of Project Mercury 'til next year, 2022. Plus, more sixtieth & fiftieth anniversaries of the Soviet space program; I considered covering the fortieth anniversary of Soviet spaceflight in the 1980s, contemporaneous with the Shuttle era, but for the moment the backlog of Soviet missions from the 1960s & 1970s seems sufficient enough a challenge, without also tackling the 1980s. About all of that, I reserve the right to change my mind.
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