posted 04-26-2012 06:43 PM               

I love museums. I go whenever I can to my local air and space museum to gaze on the cool artifacts from Apollo 009 to the X-38 (plus planes like the B-52B, Vulcan bomber, B-29 and B-17). I agree they have a place and a purpose. Personally, I think Discovery has rightly earned its place in Udvar-Hazy. But at the same time as I watched the SCA with Discovery orbiting around DC no less than five times and doing flights to all the suburbs around the greater DC area and Virginia, I couldn't help but think that maybe if a 747 had been orbiting around DC a couple years ago to give the lawmakers in DC something to look at, perhaps we might not be in this situation.

And before somebody says "But President Bush brought about shuttle's retirement" I say Duh! I know that. I've known that for years. My point is if a nice piece of built and flying hardware was there hovering around in the sky over Washington to SHOW the leaders in DC what was built and somebody pointed to it and say "We built that, it is flying today. But it is retiring soon so let us fund the next step the best we can." then perhaps... But, that is what "what ifs" get you, just unanswered questions.

I will tell you my personal feelings about shuttle's retirement. We are indeed transitioning from something that is known to something that is unknown. When I saw Atlantis punch through those clouds for the last time in July, I cried tears of joy and tears of sadness. I enjoyed the moment but I really wondered just how long it would be before another rocket would lift off from the pads at KSC with a crew onboard (sure, rockets fly all the time from CCAFS to the south, but that is a little different).

So what do we have, maybe nine years until Orion flies in a state resembling a mission ready craft, five years hopefully before a manned Dragon flies (assuming the unmanned Dragon test goes well and assuming a lot of other things, the magic eight ball is saying "results cloudy, try back later").

While I don't think of museums as being graveyards for spacecraft, I do think of the shuttles have at least been treated somewhat as trophies. I can remember the bit of controversial back and fourth infighting with the Air Force Museum and Houston not getting a shuttle and crying "foul" because California Science Center and Intrepid did. To me it almost seems like a bunch of turkey buzzards trying to pick clean a carcass.

These museums, the ones that got shuttles awarded to them, plus Seattle, USSRC, Tulsa and others did what they could to prove they could host the birds. Members of the general public got behind those efforts. I was pulling for a couple places myself. And of course there were not enough shuttles to go around and some places expressed their displeasure.

Granted Seattle, Houston and Dayton are getting some great consolation prizes in the form of simulators and mockups. But again I thought to myself about the efforts expended in this exercise. But what about voicing the opinion when the time came to speak up about NASA in the budget fights?