Space Shuttle 1977 - 2011

(The space shuttle Enterprise at Fairford Air Base, 20th May 1983)

Today brought the final launch of a Space Shuttle, a tremendously sad day for people of a similar age to myself. The space shuttle was going to open up space for the ordinary man, but in the end it was just a futile and costly experience. I never expected to go into space, but I'm hugely disappointed that my dreams of Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy (the Kennedy Space Centre) and witnessing an actual rocket launch have  today ended I suppose? Space does remains the final frontier, just a frontier that America no longer feels the explore (that crusade has ended) and Europe doesn't wish to pursue. The space race is over ... the Russians won

It is estimated that the Space Shuttle program cost about $170 billion from 1977 until 2008 (an average cost per flight of about $1.5 billion) Hugely - gargantuanly - expensive, but can you put a price on pursuing dreams and exploration? You can of course in better spending of the money; education, health, social care, community action.

It'll never be known exactly how many people watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, but it was beamed live around the world and watched by all races in all continents- a realistic estimation would be hundreds of millions. But people lost interest, space exploration became routine and lost it's excitement. How can this be true, a minuscule select few of our fellow human beings were strapped to what in the most basic terms is a giant firework which is fired into space; flaming exciting.

I gazed through the fences of RAF Fairford to see the arrival of the Shuttle Enterprise in the UK piggy backed on a Boeing 747 in 1983, it had stopped for refuelling en route to the Paris air show. I witnessed the live broadcast on television of both Challenger disintegrate after launch in 1986 and Columbia break apart during re-entry in 2003, and visited the memorials at Arlington cemetery.

Whilst in New York I feel it maybe necessary to go to Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum so I can touch both a Space Shuttle (Enterprise) and Concorde (Alpha Delta G-BOAD). That's not a euthanism, but it should be!