I’ve just been watching the Space Shuttle successfully landing on what NASA are calling a test flight.
There’s still quite a lot of questions in the air about both the future of the Shuttle and indeed of manned missions in general.
Last week I read a well-argued article questionning the worthiness of what’s been happening, and in particular the Shuttle and the International Space Station.
I suspect that whatever NASA might hope, the Shuttle is coming to the end of its workable life, but what’s coming next?
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to Stephen Baxter’s Voyage, as dramatized by Dirk Maggs and broadcast on BBC7 a month or so ago. The original novel is now near the top of my “to read” list.
And only today, I was reading Arthur C Clarke’s famous article where he suggested what is now known as the Clarke belt to place a geostationary satellite. This year is the 60th anniverary of that paper, and if you read it, you see that rather than broadcasting 24/7 shopping and gambling channels, Clarke talked about placing a series of space stations in orbit using technology built upon that which the Germans had developed with their V2 rockets.
Bush has talked about a manned Mars mission, but you get the feeling that we’re a little way off it yet. Indeed even a return to the moon would be great. The “trouble” is that we can do some fantastic things by remote control. For example, look at the recent fabulous photo taken by Mars Express below.
More rovers and landers are on the way because they’re relatively cheap, and we don’t have to get the craft home again, or keep anyone alive on board. But man is an explorer, and we shouldn’t be limited to just this planet.
