Five-year gap coming in space race

Who'd a thunk it?

From the New York Times:

The gap is coming: from 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shuts down the space shuttle program, to 2015, when the next generation of American spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, NASA expects to have no human flight capacity and will depend on Russia to get to the $100 billion station, buying seats on Soyuz craft as space tourists do.

In the past, I had some correspondence with "Rocket Boys" author Homer Hickam. He maintains the space shuttle is seriously flawed. People should be above the fuel tank, not right beside it, he says. Given what happened to Challenger and Columbia, it's hard to argue his point.

But five years with no American manned launches?

You would think that's unthinkable. But apparently not.

I remember where I was when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. At the time I was distracted buying a Milky Way bar and a bottle of Coca-Cola. But I remember where I was. And I remember liftoff of the last Apollo mission to the moon.

Before those years, I had memorized the names of astronauts on every Mercury and Gemini mission. At home I still have the Life magazine and the book my mother bought me.

And it's about to be over.

Who would have seen it coming?

As NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, the time lag in the Bush administration’s plan to retire the nation’s three space shuttles and work on a return to the Moon has thrust the United States space program squarely into national politics and geopolitical controversy.

Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have denounced the gap and promoted their commitment to the space program while on trips to Florida, where thousands of workers will lose their jobs when the shuttle program ends. And antagonism between the United States and Russia, over the conflict in Georgia and other issues, is clouding the future of a 15-year partnership in space, precisely when NASA will be more reliant on Russia than ever before.

Meanwhile, China is launching its own astronauts.

“In a rational world, we would have been allowed to pick a shuttle retirement date to be consistent with Ares/Orion availability,” Dr. Griffin wrote. Within the administration, he wrote, “retiring the shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision.”