Logistics

With the Space Shuttle to be launched again this year, the United States will have reactivated and returned to service the most spectacular space transportation capability ever developed: the only spacecraft able to be launched into space, return to Earth, and then to be launched again.

Many mistakes – of both omission and commission – were made over decades past: the Space Transportation System envisioned in the early 1970’s was never completed (e.g. the Space Tug – a reusable upper stage), an insufficient fleet of Orbiters was procured, and the Western launch site was never completed.

The most outstanding decision over the next months and years will be, whether the United States will build upon the reusable space transportation systems technology with a shuttle derivative capability for the many missions ahead in Cis- and Trans-lunar Space – or whether we will “burn our ships of space” – just as the Chinese did with their ocean-going fleet in 1423. A robust presence on the Moon and beyond requires a robust, reusable space transportation system.

But then that vision may be beyond the green eyeshades of OMB bureaucrats and their cohorts of government “interagency” secrecy -- inaction and procrastination in the rituals of the particulars -- while loosing sight of the greater purpose and prospects ahead.

The opportunities are there, the question is this: Do we still have the spirit of the 1950’s and 1960’s and that of our ancestors in centuries past, when they came to these shores to build the infrastructure – the canals, the roads, the ports and highways that made our dynamic economy and society possible – or shall we regress to the stagecoaches of the past – the V2s of the 1930’s and 40’s? Will others build the “Shuttle Derivative” next-generation fleet of spaceships – or do we still have the courage to set out where no one else has yet ventured?