The End of an Era

The last flight of the Space Shuttle program took place today when Endeavour was piggybacked on a 747 from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida across the USA to Los Angeles. It will eventually be on display at the California Science Centre.

Space shuttle Endeavour loaded onto the 747.... image from NASA's Image of the Day Gallery.

I'm a little bit sad about the end of the Space Shuttle program. I'll miss seeing those smiling astronauts march out of the building, dressed in their space suits and carrying their helmets, and waving confidently. I always considered it was an amazing feat of engineering to get the shuttle up into space and home again safely, although not everything always went smoothly. Two shuttles and their crews were tragically lost. I watched many of the launches and landings on TV, and I was lucky enough to witness the launch of Endeavour first hand when I was in Florida a couple of years ago. Spectacular!

A couple of additional facts: Endeavour was the replacement for the destroyed Challenger shuttle. It made its debut in 1992 and flew 25 times, logged 198 million kilometres in space, and circled Earth nearly 4,700 times before it was retired. 

Another unforgettable space shuttle moment came on a hot June day in 1983. (Was it really that long ago???) I was at work in Toronto, and looking out of the top floor office window I saw the prototype shuttle Enterprise fly by on top of NASA's first 747 shuttle carrier. Not the normal view from my office window!

Enterprise was on it's way to (or possibly coming back from) the Paris Air Show and made a short side trip to Canada...... probably because Canada had contributed to the space programme with the Canadarm, which was built in Toronto by SPAR Aerospace. Enterprise never flew in space. It was used to practice landings on earth and verify the flight worthiness of the design, and it was retired in 1985. It is now on display at the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan.