[July 22, 2011] A bittersweet end to the space shuttle program Tweet Jul 22, 2011 (The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- CAPE CANAVERAL -- The safe return of space shuttle and crew from the dangerous journey into orbit has always been a time for celebrating at Kennedy Space Center. They did it one last time Thursday but with a mix of emotions that felt an awful lot like a wake. An era that defined America's space program as far back as a good portion of the nation can recall officially ended at 5:57 a.m. as Atlantis touched down in predawn darkness, just a few ticks past the calculations of NASA flight planners. After two signature sonic booms triggered by its otherwise silent glide through the black, Atlantis materialized -- almost ghostlike -- in a whoosh of wind and flapping drag chute, rushing straight down the three-mile runway and all the way into mothballs. Tears are normally reserved here for the worst tragedies, the ones that lose lives, not just jobs. But after 135 shuttle launches spanning 30 years, veteran engineers and technicians wiped eyes or choked on words once Atlantis rolled to stop. "Human emotions came out today. You couldn't suppress it all,'' said NASA launch director Mike Leinbach. "I heard nothing but pride out on the runway today amid the hugs and pats on the back, the pride they have of having been part of this amazing program, this amazing bit of history.'' That was the message that NASA leaders have stressed leading up to the final countdown. They repeated it again Thursday, with KSC managers and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden extolling the program's accomplishments and proclaiming that the space agency had a bright future beyond a vehicle designed before cell phones with the limited goal of serving as a sort of low-orbiting "space truck'' to help build the International Space Station. "Children who dream of being astronauts today may not fly on the space shuttle. . . but, one day, they may walk on Mars,'' Bolden said in blog post minutes after the mission ended. "The future belongs to us." At least for the fortunate workers remaining. The landing amounted to a pink slip for another 2,300 workers or so. According to Brevard Workforce, a job and counseling agency that helps place former space workers, primary shuttle contractor United Space Alliance is expected to cut 1,900 workers beginning Friday and another 400 jobs with other contractors are expected to end within weeks as well. They're the latest in what has been continuing waves of shuttle-related layoffs expected to eventually add up to some 9,000 lost jobs for Florida's Space Coast. The last mission was somewhat mundane, a 13-day trip intended primarily to restock the space station with supplies and spare parts. But history and the uncertain future of America's space program gave the final flight far more gravity. At Mission Control in Houston, the viewing room was filled with former flight directors and their families and crowds gathered outside to watch the landing on a big screen television. At KSC, thousands of workers assembled for a ceremonial last look at Atlantis before work begins to prepare it for display, a process expected to take two years. Standing in the spacecraft's shadow, commander Christopher Ferguson, speaking for three crew members, said they had been "honored'' to be part of the historic but bittersweet mission. The work-a-day shuttle never really seemed to capture the public imagination -- certainly not like the breath-taking feats of Mercury and Apollo, programs that first put Americans in space and on the moon -- but it united the men and women in orbit with the thousands who worked to get them there and back in one piece. "Although we got to take the ride, we sure hope that everybody who has ever worked on or touched or looked at or envied or admired a space shuttle was able to take a little part of the journey with us,'' he said. It may be four or five years before the next manned flight aboard an American spacecraft. America's astronaut corps will be consigned to hitching rides to the space station aboard Russian rockets -- at least until private companies bankrolled by NASA prove they can safely fly cargo and humans into orbit. The next mission for Atlantis, which traveled nearly 126 million miles during its 33 flights, will be as a tourist attraction at KSC's visitor center. The two other surviving shuttles also will become museum pieces, with Discovery going to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and Endeavor to a science center in Los Angeles. During the mission, Ferguson and other crew members -- pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim -- advocated for the country to continue an ambitious space exploration program but they also paid tribute to the past. After completing their last task Wednesday, sending a small solar-powered satellite into orbit, Walheim even read a poem to mission controllers in Houston: "One more satellite takes its place in the sky, the last of many that the shuttle let fly. Magellan, Galileo, Hubble and more have sailed beyond her payload bay doors. They've filled science books and still more to come. The shuttle's legacy will live on when her flying is done.'' Earlier in the week, the crew also left mementos on the space station for future American astronauts to reclaim -- a small model shuttle and an American flag seal over the passageway separating the shuttle and the space station. The shuttle program rang up many successes, topped by the construction of the space station, an effort that spanned a dozen years and 37 missions, as well as the daring space-walking repair of the Hubble telescope, an instrument that has given scientists unprecedented glimpses of how stars and galaxies form and die. But it also never lived up to its original conception as a cheap delivery vehicle. It was complicated, expensive at $1 billion-plus per launch and risky, failing at a sobering rate of every 50 missions. The Challenger explosion in 1986 and disintegration of Columbia in 2003 killed a total of 14 crew members and ultimately led to its scrub. NASA's long term plans are to develop rockets and vehicles capable of visiting Mars or an asteroid but both goals likely remain at least a decade away -- and will depend greatly on political and budgetary support that will pose challenges to maintain as Washington focuses on slashing federal spending. KSC Director Bob Cabana said NASA was already pressing to push the envelope in deep space. Hardware for a new long-range crew vehicle will arrive at KSC later this year and next month a car-sized robotic rover will arrive on Mars to gather information for future human visits. Ultimately, he said, the shuttle will go down as a critical evolutionary vehicle. "It allowed us to learn how to actually live and work in space,'' Cabana said during a post-landing news conference. "We've done so many things with the shuttle that could not have been done otherwise.'' To see more of The Miami Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.herald.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Miami Herald Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]