Inner space is useful. Outer space is history.

This is the sub-heading on this weeks Economist. The mag hit my mailbox earlier in the week and I was reminded, in big bold print, that the space age as I know it is over.

I grew up enthralled with the US shuttle program. While my parents and the generation before mine huddled around the TV in the 60s to watch our country pour billions and billions of dollars simply to stake claim in space from the Russians, I had the Shuttle program; a long term program funded for 30 years to help ensure the US had access to space for technological, scientific and exploratory purposes. I went to Space Camp. Twice. I built models of Columbia and Discovery. I remember where I was when Challenger and Columbia both met tragedy head-on (laid up with Mono and moving my brother into his first apartment, respectively). My parents graciously took me and my brother to see a shuttle launch when I was a pre-teen. We climbed up and sat on the roof of the minivan and watched Atlantis blast off from mere miles away. Hopefully this weekend it will soar into space with 7.8 million pounds of thrust for the last time. To this day a shuttle launch is the one thing I tell friends and colleagues they must do in their lifetime. But soon, they can no longer, ever, see a Space Shuttle launch into space.

The US has had a government funded space program going on 60 years; 30 of which was operated by the Shuttle. After Atlantis, the only way to get an American man or experiment into space is via Russia. Take away what you want about that statement, but it is a bit hard to swallow.

So now we turn to private, commercialized space programs. The likes of Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Can it be commercially viable? Will we launch trained astronauts into orbit as we do today, or just millionaires looking for a joyride? NASA will focus on low-orbit, unmanned missions and lay off countless thousands of staff in this historic decision and ‘sometime’ in the next decade return to space in the form of a program to explore beyond just the moon. However, with most decisions in Washington, once the money is cut it’s likelihood to return is few and far between. I read one article in the Guardian that struck a cord: “Crewed space flight is too important a field of human endeavor to play party politics with. Is it not time once more to commit as one nation with one political voice to a new exploration program for Nasa?”. Here, here. I, for one, see the need to slash our federal budget but all one needs to do is look back to the 1960s and see what came of our nation, indivisible, united to see us reach ‘the final frontier’. Without a program on the books to replace the Shuttle, we have failed the hopes and dreams of millions.

Regardless of what we can hope for, and despite what some see is a huge taxpayer money pit of a program, the Shuttle represented an amazing technological and engineering miracle. For the better part of the last three decades, we’ve spent billions to build the ISS. The Shuttle put Hubble into orbit, which provides us unmatched photos of the universe that makes my skin crawl. For those of us passionate about space exploration it was our symbol, our vehicle. Tomorrow, or perhaps by the end of the weekend, it will launch for the last time. This is truly the end of an era for my generation and frankly anyone who was alive to see Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle defeat gravity.