Just before dawn today, U.S. astronauts folded their tray tables and returned their seats to an upright position as the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down on Runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center. After five decades, our long National Space Stunt is over. Designed by Dr. Evel Knievel, the U.S. manned space effort sent humans into the cold void of space to definitively prove … um, that humans could go into space. Perhaps NASA will actually devote some of its funds to science now.
The space shuttle Endeavour landed in Florida early this morning. The 20-year-old space heap was cobbled together out of spare parts from the 1984-model Discovery and 1985 Atlantis shuttles. Endeavour’s next trip? It’s going to a museum.
So is another spacecraft. George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic Mothership is headed to the Smithsonian. Not the original 1976 stage prop — it went to a junkyard in Maryland — but a mid-Nineties version. That’s right, Endeavour is about the same age as the Mothership.
Space shuttle Atlantis is even older. First launched in 1985. it will fly again on NASA’s last space shuttle mission in July.
Related:
“Spaceport Opens for Tours,” Monica Drake, New York Times
“Australians create ‘space beer’ for intergalactic tourists,” The Telegraph
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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