On Tuesday, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery took one last flight from Florida to Washington DC, where it will be placed in a museum. This event really put a big punctuation mark on America's ability to put humans in space. I was on The Alyona Show Tuesday to talk to her about what this means, and what's next for us. That interview is now online:
[embed width="610"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxlWf5KJdjY[/embed]
I had to squeeze in a bunch of things there at the end, and I hope I didn't gloss over ideas too much. I said, for example, that nationalism is fine; but what I meant is that national pride is fine, and American citizens wanting our country to do what's best -- specifically, to explore space -- is fine by me. I do think that a key step in that is getting people educated and excited about space travel. Many, perhaps even most, people are interested in it, but in a vague, fuzzy way. Apollo galvanized that natural desire, but we don't have an Apollo-scale program in the works right now (or do we...?
). I'm attending several meetings in the next few weeks with space scientists, astronauts, and movers and shakers in both private and public space exploration, so I'll be very curious to see what they think about this. I may have one or two things of my own to say to them as well. [Updated to note: for some reason, every time I type Alyona's name, I misspell it. There are a handful of typos like that I always seem to make, and someday psychologists will have a name for it. Perhaps Plait's Phumble Phingers. Anyway, I apologize to Alyona and I'll try harder to spellcheck next time!]
