John Near Kennedy

Before Atlantis' last flight, shuttle era's legacy debated

Scheduled to depart July 8, Atlantis will carry 23,000 pounds of clothing, food and equipment — a year's worth of supplies — for the International Space Station , a partnership of NASA and the space agencies of Europe, Russia, Canada and Japan.

The mission is about far more than carrying supplies to the space station.

It is sparking renewed debate about whether the space shuttle era was worth the price.

Viewed by NASA as some of the most complicated machines ever built, the space shuttles sent probes to Venus and Jupiter, launched and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope and largely built the International Space Station.

The shuttle missions also cost well more than $1 billion a launch, never met their original goal of weekly, inexpensive launches and cost 14 astronauts their lives in two tragedies that shocked and saddened the nation.

On balance, the shuttle's legacy looks solid to many closely involved in the program.

"It will be a celebration. We achieved our mission goals and did everything we set out to do 30 years ago," said Atlantis Cmdr. Chris Ferguson at a recent Johnson Space Center briefing.

"More than any one technology, the space shuttle demonstrated that humans can work together in space, and the most dramatic evidence is the space station," says John Logsdon , author of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon .

Given the high costs and the loss of lives, was the space shuttle program a technological triumph or a tragic, expensive detour for human space exploration?

"Legacy questions are a bit like 'ink blots' onto which we map our hopes and aspirations," says science policy analyst Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado in Boulder. "I can certainly make the case both ways — that the shuttle was a debacle or the shuttle was a triumph."

Others say the shuttle deserves a better sendoff than that.

"The main legacy of the space shuttle is that, while it did not make spaceflight as its designers intended, it made spaceflight far more accessible than any vehicle, Russian or American, to date," says former NASA chief Mike Griffin . "I think a due amount of respect has to be paid to that.

American Antiques Hero Legacies In Need Of Update – Big John! - ist OK

President John Kennedy followed an honor role of many Americans with leadership abilities at many levels, over many decades, in many ways. And we see some signs of that special kind of hero now ending their duty tour in some warn torn hell. And we applaud this US Army Military Intelligence to encourage this, by having an exhausted GI, man or woman, facing some bad dreams ahead, serving his or her final duty tour more as Army Peace Corps bringing in food, blankets, medical supplies and toys for the kids, even chocolate.

And the camera shows this happening right now, as smiling GI’s are climbing off aircraft from the middle east, arriving in central American villages washed away by storm or under the surging volcanic ash again reshaping the valley. They get off without guns, and immediately all pitch in, forming food lines to unload sacks of food to eager out stretched hands, smiling faces, grateful eyes, and a very happy crew of good honest GI Joes and Josephines doing good, as they had learned in Eagle Scouts and know God smiles on Armies like this. And studies show these memories will make better mid night sources of inspiration and hope than of anger and destruction.

And the news today is so topical to what JFK did by creating the Peace Corps to allow idealistic Americans and others to go help people in needy areas on earth learn how to grow their crops better, these GI’s are doing today, and we hear of what the children of 1948 Berlin called during the Berlin Blockage by Russia, all supplies that winter had to be flown in by Allied bombers, mostly American. And on the first mercy flight, an American pilot Hal Halversen stood near the Templehoff Airport fence and handed two sticks of gum to a crowd of children. He said tomorrow he would wriggle the wings of his plane and which field they should be in.

And these frightened children, knowing the occupation forces were seriously confined to bring in coal for winter heat and essential food supplies, found to their amazement that the pilot they named The Chocolate Pfluger wriggled his wings after his regular food drop, came in low, and unloaded over the course of that fall and winter, many hundreds of little parachutes. This Allied mercy mission was known as Operation Vittles, and the press named the Candy Bomber the leader of Operation Little Vittles.

And to now. The mighty mate of the mighiest aircraft carrier still in active duty, the USS Abraham Lincoln, finds it’s mate has been retired from active military duty after many fine years of bumping up against the Evil Empire more than once, never facing a larger naval foe. And we think now that the Warrior John Fizgerald Kennedy has been allowed time off from active duty, that we bring him back as the USS Peace Corp, a mercy ship for emergencies anywhere on earth.

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