Last Shuttle Lifts Off; NASA Says Space Program Still Strong
Friday, July 8, 2011
By: Judith Smelser

July 8, 2011 | WMFE - Space Shuttle Atlantis defied all the odds Friday morning with an on-time liftoff from Kennedy Space Center. It was the start of the final space shuttle mission, and also the beginning of a period of uncertainty for NASA.

[Photo Credit: NASA/Fletcher Hildreth] 

NASA forecasters said there was only a 30% chance the weather would let Atlantis get off the pad.  When the clouds finally cleared, a technical glitch popped up with just 30 seconds left in the countdown.  In the end, though, it only made for extra drama leading up to a spectacular launch.

 “To me it looked like it was lifting off in slow motion,” said NASA’s Mike Moses, a shuttle program veteran.  “It was very moving; it was very beautiful.”

His voice shook slightly as he recalled the moment at a press conference after the launch.

The day was especially bittersweet for the more than 2,000 people who will lose their jobs when Atlantis’s mission is through.  More than 4,000 others have already been laid off.

“We’re gonna be going through a tough time,” said Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana. “We’re gonna have more folks walking out the door here in a few weeks, and they were - and are - performing their jobs absolutely flawlessly right up to the very end.”

Cabana bristles at the questions that are now swirling around the future of America’s human spaceflight program and the future of Kennedy Space Center itself.

“All this talk about, NASA’s adrift, we don’t have a plan – we do have a plan,” he said. 
“We’re enabling commercial space, we have the commercial crew program here at Kennedy.”

NASA hopes private space firms can move quickly to start sending cargo and eventually crew to the International Space Station.  For now, though, U.S. astronauts will be riding to the station on Russian Soyuz rockets.  That has given rise to numerous concerns, which NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden addressed in a video he released just after Atlantis’s launch.

“Some say that this final shuttle mission will mark the end of America’s fifty years of dominance in human spaceflight,” Bolden said.  “I want to make clear that American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half century because we’ve laid the foundation for success.”

Despite the questions about what that next half century will look like for NASA, Friday was a day for celebration at Kennedy Space Center.

Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach says it was hard to leave the Launch Control Center after the liftoff.

“It was like the end of a party, and you just don’t want to go,” he said.  “You just wanna hang around a little bit longer and relish our friends and what we’ve accomplished.  It was very special.”

Atlantis is scheduled to land back at Kennedy Space Center in just under two weeks’ time.