Journey to Space

1

We are the species that explores,

that fashions vessels

to carry us into the unknown.

We sailed the planet of our birth,

saw its wonders and made it home.

And it wasn't enough.

We built flying machines

to explore higher, faster, farther.

Heroes flew them beyond

what once seemed possible.

And it wasn't enough.

In time, we created special craft

that would ferry us

to the edge of space and back.

And as always, there were the few...

brave and brilliant souls...

ready to guide this vessel through dangers

in the name of discovery.

Using the space shuttle,

we built an unprecedented

outpost in the heavens.

We learned in the weightless world

of the International Space Station,

peered into the dark night

of an infinite universe.

And it wasn't enough.

Now we are fashioning vessels to set off

on our greatest adventure

of exploration ever:

to Mars and beyond.

Who knew that 30 years

would go by so quickly?

That these unique spacecraft

would leave in their wake

a public captivated

by their achievements...

...a planet poised at the brink

of deep-space exploration.

As an astronaut, I definitely felt

I was saying good-bye to a long-time

friend when the last shuttle landed.

My name is Chris Ferguson.

I was lucky enough to fly

on three shuttle missions,

one of them on Endeavour.

So it's no surprise

that I wanted to be there

when she was headed for her new home

at the California Science Center

in Los Angeles.

From the look of it,

you might think it took

as much engineering to get Endeavour

through the streets of L.A.

as launching her into orbit.

Watching the orbiter squeeze

through the city neighborhoods,

you could feel just how much the

shuttle had come to stand for,

almost as if it had taken

all of us into space.

I sure don't want the world to forget

this remarkable spacecraft

and those who built it,

and the legacy they left,

lighting the way toward

our next frontier in space.

They're coming.

The shuttle was the first

reusable piloted spacecraft.

And its engineering and software

was so bulletproof,

it could be flown by computers

less powerful than today's smartphones.

Two hundred.

One hundred.

At 235 miles per hour,

the shuttle had

the fastest touchdown speed

of any flying vehicle ever built.

When you glide 220,000 pounds

of spacecraft

to a no-power landing,

the gear hits with a major whomp.

Touchdown.

Conceived in the 1970s

as a kind of winged delivery truck

to build a United States

low-Earth-orbit space station...

Give you a payload I.D. of one.

...the shuttle actually flew

more than a decade beyond

original expectations.

It was the shuttle program

that allowed us to do

real ongoing work in space,

to put delicate equipment

into orbit and to retrieve

and fix that equipment

when things went wrong.

Orbiters deployed, retrieved and repaired

over a hundred scientific

and communications satellites.

And no missions were more

important to our understanding

of deep space than the

five flights, beginning in 1993,

made to repair and upgrade

the Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble affirmative.

You have a go for release.

I think history will view

the Hubble Space Telescope

as one of the crowning

achievements in astronomy.

The Hubble gave us an unprecedented

view of both our closest neighbors

and of galaxies

unimaginably far from our own.

Further space telescope

investigations have revealed

that the number of Earth-like planets

capable of harboring liquid water

is vastly greater than

scientists once calculated.

In 1995, the shuttles began

a new era of

international space exploration

when Atlantis docked, for the first time,

with the Russian MIR station.

Eight inches.

One-oh-point-oh-seven.

One-oh-six.

Four inches.

Now. We have capture.

Altogether, the orbiters

made 11 trips to visit Mir.

These missions established a level

of international cooperation and expertise

that continues to this day.

Though MIR no longer orbits Earth,

the shuttle proved itself

as a brilliant reusable tool

that allowed us to live,

build and do science

in the weightless environment of space.

But the shuttles' truest legacy crosses

the sky above us every 90 minutes.

The International Space Station

could never have been built

without the shuttles' payload

and space-walk capabilities.

Space shuttles and Russian

Soyuz and Proton rockets

made more than 40 flights to construct

the International Space Station...

a true engineering miracle.

All three of my Orbiter missions

were to the ISS.

Modules built by NASA partners in Asia,

Europe and North America,

came together above Earth,

over a period of 13 years,

to create a floating world

longer than a football field

and with more living space

than a six-bedroom house.

A typical ISS mission

requires an astronaut

to live six months onboard.

But some crew members will spend a year

learning even more

about the very real physical

and psychological stresses

of long-term separation from Earth.

These missions and the 15 nations

that designed, built and crew the ISS,

forever changed space exploration

into a cooperative international program

and made a true home

and science lab like no other.

# Wash away my troubles #

# Wash away my pain #

# With the rain in Shambala... #

ISS system designs

and scientific experiments

have spawned a multitude

of Earth-useful discoveries,

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