J. T. Chapman, a friend and fellow nature center volunteer, has been very upset over the demise of the space shuttle program and the government’s refusal to leave one of the four retired shuttles in Houston. Most, if not all, NASA workers at the Johnson Space Center and other NASA facilities, both active and retired, probably feel exactly the same way J.T. expresses his outrage here:
I'm proud to have been part of this GREAT venture. I spent 10 years of my NASA career in the Space Station Program Office and the JSC WP-2 Project Office making this happen. I was in the Skunk Works early on and helped establish the initial requirements for the data and operations management systems our astronauts are using today. We would have gotten it done and on schedule by 1994 as President Reagan mandated if the politicians had gotten out of the way. They didn't.
That the Shuttle Program is ending is a travesty. Our Shuttles - the most complex machines ever built by man - still have many good useful flights left. I was instrumental in writing the requirements for software and proceedures for the Shuttle Guidance and Navigation and served as a Guidance Officer in Mission Control on the front row (the "Trench) for the first 13 Shuttle flights. That OUR Orbiters will become museum artifacts and the fact that we have to depend on the Russians for even access to the ISS pisses me off. That Houston will NOT get one of those artifacts enrages me. POLITICS! - shit- I have a RIGHT to be pissed. I earned that right.
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