When you close your eyes and imagine yourself on a journey to the space, I bet you are not seeing the 'Soyuz' or one of the 'Apollos', but some of the transporters of the NASA, the 'ferry-planes', the nearest that has been created by men for the journey to the space to seem like an everyday routine vehicle. Beyond the capital importance in the conquering of the space, the transporters are icons from the 20th to the 21st century. The image during decades of economical, strategic and military power. It retires today to the National Museum of Air and Space in Washington; metaphor that time has changed.
The transporters are also powerful cultural icons because, for great many people, are the only space shuttle they have known all their lives. The capacity of these vehicles take off like skyrockets and land like an airplane that fulfills a lot of dreams of space travel that exist in fiction novels and films before the transporters became a reality.
It was in a transporter that James Bond (Roger Moore) travelled in Moon-Raker in 1979, Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones, when they were improbable action heroes in Space Cowboy in 2000; Bruce Willis perforated an asteroid in Armageddon in 1998, Homer Simpson discovered the charm of potato chips in gravity zero, and when Superman decided to return in 2006, substituted the original helicopter by a transporter. Now, It's in a museum but not dead. There would be countless souvenirs: models, T-shirts, home or office decors, toys, bags, boxes ... films,TV shows ... for decades to come yet.
In 30 years, 4 key points:
1) The Shuttle had effected 134 flights, transported 355 astronauts. 70% of people who had been to Space had used this transport.
2) NASA foresaw at first to construct 4 airships, plus 1 for testing called 'Enterprise', but the accident of the Challenger gave cause to the construction of a new one, The Endeavour.
3) Two disasters in 134 missions. Two of them ended in catastrophe: the Challenger blew up as soon as it took off in 1986; and the Columbia disintegrated in 2003 when in contact with the atmosphere on the return journey.
4) NASA puts an end today to 30 years of success with the farewell flight of the Atlantis. The airships Soyuz will in the following years the only way of going to the international station.
