Space relations

After 30 years and 135 launches, NASA sent its last shuttle into space Saturday. If my expertise in space travel tells me anything, this is going to be a tough but necessary breakup.

Ok, I may have been exaggerating my knowledge regarding space, but I’m practically an honor roll student when it comes to breakups. If I apply the experiences I’ve had to this scenario, I can only predict it will be loud, messy and unfair. But which side loses more?

Remember the 1987 movie “Harry and the Hendersons”? The scene of John Lithgow screaming hurtful words at Harry the bigfoot because their joyous relationship cannot go further fits NASA’s breakup perfectly. In that scene, the shuttle is Harry the bigfoot — hurt and confused that NASA is throwing away everything they had together.

NASA isn’t a high schooler though; it isn’t breaking up with the shuttle program without reason. In their relationship, the shuttle program is the trophy wife and NASA is the breadwinner. But NASA would rather just find a new honey than keep dusting off shuttles and paying an average of $1.5 billion per year. It’s too bad because the shuttle program wasn’t originally such a gold digger.

In the 1970s, the shuttle program was projected to cost $15 million per launch, and NASA was aiming for about 48 launches per year. Now, you’re probably thinking what I’m thinking: someone decided the tequila couldn’t wait until they got home from the office.

It isn’t only money that is an issue, though; the shuttle program just doesn’t let NASA go deep enough. NASA has decided to pick up its game and start more deep space missions because lately its missions have settled for just the tip of the space iceberg. President Obama was quoted as saying, “Let’s start stretching the boundaries so we aren’t doing the same thing over and over again.”

All of the awesome things the shuttle program did for us don’t rev our engines like they used to. Piecing it all together makes the reasons for the break up quite simple: The current shuttle program was expensive and unimaginative in bed ... I mean space.

Now that the breakup is official, the next phase of nostalgia will set in. Cue the montage of all the good times they had together and wondering if they were able to stay together in another life. But nostalgia won’t last long. NASA will find some new toys and move on quickly, leaving the shuttles it once loved to be admired in museums.

Private companies such as SpaceX, Sierra Nevada and Boeing will likely compete to make the new spacecrafts for NASA’s missions. Luckily for NASA, it won’t ever have to worry about the awkward encounter with an ex at its old favorite restaurant with its new partners.

­— agreiner@indiana.edu