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America’s Long Journey Back to Space
By the start of 2003 human spaceflight was almost routine in the United States. The Space Shuttle had carried astronauts into orbit more than sixty times during the 1990s, and the demands of the construction of the International Space Station had created an expectation for regular flights throughout the first decade of the 21st Century.
When the Space Shuttle Columbia launched for the 27th time in January 2003, few people paid much attention to the mission or the seven astronauts onboard. That would change two short weeks later when, amid the stress and high speeds of atmospheric reentry, super-heated gases penetrated the damaged heat shield of the Shuttle and ripped the craft apart, killing the astronauts aboard and scattering debris across the southern United States.
The Columbia disaster marked the beginning of the end of regular human spaceflight in America. Although the Shuttle returned to service two years later, it was no longer trusted as a safe and reliable vehicle for carrying astronauts into orbit and was eventually retired in 2011. Ever since the last Shuttle flight America has relied on the Russian Soyuz for human access to space, and has lacked its own independent means of sending astronauts into orbit.
Less than a year after Columbia broke apart President George W. Bush announced a new vision for NASA, intended to…
