With the recent flyovers of the retired Space Shuttles to their respective museums there has been much waxing nostalgic about the glory days of the Shuttle era. Call me a hater if you must but they were not NASA's finest (decades long) moment. Not only was the cost of the program greater in treasure (aka "tax dollars") and human lives than another manned space vehicle, but the thing was cutting edge 1972 technology. Sure, it could land on a runway (if it didn't blow up on ascent or burn up on reentry), but we'd been taking men to space and landing them that way since the X-15 program in the 50's.

NASA's engineering reputation was built in the 60's, during the space race. During that time their designs were at the cutting edge. In a single decade we saw three manned launch systems go operational without a single in-flight casualty! The following four decades saw one system – the Shuttle – and claimed fourteen human lives, including one civilian and Israel's first astronaut (who perversely met his death over Palestine, Texas).

If you listen to recent media interviews by NASA personnel there is often a bitter undertone to it and a general impression that American spaceflight is dead. They seem loathe to mention the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Service) program, initiated under the Bush administration, to introduce commercial aerospace industry alternatives to routine orbital access for cargo and personnel. It's in the COTS participants that you find that flame of 60's NASA still shining brightly. Innovative thinking and ideas that go from "drawing board" to launch pad in the matter of a few years. And designs built on modularity/expandability and long-range planning.

Next week will see a milestone in the COTS program as Space-X launches its first Dragon supply capsule to the ISS [link] . Plans for the manned Dragon capsule [link] already well underway and could be flying within the next two years (ahead of the best estimates for the now-cancelled and more expensive Ares booster to fly the same mission).

So all this panicked hand-waving the mainstream media (from ABC News to NPR) is spewing about "an unprecedented gap in American manned space access" is just sour grapes and hyperbole. The '76-'81 gap was far more real and significant. Today astronauts still fly over our heads each day, a new generation of launch vehicles is ON THE PAD, and NASA continues to plan and create the hardware for missions beyond Earth orbit [link] .

And now.... ART! Stuff to look at if you'd missed it. Click to see the bigger versions: