Science and Health

Pride and frustration mark end of shuttle flights

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-04-29 10:47

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - For the residents of Florida's Space Coast, the approaching end of the shuttle program brings a mix of pride in what they helped build and frustration that America has no new spacecraft ready to launch the next generation of explorers.

NASA is set to launch the shuttle Endeavour on its final voyage on Friday, and sister ship Atlantis will close out the 30-year-old shuttle program when it returns from a mission set for launch in June.

"I'll cry when it launches. I'll cry when it comes back." said Laverne Woodard, who began working for NASA as a shuttle payload logistician in 1980, a year before the first shuttle flight. "When you watch them go up, you feel you've touched a piece of history."

Woodard retired five years ago but came right back to the Kennedy Space Center as a volunteer and has attended all 133 shuttle launches to date.

She is awed by the scope of the shuttle's scientific research and can recite a list of everyday innovations that evolved from the space program - cordless power drills, certain medical lasers, improved prosthetic limbs, and GPS devices to guide motorists.

"We are going to miss the shuttle program and the research that it's generated," said Bob Elder, facilities manager at the Cocoa Beach Pier, which juts out into the turquoise Atlantic Ocean south of the spaceport. Thousands of spectators jam the pier and adjacent sandy beach to watch the shuttles go up.

Elder said he would miss "the excitement, the American pride, for the youth and the aviation industry."

"There will be a lot of sad people, a lot of very worried people," when the shuttle program ends, he said.

Space exploration is woven into the fabric of life in Titusville, Merritt Island, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Melbourne and other communities on Florida's central Atlantic coast. Children attend Astronaut High School and Satellite High. The telephone area code - 3-2-1 - reflects the countdown to launch.