The Death of a Dream and the Need for Manifest Destiny

I always knew I would see the first man on the moon.  I never dreamed I would see the last.
            Dr. Jerry Pournelle

Tomorrow, as I write these words, and earlier today, as I post them (thank you software glitches for the delay), the last Space Shuttle, Atlantis, will land for the final time.  And then, for all practical purposes, it will be over.  America’s manned space program will be gone.

Yes, I know we’ll still have an astronaut corps.  They will still fly, on other nation’s launch systems, to the International Space Station.  At least until it’s deorbited in a few years.  But we won’t have the capability to send our people into space.  We’ll simply be hitching rides on some else’s rockets.  Like other countries used to do on ours.  We will no longer be the wold's leader in manned space exploration.

Long Looks at Short Fiction: "What's It Like Out There?" by Edmond Hamilton

With the final mission of the Shuttle ending next week, I thought this would be an appropriate story to write about. 

"What's It Like Out There?" is probably Hamilton's best known story, certainly his most reprinted, and arguably his best.  It concerns an astronaut, Frank Haddon, who has returned from the second Mars expedition and his adjustment back to civilian life on Earth.

A victim of Martian sickness, Haddon had just been released from the hospital in Arizona, where the Mars program is headquartered.  Before he goes home, he has to honor some promises to visit the families of some of the men who didn't come back.  As he travels, everyone wants to know what it's like out there.  They usually don't bother to listen to the reply, or try to tell him how dry/cold/etc. it's been locally. 

The truth is that the whole experience was a living hell.  Yet he can't bring himself to hurt the grieving families and finances with the facts, so he makes things up about how they died.  Rather than pain, their passings are peaceful; rather than shot as a muntineer, one's death is described as an accident.