Rob Coppinger: February 2006 Archives

In Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey the 21^st century was a world of rotating space stations, Moon bases and spaceplanes and the passengers, national government and United Nations personnel.

Space was another location for nations to play out their political games.

But recent events suggest that Kubrick's movie, based on Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Sentinel, was no where near as fantastic as the reality that could be before us; air launched Russian and US suborbital rocket glider vehicles carrying tourists on flights into weightlessness from the Middle East and the US state of New Mexico.

“Excuse me sir, I’m a federal agent, why are you photographing this building,” the voice called out.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia and its seven crew on re-entry and on 28 January it was twenty years since the Space Shuttle Challenger's ascent disaster in 1986, which killed its seven astronauts. Now the remainingfleet of three Orbiters is expected to be retired by 30 September 2010, 29 years and almost six months after the maiden flight of Shuttle Columbia in April 1981.