When I was a child, I dreamed about becoming an astronaut, and I remember that when I was around 12 years old, I followed very closely the mission that took Rodolfo Neri Vela, the first mexican astronaut, into space. Down the road, I started to grow and realized that becoming an astronaut was far within my range of opportunities, so the idea of one day getting on a Space Shuttle started to vanish.
Today after reading the news at CNN I saw that NASA has a plan to retire space shuttles from service by September 30th of 2010. NASA plans to sell each of these space shuttles in $42 million dollars, an amount that doesn’t sound like a fortune, considering what they represent, I’m sure there’s a lof of millionaires out there that would be willing to buy one of these, but NASA only wants to sell them to institutions within the United States, that besides paying such amount of money, also are willing to display these shuttles for public view. This reduces the list of possible buyers to Universities, Museums and similar institutions in the U.S.
The note from CNN doesn’t reveal any details of what kind of space vehicles they would use to replace the space shuttles, but I’m almost certain that whatever thing they want to use, would make trips to space a lot more cheaper.
I guess that now that the space shuttles are displayed in public places, I might get a chance to get on one of these space shuttles, something that I would’ve enjoyed a lot when I was 12 years old.
Tags: astronaut, NASA, space, Space Shuttle
