The Faded Dreams of the Space Shuttle

In 1981, Analog magazine was ecstatic about NASA's first Shuttle launch and proselytized a new age of exploration (and militarization) that never quite came true

As a space-obsessed child of the late seventies and early eighties who once dreamed of being an astronomer, I had my own holy trinity of the future: Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Space Shuttle.

Given that we were still using rotary-dial phones and our home computers came with a whopping 48K RAM, it can be hard to understand now how much it felt like we were living in the future science fiction had been dreaming of for decades. But in some very real ways, it was true. Robots were invading assembly lines. Computers were encroaching on traditional office work. Satellite TV was bringing dirty movies to rural America.

The Space Shuttle was the crown jewel of 1980s space age life. It was a rebirth of American can-do-ism that was lost with the cessation of moon missions in 1972 and the spectacular disintegration of Skylab over Australia in 1979. Before it even flew, the shuttle was embedded in culture — Star Trek fans successfully campaigned to christen the prototype Shuttle Enterprise and Jam…