The space shuttle changed the way we view the world and changed the way we view the universe. We have emotion today but one thing is indisputable: America is not going to stop exploring. Thank you Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and our ship Atlantis. Thank you for protecting us and bringing this program to such a fitting end. God bless all of you. God bless the United States of America.

And with those words from Shuttle Commander Chris Ferguson this morning, the US Space Shuttle program came to an end.

I’m thirty-six. The shuttle program has been there in the background of my life for most of that. I’ve got hazy elementary school remembrances of the first launch of Columbia. I remember the grief in ’86 when the Challenger exploded after liftoff. I remember the Saturday morning in ’03 wrecked by the news that Columbia broke up on re-entry. Still, the program kept going. It’s always been there.

Sure, the Shuttle’s technology is outdated, and in the scheme of things, it was never much more than a pick-up truck to low Earth orbit. But, when you need to haul parts and tools someplace, a reliable old pickup truck is exactly what you nee to do the job. Because of the shuttle, for example, NASA’s kept the Hubble running for much longer than anyone ever expected, providing scientists with amazing information with which to expand our understanding of the universe. Because of the shuttle program, the planet’s got a pretty kick-ass space station that will continue to provide valuable data from experiments, and real-world experience in how humans handle long-term space living, which will, ideally, help us to craft better plans for further exploration.

And, of course, space ships are just cool.

No one expected these shuttles to last forever. Machines break down, and technology marches on. However, the biggest shame of all this is that there’s nothing definitive in the pipeline to replace the shuttle. For probably the next decade, American astronauts are going to have to hitch a ride with the Russians to get up into orbit. And, if we’re ever going to get out beyond Earth orbit,to places like Mars or moons of Jupiter and Saturn, it makes a lot more sense to start that trip already out of Earth’s gravity well. And here we are, without that trusty old pickup truck to haul up all the stuff we’d need to start building a longer-range spacecraft, and the best vehicle we can borrow right now is the equivalent of a remarkably durable 1970 Datsun hatchback.

In short, we need a new ride, and it’s unlikely that the US space program will be in a position to come up with one any time soon.

If anything good comes from this situation, it’ll be that all of the private space launch companies cropping up will finally get a shot to step up and deliver the new technological advancements to make this work. Some of them are already doing unmanned launches at a lower cost than NASA’s managed. Maybe it’s time to hand the mechanics of getting scientists and explorers into space to private companies…I don’t know.

I hope that the Rutans and Bransons and Musks of the world are up to it; I want them to come up with something game-changing, and I look forward to where they’ll hopefully take us. At the moment, though, I’m still kinda bummed that NASA’s stuck hitching a ride.