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After more than 130 missions over 30 years and at a price of ? 120 billion, so the space shuttle program ends on 8 Last July with the launch of Atlantis. Two veterans of the flight talking about the thrill of takeoff, the view from the top and the next step for humanity in space

The ritual of hurling people into space is deeply rooted in the fabric of Florida 's Space Coast, a 40-mile strip of coast that runs from Cape Canaveral Titusville to Palm Bay in the south.

In 1961, crowds gathered here to see Alan Shepard blast off aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket and become the first US citizen in space. The Apollo programme to land men on the moon came swiftly after. From here, astronauts flew to the moon, trundled around in buggies, struck a few golf balls and collected lumps of moon rock before heading home.

But the area that lives in the shadow of the space program is, before the end of an era. In the past 30 years, Kennedy Space Center is home to the Space Shuttle, NASA 's great hope for space travel cheap and banal. Morning, a million spectators are expected to gather viewpoints along the coast to the launch of Atlantis, the 135th To witness shuttle mission and the last flight of the fleet. If Atlantis in 12 days time, they are dismantled and sent to a museum.

The space shuttle was known to fall short of expectations. Estimates put the cost for each start at an exorbitant $ 1.5 billion. Preparing for a mission took months if not years. And hardly become routine flights. Instead of a trip into space once a week - as designers had hoped - NASA managed only a handful of launches per year.

And then there's the human cost. In 1986 the shuttle Challenger was destroyed during launch when a booster rocket, exploded killing its crew of seven. NASA has made great efforts to resolve the problem and looked hard at the management failures that led to the accident. Then, in 2003, another shuttle was lost into the atmosphere, this time as a crack-super-hot plasma into the wing of Columbia, after damage from foam falling off the main tank caused during launch. Another seven people were killed. Michael Griffin, the former chief administrator at the U.S. space agency Nasa, the 's ambitions in space laments how not to do more than endlessly around the earth, "\ inherently flawed" so-called shuttle \.

At main engine cut-off, all three shuttle engines shut off and "bang!", just like that you're floating. The transition is instantaneous and you feel your body going forwards as if it's a compressed spring and anything that's not tied down goes floating by. You can't see the ground too easily until a point when the whole stack rolls upright and you go from inverted over the Earth to upright, and as you sweep through that roll, you can look out of the window and see the Earth opening up underneath you. I'll never forget that sight on my very first flight when we rolled in the direction and I was looking out of that window. I saw the curvature of the Earth, and the ocean there, the thin blue line at the horizon that is the atmosphere, and it was just an incredible sight. And then it was: "OK, come back in on the dials, let's get back to work."

Returning to Earth

Thus abandoned, detach and fly around the space station and that 's all very slowly and dancing and pretty but not very dramatic. Then you spend the day idling around the Earth, packing things and getting ready to come home. Get up in the early days of entry and it 'sa sprint. You have to pack everything to save everything and adjust your pressure. The whole business really starts to burn the de-orbit. Turn the shuttle so the tail into the wind shows up when you like, burn, let it rip with the motors for a long time to turn the shuttle kick out of orbit, then the shuttle over so his nose is the right way for hitting the atmosphere. Very soon after that you start descending into the upper layers of the atmosphere. You do not see 't much to begin with, but after. One moment you are this beautiful cherry red gloss all get around the shuttle and you can see, grab the tail, it is a form of pulses, but over the front cockpit window, it 's just a beautiful cherry red that is due to . see In daylight you can see by this red mist and see the world. In fact, we have come a sunrise by the red glow of the entry.

SA

PSThe shuttle has to slow down a couple of large S-curves over the Pacific Ocean. In our case, we were zipping through Panama and Cuba to Florida very quickly, in just a few minutes. They pop out of the sky at Mach five [miles 3840 hours], and any of you hear a double bang as you go transonic. Then you have this great kind of spiral dive over Florida, and come down to shoot in the direction of the runway to do, pointed nose almost in the dirt. In the last minute, the captain pulls the nose up and it squeaks at the airstrip. You feel the main wheels go down, then the nose wheel, they implement the slide, slow down, and then gradually roll to a stop. At this point there are a lot of smiles. The people are happy. Hopefully, the mission is going well, no one was injured, all tasks are accomplished and you did it all without shame or even your friends.

I 've flown on two shuttle, and they both felt a little different. They are true to their individual characters and ships with their own nicknames and shock. You look at the shuttle, it 's not as if it' s this pristine, shiny, shiny piece of metal technology - it looks like a ship, it 's got bruises and burns and multiple internal teams have the Lack whacked and you can see scratches and things. They are ships, which was operated and lived in and done all these incredible trips with their individual characters. I am personally very pleased with the shuttle. As they wind in museums I 'll go and see them and I' ll be happy to see them like old friends.