A word of advice to all you budding innovators out there: when you’re busy pushing the technological boundaries, don’t neglect the name of your trailblazing ‘baby’. Although its capabilities would have obviously been the same, it’s hard to imagine people getting quite as excited as they did about our top ranking, most expensive science experiment if it had still been called the ‘Space Truck’.
Costing more than Portugal’s annual GDP, NASA’s Space Shuttle Program completed a total of 135 missions during its 30-year lifetime from 1981 to 2011. Designed to launch like a rocket but land like a glider, the space shuttle fleet comprising Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, completed all manner of missions, from ferrying crew and equipment back and to from the International Space Station and delivering the Hubble Space Telescope into low Earth orbit to repairing and retrieving satellites.
One of the program’s most closely watched missions though must have been Endeavour’s final journey from Los Angeles International Airport to the California Science Center. The 12-mile trip passed not in the blink of an eye as you might expect but took two days as the shuttle was transported through the city streets, at one point being towed over the 405 freeway by, you guessed it, a truck!
* All costs calculated in 2017 $US
