After 30 years America’s Space Transportation System or Space Shuttle will be coming to a close. If everything goes as planned, on July 8th, 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis will lift off from launch pad 39/A one last time signaling an end to an era.

Some people are upset by the change. How could NASA let this happen? How will we send astronauts to our $100 billion dollar space station? We should keep flying the shuttle until we have a replacement! Each space shuttle was designed for 100 flights, after all! We’ve only had less than 1/2 of that per vehicle. Heck, Atlantis will have only flown 33 times by the time we retire the vehicle. That leaves 67 more flights by design.

Others feel the shuttle retirement is long overdue. While it is true that each orbiter was designed to fly 100 missions, it was also designed to fly around 25 times per year. Originally the shuttle program was supposed to have over 100 flights per year with a fleet of 4 vehicles making space much more accessible and inexpensive in the process. That means that the shelf life of a space shuttle is really only around 4 to 5 years, not the 25 that we have been running them at. Because of that some parts are no longer available. Some elements of each orbiter are old and need replacing. It’s time to let them retire before we have another catastrophic accident.

As we watch NASA gear up for the final flight, it is hard to not want to keep the status quo. To keep the orbiters flying. Change is always hard. But the cold harsh reality of the situation is that while the Space Shuttle is beautiful, majestic and an awe of engineering it also never lived up to its promise of inexpensive flight to space. Humanity and more specifically America has been locked to Low Earth Orbit due in no small part because of the space shuttle. Funding required to send humans back to the moon, on to Mars and beyond is tied up in this amazing yet inefficient vehicle.

I’ll be sad to see the fleet retire. Heck, I grew up with the space shuttle. Born in 1978 I never knew Apollo or even saw humans set foot on the moon. And at this stage, over 1/2 the planet shares that experience. It is time to change that. I want to be a part of a generation that doesn’t accept Low Earth Orbit as good enough. I want to be part of a generation that goes out there and conquers space flight to other alien bodies in the sky. I want to explore the moon again. I want to go Mars. I want to go beyond! The shuttle can’t do any of that.

The question now is not if we should retire the shuttle. That is all but set in stone. The parts required to fly the orbiter are no longer available, we simply can’t easily fly it again. Now the question is where do we go from here? This is the tipping point. This is the moment in time where we get to decide our future. Will we pony up and fund amazing projects coming out of SpaceX, Blue Origin, Orbital, Masten Space, Armadillo and other innovative space companies? Or will we return to the status quo and have our elected officials try to force NASA to build yet another unsustainable rocket designed by senators rather than scientists.

This is the point were we can choose positive yet difficult change, or we can choose to go back to Low Earth Orbit and leave the exploration to another generation. I choose change. How about you?