Astronaut Melvin reflects on last shuttle mission

Friday was a day of mixed emotions for Lynchburg astronaut Leland Melvin, as the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off for the International Space Station one last time.

"It was incredible because there were a lot of people (here) who hadn't seen the launch before," Melvin said in a phone interview from Cape Canaveral.

"They were just so, so inspired. But at the same time, for the astronauts, for the engineers and scientists and workers here at the Cape, it's bittersweet."

Once Atlantis returns from its mission — to deliver equipment and supplies to the station — the space shuttle fleet will be retired after 30 years and 135 flights.

Melvin, who has an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Richmond and his master's in materials science engineering from the University of Virginia, has worked for NASA for 22 years. He has gone up in Atlantis twice, in 2008 and 2009, and now works as the agency's associate education administrator.

He said the shuttle is an amazing vehicle, but that its job — to build the space station and deploy satellites and telescopes like the Hubble — is done.

"It's been around for 30 years," he said. "It either needs a significant upgrade, or we need to retire it. If we're no longer going to be using it to build the space station, then its utility as a vehicle for servicing (it) is pretty much up."

"As an astronaut who loves to fly on the shuttle, I'd love to see it stay," he added. "But, I think, for the grand plan that we have for the future of space flight, it just doesn't fit into that equation."

That grand plan has changed over the years.

In 2004, President Bush ordered NASA to retire the fleet by the end of the decade and begin designing lower-cost rockets that would take us back to the moon.

But in 2010, President Obama set a new course: Mars.

He has charged NASA with developing spacecrafts that will take astronauts to nearby asteroids or the red planet. (The current shuttle fleet cannot leave low-earth orbit, making trips to either impossible.)

Astronauts still will be able to get to the space station via the Russian craft Soyuz, which Melvin said has been taking people to the space station from the beginning. The hope is that they'll eventually be able to get there on private-sector crafts, but those are still in development.

While visiting an asteroid or Mars may sound like something out of a big-budget summer movie, Melvin said it is possible, as long as the resources are there and the right technology is created.

It would likely take between eight and nine months to get to Mars, he said, but more research needs to be done to figure out how the human body can withstand that much solar radiation.

Then there are more practical considerations, like how the astronauts would get enough exercise while in flight.

"How do you exercise if your spaceship is not big enough to have your equipment? If you can't exercise, your bones will be brittle and your muscles won't function properly," he said. "You step out on your big debut, on Mars' soil, and you break your leg."

Obama has said he thinks NASA can reach Mars by 2030, a prediction that calls to mind another one from the space program's past.

"JFK said we were going to send a man to the moon and bring him home safely, and we did it," Melvin said. "It was a charge from the president: 'This is where we're going to go.' It was a grand challenge, a grand goal that we as a nation decided to try to achieve.

"We are intrinsically a civilization that is curious, and we are explorers by nature. If we get the right resources, if we get the right inspiration ... we'll still have a very vibrant space program."