Shuttle flights have helped explore the final frontier: Sara Pagones

NOLA.com: Shuttle flights have helped explore the final frontier: Sara Pagones

Early in the space shuttle program, a friend told me her husband, an aerospace engineer who worked at Michoud, had sought her reaction to a launch.

It wasn't the first time the shuttle had lifted off, it was perhaps the third or fourth. And she felt bad telling him that it had seemed, well, kind of routine.

But he was thrilled to hear that the thrill was gone -- "That's exactly how it should be,'' he told her.

Now, the era of shuttle flights is ending as NASA's workhorse heads for retirement. Discovery, the oldest and most traveled of the space program's fleet, left Cape Canaveral Thursday for its final trip. Two more flights, one by Atlantis and one by Endeavor, are all that remain.

In the shuttle program's 30 years, the feeling that manned space flight had become routine was shattered twice: by the explosion of the Challenger and the disintegration of the Columbia. Both accidents were horrifying reminders that space exploration is anything but run-of-the-mill. It's a dangerous enterprise that human beings have barely begun.

But for my generation, which grew up believing that people would walk on the moon and seeing it happen, it's hard to watch the shuttle program end without a clear idea of what comes next.

It's painful, too, to see the loss of jobs here -- more than 5,000 people worked at the Michoud Assembly Center when it was manufacturing external tanks. Now, Michoud is losing its connection to NASA.

Discovery is destined for a museum, where it will help people look back at 30 years of shuttle flight. But we also need to look forward -- to a future where space flight is, if not routine, at least considered worth pursuing.