Eileen Collins Quits

Got Scared? I Would Too
The first female commander of the US Shuttle fleet called it quits citing family as a reason. I would've cited boredom between flights and you know, the issue that maybe the shuttle was nowhere near as safe as advertised when she first joined the ranks of astronauts.

Collins, 49, commanded NASA’s first shuttle mission – STS-114 aboard Discovery – since the 2003 Columbia disaster, and is a veteran of four orbiter flights throughout a nearly 16-year astronaut career.

"Eileen Collins is a living, breathing example of the best that our nation has to offer," said NASA chief Michael Griffin, in a statement. "She is, of course, a brave, superb pilot and a magnificent crew commander.”

But the experienced shuttle astronaut will not plunge into a post-spaceflight career immediately. Collins said she’s reserved the entire upcoming summer to spend with her husband, Pat Youngs, daughter Bridget, 10, and son Luke, 5.

“They’ve put up with all of my training schedules and then I was gone for five weeks over last summer,” Collins said of her family, citing the three weeks of quarantine and two weeks in space during her last mission, not to mention the many national and international appearances that followed her return. “Now that it’s been eight or nine months, I’m just going to chill out and finish the remaining work to be done from STS-114, then it’s on to something new.”

Collins said she hopes her retirement will also allow newer astronauts an opportunity to fly before the shuttle fleet itself retires in 2010. Though a native of Elmira, New York, Collins said she will remain in Houston, Texas – home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center – for the time being.

“It’s important to me that these young people get a chance to fly,” Collins said. “It’s very important to the country to have more people that have flown in space because we take that spaceflight experience with us, which is a valuable thing to have when you go on to design future spacecraft and educate young people.”

Errr, yeah Commander Collins. Let's all share around the death seat. I just couldn't bear to watch STS-114 come back down because it was so nerve wracking.

When I went to JAXA earlier in the year, I found myself looking at the experiment module JAXA had built at Tsukuba for the International Space Station. It's a very big module and the only thing that can get it up to orbit is of course the shuttle. Of course the shuttle quickly got suspended after STS-114, so I pointed out this module was at risk of never getting up to the ISS. You should've seen the grim looks I got.

One JAXA engineer spat out "I hate people who say shit tlike that!" and walked away.
The other JAXA engineer said "How do you know?"
I told him about the shuttle's structural woes and how fundamentally unsound it was and he said "Well, you've done your research. We're just praying it works well enough here."
So even people in the space exploration business are willing to admit that's that.