The last space shuttle flight is scheduled to lift off on Friday morning (weather permitting, and it doesn't look too permitting), with Atlantis and a crew of four heading to the International Space Station for 12 days. When the shuttle returns, it will mark the first time in 30 years that manned space flight is not led by Americans as the U.S. seemingly cedes the space stage to other countries.

For some perspective on how this will change NASA and the future of space travel, CultureMap spoke to Patricia Reiff, the director of the Rice Space Institute, which is celebrating 50 years of partnership between Rice University and NASA this fall.

CultureMap: So what is happening on this last space shuttle trip? Aside from the symbolism, is there anything unusual about this mission or it is the same routine?

Patricia Reiff: It will be the last trip of the U-Haul, so to speak, so they are going to get off as much equipment as they can. They are bringing the major module Raffaello and are also taking a lot of other equipment, bringing back other equipment. One of the things we will lose by losing the shuttle is not so much the cargo launch but the ability to bring back cargo.

It's the only thing that can bring back heavy things from space. We'll have to refurbish on site rather than replace. The equipment was designed to be modular, where you plug in a different module, or send up another module. That kind of modularity capability is lost, we will have to take pieces.

CM: What do you think winding down the space shuttle program will mean to NASA and to Houston?

PR: We are definitely going to lose lot of capability, a lot of people that have expertise that is specific and long-lasting. Some are retiring, some are going into other jobs. That loss has already begun. On the other hand, NASA is also looking forward to next generation of space travel to work with commercial entities, and farther topics like Mars, the moon and asteroids.

The idea is that NASA becomes the lead in space exploring where others can't get to and helping the commercials launch.

CM: What will the focus of Johnson Space Center be now, and how big of a change will this entail?

PR: The JSC does a lot of science that is not necessarily related to manned space. Lots of samples from the moon, stardust, meteorites — that observation will continue. That office will also help commercials use the testing facilities so they won't lay fallow. There will be a loss of personnel, and that's a shame for Houston, but they are building up the Orion space module for new generation of launches.

They have protoypes, engineering work been done, the development of that capsule underway, we're not sure where it's going to go. Some say an asteroid, I think the moon. It's still a very exciting place ... It's the end of an era, you mourn your favorite motorcycle but have to sell it to buy a new car, because you can't afford both. It's the same way with Apollo.

CM: Astronauts are kind of the rock stars of the science world, so with this gap in manned space flight, how will it affect up and coming scientists and engineers interested in space?

PR: Two things: They are not stopping to fly people, we are using Russian launches as we have been already, the space station will be in operations through 2020 or longer, so it's not that we won't be traveling into space, we just won't be using our shuttles. Ninety percent of science that NASA does is done through robotic explorations of planets, through Hubble, lots of space telescopes.

I'll admit there will be a loss of caché, if you will. But eventually it will be "Here's the crew that's going back to the moon" or "Here's the crew going to an asteroid." We've flown in circles around Earth a lot.

CM: I hear you turned off one of the last instruments on the moon (from Rice)?

PR: The instrument I turned off is a seismometer plasma detector that studied electrons trapped in the earth's magnetic field.

CM: Can you talk a little about how the space shuttle came about and how the program evolved? What have we learned?

PR: We had hopes we could end up with reusable space vehicle that would launch and land at will and turn around quickly. We had to make a compromise, we ended up with vehicle that a regular airline pilot would say how poor it flies as an airplane. There's no steering jets as with an airplane. It falls 10 feet for every foot it travels — usually those numbers are reversed — it's much more challenging jet to fly and a testament to the automatic system and the humans behind the wheel.

The engineering challenges included the world's biggest thruster, the world's biggest engine, the world's biggest cargo bay. Just a tremendous engineering challenge, like the tiles, getting something lightweight and able to withstand thousand degree temperatures without burning.

A lot of it has to do with biology and human systems in space. We've learned that humans can live in space. We've learned about bone density, how being in space is an analog to aging. There are a number of spinoffs: transistor radios, heads-up displays, all sorts of devices. Another amazing thing from the shuttle is the view of our home planet, how human activities have changed it.

You can see Madagascar bleeding, the rain forest mowed down. It's a good perspective of our fragile planet. The more we look out into space the more we realize it's the only planet we can live on and we better take care of it. That's an important lesson for humans.