NASA Leader: Space Shuttle 'Most Amazing Machine Ever Built'

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden shared his "love affair" with the space shuttle at Tuesday as part of a three-day symposium called "The Space Shuttle: An Engineering Milestone."

The event, which concludes Wednesday, gathered international scientists, engineers, policymakers, students and others to talk about shuttle missions and the future of space exploration.

The final flight in the U.S. shuttle program is set to launch July 8. For the past 30 years, five shuttles (Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour) have flown more than 130 times and traveled more than half a billion miles. 

"It's a bittersweet time for all of us," Bolden said during his opening address at Tech's . Bolden traveled to space four times between 1986 and 1994. His flights included the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first U.S.-Russian shuttle mission.

"You get a little attached," he said, calling the space shuttle "the most amazing machine ever built."

He talked about the advancements that shuttle travel has helped facilitate, including medical breakthroughs such as the development of a salmonella vaccine, as well as crucial research on the earth's ozone layer. Space travel also forged better international relations with countries such as Russia, Bolden said. 

"We've done incredible things," he said. 

Even though the U.S. soon will retire its space shuttle fleet, Bolden said "the future of human space flight looks very bright." He talked about commercial travel to the International Space Station, where future research and further exploration will "open up a new segment of the economy."

"We are very excited about the future," Bolden said. 

Other speakers at the symposium included NASA deputy chief technologist Michael Gazarik and astronauts Steve Hawley and Shannon Lucid.

“The space shuttle program is an engineering accomplishment no other country has been able to duplicate,” Robert Loewy, conference chair and Georgia Tech professor of aerospace engineering, said in a release. 

Tech has a long history of contributing to NASA, according to the university. The U.S. Army created a school of military aeronautics at Tech in 1917. In 1930, the Guggenheim Foundation help fund one of the nation's first schools of aeronautics.

Fourteen Georgia Tech graduates are NASA astronauts, including Eric Boe, who piloted the final flight of Discovery in May, and Sandra Magnus, who will be a mission specialist on Atlantis’ final flight later this month.