In 2004, a Senate subcommittee gathered on Capitol Hill to ask a question that now sounds quaint: Could America still reach space without the space shuttle? The shuttle was grounded, 14 astronauts had died in two disasters, and the hearing room was thick with the anxiety of a nation that feared it had lost a step. Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), who had flown on the shuttle, warned that without it the country might spend years relying on Russian rockets. Nobody disagreed.