Just before dawn today, U.S. astronauts folded their tray tables and returned their seats to an upright position as the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down on Runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center. After five decades, our long National Space Stunt is over. Designed by Dr. Evel Knievel, the U.S. manned space effort sent humans into the cold void of space to definitively prove … um, that humans could go into space. Perhaps NASA will actually devote some of its funds to science now.
The 1985-model Atlantis Space Shuttle will be stuffed, mounted, and exhibited at Cape Canaveral’s Kennedy Space Center, which will become Florida’s largest theme park outside Orlando. And rightly so. The shuttle is a monument to bad engineering design, the equivalent of using a sixteen-wheeler on family runs to daycare and the supermarket.
And so ends an era. Without the inspiration of the trillion-dollar Man In Space Program, America’s young people now face the challenge of developing their own imaginations. Pray it can be done.
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Tags: aerospace industry, astronauts, Atlantis, engineering, flight, human space flight, man in space, NASA, outer space, shuttle, space, space flight, space shuttle, Space Shuttle Atlantis, space shuttle program, STS-135
NotionsCapital 
July 23, 2011 at 1:41 pm
UPDATES:
“Dear NASA, This is Why I Want to be an Astronaut,” Mark Thompson, DiscoveryNews.com
30 Years of the NASA Space Program {Infographic},” Science-Based Life
“How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle,” Amos Zeeberg, Discover
“Former NASA Chief: Shuttle Was Oversold,” Michael Griffin, Aviation Week
“Was the Space Shuttle a Mistake?” John M. Logsdon, Technology Review