No More Shuttles

I find it sad that we'll no longer see such a site, or new photos, like this anymore.  With the ending of the Space Shuttle Program, a generation of American children will be deprived of the inspiration I remember feeling as a kid.  I remember when the Challenger blew up in 1986 when I was in college and how I sat dumb-founded in my apartment's living room, staring at my roommate's TV, struggling to comprehend how this could happen.  Then, 17 years later, on a weekend in 2003, and I was driving my car in South Carolina when I heard on the radio that Columbia broke up upon re-entry over East Texas, and I grappled with how this could happen, again.

But every time I see a picture of a US Space Shuttle (The Soviets had developed one too, but it never went into space - one of my roommates at Rose Hulman had a Russian dictionary, that described the Russian Space shuttle, in great detail) I remember all the good things the shuttle did - building the international space station, taking up research projects into space, inspiring generations of young engineers and scientists... and it saddens me that this era has passed.