Dramatic Photo of Atlantis’ Final Voyage Home as Seen From Space

AWESOME PHOTOS

TOTALLY AWESOME PGOTOS

WOW!!

cool photo, sad day

Yeah Wally, it is a sad day. It's funny to me how we can pay $60 million a pop to hitch a ride to the space station with the Russians and the money to prepare for a mission to MARS, where I personally don't think anyone other than NASA has any interest in, but can't find enough money to keep a shuttle program of some type going.Something is wrong with that picture. Am I the only one seeing it?

Wayne, the shuttle retirement was announced in 2003. You sound shocked.

No, Matt, not shocked, BUT, that was 8 years ago. I just think it's stupid not to start working on a replacement back then, knowing it was coming and that the space station was and would be in orbit for several years with people on it, rather than spending money on the MARS thing and then poor mouthing everybody cause they ain't got no money.Government employeee thinking. The teat don't never run dry. We got live people on the space station.I personally could care less about MARS. just sayin

NASA is funding the ISS 'til at least 2020 and we know that will be extended. We were working for and spending lots of money (over budget) on the planned Constellation program until it was scrapped last year. We went to the moon over 40 years ago, anyway :) STS-135 just stocked the ISS for a year and we will have US commercial resupply missions (unmanned) starting next year. NASA/ULA are also working together on strapping folks to the Atlas V.

Well, you say WE so I assume you are either part of or very close to the crowd. I have always been a practical, common sense, sort of person, and it just looks to me like that knowing years back that the shuttle was going away, and that we were funding ISS that long, that a replacement would have been put in the works ahead of anything else. To me, that is just some wrong headed thinking in thinking that the money teat will never go dry, then as it did, get caught short and prioritizing development of something else. I am certainly not against NASA, as many things for the private sector have came out it, but if I am missing the mark here so are a bunch of other folks and NASA needs to do a whole lot better PR job than what they are doing to explain it to the folks that are working and paying taxes to support it.

Wayne: How could you say that about Mars?? Marvin the Martian lives there!! lol:P
Pretty sad day indeed. Though, when you think about it, the space program kind of went backwards after the Apollo missions. Were we not sending people into orbit before the shuttle?? You would think that after getting people into orbit then landing people on the moon, the next logical step would not be to.... put people into orbit again!?!?
I think after landing on the moon (did we really? joking...) we should have worked on staying on the moon.
Anyhow, i just feel for all the people who have lost their jobs because of the end of the program.

Yeah, they are a bunch of folks now out of a job. The Cape has been there for years and so have a lot of those folks, not only them but all the support business that grew up around it, but as I said in the earlier comment, wrongheaded thinking somewhere; just my opinion.lol