I will miss the shuttle launches. :(

You're Right.
A Legend is dying, even if it's at the museum. :(

Shuttles are only going away to free up NASA time and energy to work on the kind of thing that can get past orbit, and go to the moon and beyond. It was a legend of familiarity and frequent, beautiful stagnation, giving way to unfamiliar, fearful, infrequent glory.

I heard 4,000 NASA people would be looking for work. Let's hope they can be gainfully employed AND that NASA can continue working to reach the stars... even if it is piggy-backing on Russian rockets.

Well, I'm not against piggy-backing on Russian rockets, given the account that I am Russian myself, but the shuttles were excellent machines and shame that they will be stand idle in museums.

Killing the Shuttles wasn't actually a bad idea. I'll grant you, they were old and expensive, 30-years-old tech.
The bad idea was killing the Shuttles without having a replacement available. The Orion was reduced from a launch vehicle into an escape module. The Ares system was scrapped altogether for budget reasons. The HLV is in bureaucratic hell.
And all this while claiming that the US wants to return to the Moon. If so, how about ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING TO THAT END!?

HaroldRowsdower said:
Shuttles are only going away to free up NASA time and energy

Time and energy don't mean much in this world if you don't have any money, unless you want to be a professional NEET or a track athlete.
I live in a country where one man (and pretty much only men) can make in excess of $4,000,000 a year attempting to run a ball up and down a field as part of the same game children play, yet the country can't care enough as a whole to afford to progress the human race.

The end of an era... ;_;

OOZ662 said:
Time and energy don't mean much in this world if you don't have any money, unless you want to be a professional NEET or a track athlete.
I live in a country where one man (and pretty much only men) can make in excess of $4,000,000 a year attempting to run a ball up and down a field as part of the same game children play, yet the country can't care enough as a whole to afford to progress the human race.

Agreed and killing the shuttles doesn't help at all T_T