Father and Son Recreate Shuttle Launch Photo 30 Years Later

Saw this first at AoSHQ.

And now at WaPo, "Chris Bray and his father watch NASA history, 30 years ago and four days ago."

That's cool!

The Future of Space

We need a space program. The end of the Space Shuttle Program makes us think about our priorities and world preponderance. America's not relinquishing scientific leaderships just yet, thank goodness.

There's an appraisal at New York Times, "3, 2, 1, and the Last Shuttle Leaves an Era Behind" (via Memeorandum).

Also at USA Today, "Shuttle ends 30-year run, but U.S. will be back":

Though shuttles will have launched 135 times with unique achievements — and two catastrophic failures that claimed the lives of 14 courageous astronauts and reminded a stunned nation of the price of pioneering — the program never did vastly expand the human presence in space.

But fret not. The end of the shuttle is not a signal that America is becoming less adventurous. It is simply the latest indication that technology advances in fits and starts, and rarely along the trajectories projected by the experts.

America will be back with a new manned space vehicle at some point. This may happen for political reasons if China, or some other nation, goads us into action by embarking on an ambitious program of its own. And it will happen for a variety of reasons when engineers overcome the one barrier that has frustrated them — the prohibitive costs of getting the first hundred miles or so off the Earth's surface.

In the meantime, let's step back and consider the extraordinary age that we have created ...

Atlantis Launches on Final Shuttle Mission (VIDEO)

Mashable has video, "Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch Video: The Final Flight."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off":

Despite earlier weather concerns, Atlantis is launched on the final flight for NASA's space shuttle program. It is the 33rd flight for Atlantis and the 135th shuttle mission overall.

Reporting from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Atlantis lifted off Friday morning, shooting straight into a brightening sky on a 12-day mission that marks the end of the nation's three-decade space shuttle program.

There was a brief hold in the countdown at 31 seconds because of a glitch seemingly involving a piece of retractable equipment. As millions of onlookers on the ground and via television held their breaths, officials checked and reported that the equipment had, indeed, been moved.

With the last knot in the timeline unsnarled, the countdown resumed and the engines fired, sending the craft upward and out along the eastern coast of the United States.

When it returns, Atlantis will join Discovery and Endeavour as retired vessels. NASA will shift its mission to sending astronauts to asteroids and Mars while private companies take over the more mundane aspect of moving cargo and crews from Earth to orbit.

More at the link above. I'll post YouTube video later.

10:20am PST: Okay, from AP ...

Also, at Wired Science, "The Last Space Shuttle Launches Safely Into Orbit" (via Memeorandum).

The Space Shuttle Program Helped Carry Southern California's Aerospace Industry for Four Decades

At Los Angeles Times, "The space shuttle's Southland legacy."

Amid the odes to a shuttle program that ends with the last mission of the last shuttle, Atlantis, scheduled for liftoff Friday, is an awareness that the space plane helped carry Southern California's aerospace industry for four decades. It staved off decline after the end of the moon landings, bequeathing new generations of aeronautical technology — and jobs — to the regional economy.

"Building the space shuttle fleet enabled a historic chapter in NASA's space program," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former shuttle commander. "Southern California has a strong place in shuttle history as a key site where the spacecraft were built and often landed."

Constructing the shuttle fleet was testament to how advanced Southern California's aerospace engineering and labor workforce had become by the 1970s — and assured that the vast assemblage of brainpower and engineering know-how would not be lost in the Southland.

The history of the shuttle program may be linked forever to the flights of Challenger and Columbia, its two deadly tragedies. But the shuttle era will also be remembered for advancing technology, including reusable rocket engines and computerized guidance systems, that changed manned flight.