While on the level of national pride and symbols of aspiration, I think the author is spot on. However, on the rational level, the STS program is an acme example of big government. It costs about $1 billion per launch cycle. Because of its architecture, what it can haul is limited from the standpoint of dimensions, hazards and weight.
One of my college professors worked on STS planning. He stated that the risk of loss of a given mission was 1/100. We lost two craft and crews in 135 launch cycles.
Manned space launches should have been privatized long ago. We would have more people in space for less money and we would have had a diversity of launch capabilities.
I am happy to see that money-sucking monstrosity retired to the big government museum of big government program artifact.
The issue of safety is a bigger issue than most consider.
Would you insure a private company that flew people into space?
As it is now commercial has no customer but government (and that’s being quickly strangled by the Obama administration).....so where is the profit for the commercial companies??????
Our science and technology is going down the tubes and the happy campers pushing “commercial” aka subsidized Obama picks are lapping up tax dollars while the lapping up is still possible.
Anyone who fails to see that this has been orchestrated deliberately to dismantle the U.S. manned space program, doesn’t know what has been happening, or is happy to see it gone.