[tet68]

I think we are ending the program prematurily but then
I would have built fifty shuttles in the first place.
Now we can only look ahead and come up with Generation II.
and ride it up the gravity well, or be left behind to
extinction.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

If they are not building any External Tanks we can safely say that the Shuttle program is over. I would have done was this. I would have a military space program and have a civilian program.

[El Gato]

Now we can only look ahead and come up with Generation II. and ride it up the gravity well,

Yea, too bad the technology is not quite ready to build a beanstalk. But we're getting there. Or we were before Kenyan Jack started sterilizing the seeds.

Now it will probably be the Japanese or the Chinese that finally build a space elevator.