That “Shuttle” was a Missile Launcher.
I always hated that escalation pic.
The writers and editors of American Shooting Journal have made a big mistake in their final point.
Predators have been taken out not through limitless sport-hunting, but through habitat loss and deliberate killing - because they competed with animal husbandry: ranching, herding, bird-flock-keeping and the like.
The human propensity to bring non-native animals into environments where they have never lived before sometimes reaches absurd levels.
Over a dozen years ago, the State Game/Fish/Parks Dept of South Dakota decided to allow limited hunting of mountain lions (the big cats had begun to increase in numbers, after being hunted to non-existence in earlier years, as threats to ranchers and farmers). Some people approved, some did not; public debated heated up, and comments from folks on both sides of the issue were placed on record.
One local landowner took severe and vocal issue with the notion of any limits on lion hunting; it came out he had been attempting to raise some very exotic geese. Shortly after he had had eight geese imported (from some tropical nation like Ecuador, if memory serves) at rather serious expense (something like $2,400.00), mountain lions got into his pen and devoured the luckless birds.
In an op-ed the local newspaper published on a Saturday, the wannabe geese-herder condemned all who did not support total eradication of mountain lions - which he vilified as “wonton killers” [sic].