[NormsRevenge]

First flown in 1985, shuttle Atlantis is expected to be retired from service in 2008. Credit: NASA

[jennyp]

Is that really being lifted by a crane? Wow!

[Names Ash Housewares]

Seems like yesterday sometimes we watched in awe as Columbia ushered in the Shuttle era in 1981.
People have grown up now their whole lives with America flying shuttles.
She still fills me with awe, I have always thought the shuttle stack looks cathedral-like on the pad.
Time for shuttle to finish her work and move on to the next vehicles, as ugly and boring as the CEV looks, it will take us much farther in more ways then one.
I hope we will see more winged spacecraft from private industry. There is a beauty to machines with wings.

[Jotmo]

In the Air Force, we called Donor aircraft "Hanger Queens" cause as often as someone would sneak in a steal parts, and as long as it took to get parts, they never made it off the ground.

Every so often we had to take all the parts off of one aircraft, put them on the Queen, and get the wheels off the ground so it could maintain a mission capable status. Then take all the parts back off, and there she'd sit till next time.

So Atlantis is going to be a Queen. Sad.

[Brett66]

I think it's possible the remaining flights of the shuttles will be cut back quite a bit. If possible, some private launch companies could try to fill in the gap. I think Griffin would like to do this and terminate shuttle operations as soon as possible.

[SteveMcKing]

We could have explored half the solar system by now, if not for the imagined need to produce retired astronaughts who travel the country telling school kids about their heroic achievement of breeding worms in zero-gravity.

Kids need inspiration, I guess... as in melodrama.

[Spruce]

If I recall correctly, the shuttles were but one part of a comprehensive system for our conquest of space. They were to be the short-haul 'trucks' for the building, and servicing, of a real space station. This space station was to be an orbitting factory to build the real exploration and colonization spacecraft.

It is too bad this system was never seen through. We would probably be launching colonization missions to mars by now.

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!