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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_space_shuttle

I for one, am sad that our government is squatting this program with NO replacement even on the table. We can afford to bail out Big Business, fund two decade long wars, and give free healthcare and aid to Illegal Aliens, but can't drop the extra $$$ to overhaul Nasa (A Massive Source Of American Pride) into something other then a muslim outreach program??

Sad days ahead America.

"NASA is not a Jobs Program." -Obama

It's Ok, though. The Soviets still have their rockets. We'll be paying them for rides to the station.

And lets not forget China!

Yeah, letting NASA go to hell really pisses me off. Discovery was always my favorite of the space shuttles too.

Frankly, it was a terrible program. They built it as a reusable shuttle to...nothing, since the space station took about two decades longer to get off the ground than expected. And then by the time they had the station built there was no doubt that the shuttle was actually much more expensive than traditional rockets for getting back and forth, launching satellites, and all the other wonderful uses it was supposed to have.

I remember being a young nerd excited for the Columbia's first launch. But the gorgon of 2010 says you don't keep something that expensive and ill-conceived around simply because it's "cool."

I don't mind the shuttle retiring. I mind it retiring without a functioning alternative.

kronk wrote:I don't mind the shuttle retiring. I mind it retiring without a functioning alternative.

Yup, exactly.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Didn't mean to be too harsh on them.

kronk wrote:I don't mind the shuttle retiring. I mind it retiring without a functioning alternative.

Fully Agree.

Also, wasn't the current administration talking about the possibility of sending people back to the moon here not long ago? (Could be wrong on this one though)

Yeah. Bush gave it lip service too. Neither funded it. (yet)

I'll stay hopeful.

Damn! Obama! Why the hell did you have to go and cancel Constellation! (Yeah, I sound pissed, and I am, but I'm a liberal so I can't get too mad at Obama. After all Bush was the one that screwed up the economy anyway. But we need an effing heavy lift rocket to get us to mars and stuff! And now we canned the moon return trip. Nasa has been neutered by our government! the bastards!)

The Ares program needed to die. The Ares I was a trainwreck to the point where it's own design engineers were pleading with their bosses to kill it and trying to design a working replacement in their off time. The V was theoretically workable but essentially an entirely different rocket all together necessitating another costly development program which would have been ripe to be axed.

You can just as easily blame NASA as they jealously guarded their baby with one of the worst cases of "not invented here," I've ever seen. You could also blame the Augustino commission that had dozens of viable proposals presented to it yet still chose to protect their old buddies baby. Those two groups kept Constellation married to a rocket that was never going to live up to its promises before it ever got off the pad.

Not to absolve the Presidents of blame. After all we're talking about how many trillions in bailout and stimulus money and you can't find ten billion for NASA?

NASA really needed something other than the shuttle it got. Hope it eventually gets the ships it deserves (though if NASA want to invade the UK and turn us into Space Land - a nation dedicated to shooting things up into the air and beyond, I would be cool with that