The space shuttle Atlantis launched this morning to start the final STS mission for NASA.
It is a bittersweet day for American space travel. The shuttle program sought to make space missions a regular part of our existence with up to 50 missions a year. Unfortunately due to poor initial funding and two disasters the program only launched around five missions a year and failed to capture the American imagination the same way the Apollo program did. The shuttle program had a total of 135 missions including today's launch.
It is unfortunate that space travel can be one of the most popular subjects in a multi-trillion-dollar film industry but cannot win the funding necessary to make the United States the world leader in space. Kids in the 60's dreamed of being astronauts, while kids today dream of being the next Rebecca Black, Mark Zuckerberg or LeBron James. We used to dream of touching the sky, now we just dream about lining our pockets.
Private industry has taken up the mission of returning America to space but in all probability the United States will probably be passed by either Russia, China or the European Union and will probably be relegated in the future to catching rides with another country's astronauts.
