Goodbye Space Shuttle!

So I know I'm a little late to show, but there's nothing like watching the space shuttle take off and successfully land after its mission was completed.

I missed the take off of Atlantis last week, but saw many images and aftermath video of the last shuttle's final flight (heading to the ISS). Now it is coming home (and selfishly, I want the weather to be too poor to make a Cape Canaveral landing imprudent, so it has to land at Edwards AFB in Palmdale; I'll disregard the ginormous cost of transporting it back to Florida for the final time), departing today from the ISS and rotating back to descend back to Earth.

It's a shame that there will be a lull now in US space flight, having to hitch rides with Russian craft while NASA figures out the next machine that will take Americans and others back into space, back to the Moon, to an asteroid, and possible to Mars.

I wasn't alive when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, nor when the Apollo mission went back 3 more times, but I can tell you that even hearing about it on the countless documentaries gives me chills. I will admit that back in the day, when I was young boy, I had a dream of becoming an astronaut--the science gene in me was very strong from the outset! So even though I didn't always keep on the events of the Space Shuttle news here and there, I still feel very connected to each flight (even including the occasional sonic boom!) and the disasters of Challenger and Columbia.

So I will miss you, Space Shuttle Program, but I look forward to the next stage in human space flight, because as any Trekkie knows, it is the final frontier, and we've only seen a micron of what it has to offer...