I can remember when NASA was called a PR firm

[Springer9]

that flew spacecraft.


Photographers greeted the crew of the Atlantis on Friday as they left their quarters for the final space shuttle flight.

So many of the stories that temporarily unite the United States are tragic, even cataclysmic. Shooting sprees. Trial verdicts. Bombings. Acts of God.

And then there are those awe-inspiring acts of man, the launchings of space shuttles — or there were, until Friday, when the final flight erupted from the launching pad at the Kennedy Space Center. Television networks interrupted their daytime shows and peered skyward for the liftoff, proving one final time that the medium that came of age during the Apollo missions played a pivotal role in explaining and exciting the American people about space.

Even the reporters and broadcasters who had witnessed dozens of other launchings sounded spellbound by the liftoff on Friday. “You feel as though they are kind of like ripping a hole in the sky,” the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said from his makeshift studio near the site as he and his colleagues were blinded by the light of the solid rocket boosters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/us/09coverage.html?_r=1&smid=tw-NYTimesAd&seid=auto

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. The dying ember of exceptionalism.

Our space program is now the equivalent of the Dead Sea scrolls.

:(


But, hey, Go Iraq! :woohoo: :patriot: