This morning, around 11:20 (East coast USA time), the last space shuttle ever launched. There will not be another space shuttle launch. This was the last one.

If any of you missed it you are dissapoint to me and those around you.

I watched a recording of it. I thought it was pretty spectacular. Hopefully, they'll be starting different model of ships sometime in the future.

The Air Force has a robotic mini-shuttle... I don't know if that counts tho

I live in Florida, but I was unable to watch the launch (slept in, go figure). Seems like NASA's coming to an end as well (or at least, the space program). I do not approve of this at all.

God, Now I'm stuck in a Transformers fangasm again...

Yeah, it's kind of sad to see countries leaving their space programs on the wayside. It's been the better part of half a century since the US put people on the moon for the first time, and while they've duplicated that feat a few times, they haven't sent anyone to the moon in the past several decades, and nobody else has sent people to the moon at all.

Heinlen said we'd have people on the moon by now, and people on Mars and Venus too, and Clarke backed him up on that. We've been lied to!

There's no point sending people to the moon, we already know enough about it, sending people there is risky and unnecessary. What I would like to see is Mars being terraformed and habitable by humans within the next 200 years.

>implying I'll ever see that.

There's been some talk about using the moon as a sort of spaceport or mining facility. The spaceport idea isn't too bad... its low gravity and lack of atmosphere would make it a great depot. A lot of plans for getting to Mars involve setting up a small base on the moon, shipping parts for a spacecraft up there, and then launching from Luna to Mars.

Well NASA is more than just a manned space program. Don't forget they have Cassini orbiting Saturn and a big ass rover headed for Mars etc.

But yeah when this thing lands our manned program will be this: Space station crew members that have to carpool with the Russians to get to their job.

Edit: Yeah going back to the moon is a waste of time. Mars is definitely the next logical step.

@MegaDeuce: To the first part of your comment, that's quite correct, and we've sent some stuff clear out past Pluto and into interstellar space, which is pretty impressive.

To the second part of your comment: That's funny in an awful sort of way.

I think that space exploration is pretty interesting, I would like to see more of it going on

@1337101: Heh, yeah were basically being demoted to where Japan is.

Yeah I forgot how useful the moon would be as a launching station, but realistically, it'd have to be for unmanned launches, unless getting people from the space station to the moon would be economically feasible, because actually living on the moon would be very hard.

As for mining, I'm not sure what kind of minerals the moon has to really make that a viable option. It would cost billions of dollars to set up a large scale mining operation on the moon, would it be worth it?

Slipspace theory.

The moon has a massive amount of iron, And using the moon as a spaceport would be good as if there's a problem the radioactive matierials wouldn't fall back to earth.

I don't think any amount of iron would justify the investment, it's not like it's a rare resource here on earth.

I agree, mining's not realistic anytime soon.

I think the moon might be useful as a sort of container yard, but I don't think it makes sense to land massive ships there just to have them refuel and take off again, since refueling can be done in orbit.

It's not the refueling, its the danger of explosions and radioactives contaminating earth. thats why things should be built on other planets, and I'm not trying to point out iron is good, you asked.

Engine designs like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster would require a massive amount of energy to use which would mean multiple nuclear reactors, launching 10 nuclear reactors from earth is very dangerous, however launching one from the moon would be little risk for earth. All they need is the matierals and the un radioactive cores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

@Tehpwnzer: You really should learn to put your comments all in one posting. Try the edit function.

The edit function is hard to use and people who have already read my previous post will not reread the edit as they will not know about it.

Also not using the edit function is adding tiny amounts of bytes

Perhaps a rule about multiple-posting purposely should be added to the guidelines.

It's not in the guidelines yet so I'm free.

I think it is.. I have merged your posts for you, please do it yourself next time. Thanks ~tGM

Blankposting had to be added to the guidelines due to a person abusing it, do you really want to make more work for the moderators?

No, But I see no reason in editing a post that is decently old that most people have read.

EDIT: Fine, Also I'm guessing it was devas

If it's still the last post made on the thread, there's no reason NOT to edit it.

Infact, while still on the topic about editing posts, I'd like to see the 1 hour limit of editing posts be lifted to no limit at all. It would be very useful in suggestions threads where you can simply amend the original post instead of making additional posts for more suggestions you think of. It'd be a lot more tidy.

@Kaede: There is the concern there of someone editing their trolling before the admins can see it, but I'm guessing that would be inside of one hour anyways.

@Tehpwnzer (and everyone else, I guess), Have you heard of the Dawn space probe? It uses ion engines that draw much less power than magnetohydrodynamic engines and still has more fuel efficiency than a nuclear rocket would. It takes a really, really, really long time to get anywhere, but it works!

So are thousands of people losing their jobs? Way to go economy.

if a colony was built on the moon that would open up massive amount of jobs

Truth: manned spaceflight is hardly ever worth the money.

To send anything into space costs about $10,000 per pound. This added to other expenses has a single shuttle launch cost an average $450 million. That, plus the risk of losing life, puts a huge pricetag on the whole operation.

In short, machines > humans. There will be a time when our own technology makes us obsolete as a dominant species, and form of life.