End of an era - Atlantis

Mostly Cajun eloquently expresses what has been rolling around my brainpan for the last couple of weeks:

Another era ending
I believe Friday is another launch of the space shuttle. This one, though, is different. Why? Because it is the LAST one. When the shuttle Atlantis returns, it will mark the first time since 1962 that America won�t have a means of putting man into space. We�ve signed off that idea, leaving it to the Russians and the Chinese.

I watched Alan Shephard lift off in 1962, and since that date we�ve always had the next mission set on the boards: Mercury, then Gemini, then Apollo, Skylab, then the shuttle. Not any more.

It�s as if after Columbus, Europe decided that it wasn�t worth the effort to keep sending ships across the Atlantic, and stopped.

After all, we can spend that money MUCH better on government giveaways, right? Because everybody KNOWS that subsidizing the inner city birthrate pays off HUGE dividends in the advancement of technology and science, right? Besides, it�s not like you can commandeer a few schoolbuses and drag NASA research scientists to the polls to vote for a dimmocrat.

If you�re going to spend tax dollars, you want a return on your investment. To the short-sighted, dimmocrat and republican alike, the �return� is re-election, and a few billion directed to �community organizations� will net a lot more votes. And that, dear readers, is how far most of what passes for �leadership� in this country can think: to the next election.

The result may not show immediately, but there�s a quote from the Book of Proverbs that says �Where there is no vision, the people perish.�

Our nation has lost its vision.

I used to wonder how Spain felt when it lost its colonies in New World, or Great Britain when the empire ended. Now I�m beginning to know.

I also watched Alan Shephard's flight - my school brought everyone into the assembly room where their big b&w television was set up. The entire room was glued to the set. Subsequent flights were also watched if they were during school hours. And now we have nothing.