T-minus Five More Launches: STS-130 Endeavour (4:39a.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010)

NASA prepares to launch Endeavour tomorrow, in what should be its second-to-last flight.

I’m alternately relieved and appalled at the planned 2010 decommissionings of all 3 of the Shuttles—relieved, as they’ve been in service 18-26 years, and I’ve no wish to watch my third Shuttle disaster; appalled, because as of Discovery’s final flight in September, for the first time in my life, the United States will be grounded from space.

Sure, we could hitch rides with other countries. But what a comedown for the country that first put a human being on the moon.

I don’t know what will come of our space program—people much smarter than me, working for NASA, probably wonder the same thing right now. It’s one of the few things in which I totally disagree with President Obama. The space race and its magnificent fruits were what inspired generations of children to take science seriously. How will we motivate students to refocus on science now, if one of its greatest achievements can be so visibly abandoned?

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