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A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle
Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."
You'll soon be able to buy astronaut ice cream with a chinese space program theme. That and watch them go to the moon, then mars, all while NASA rocket scientists are driving cabs and eating government cheese.
The Soviets copied our space shuttle, and put it into orbit. But Buran sucked, the Soviet space program is dog-slow, and the fall of the Soviet Union intervened, so they mothballed it after the one (unmanned) flight and fell back on Soyuz.
That's the only reason the manned space program is still based on capsules. If the Buran program had a clue nobody would know what a Soyuz was today. And the Russians are thinking of redoing Buran from scratch.
If they do, in a few years you may be back here wondering why we didn't just keep using our shuttles, which at this point are marginal cost to fly.