On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:18:28 -0500, Gordon Shumway
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:24:54 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

It is one of the saddest days of my life to see the symbolic end of the
US space program. In the fifties and sixties as kids we were sure we
would always be first, as the space program represented to us that this
country could do anything, and except for Sputnik we did. Now the US
has to stand by the side of the space road thumbing a ride into space.

All of the technical advances that have enter mainstream from the space
programs are ending. Things like the Laser surgeries that they are
doing routinely today, which we would not have without the initial work
in President Reagan Starwar programs. Everything from advances in
medicine to Tang. The space program was the central point in the
federal research program, and there are millions of things that we think
of necessities today that started in the space program.

In some ways it is also symbolic of decline of what was once a great
nation.

I hope we will realize what we are doing before we become just an
another of the many debit ridden countries that are trying to survive as
independent countries. A debit ridden nation that has a first lady who
said the only time she was proud to be an American was when her husband
became president.

Very well said, especially your last paragraph.

+1

--
Energy and persistence alter all things.
--Benjamin Franklin