An era ends. The last Space Shuttle lifted four astronauts and tons of supplies into the Florida sky today, enroute to the International Space Station. The first Shuttle launch, of Columbia, occurred on April 12, 1981. That launch was a mere 20 years to the day after the first manned space flight, by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union. In those 20 years, we went from the first dangerous launches on modified ICBM rockets, to the Saturn 5 that took us to the Moon six times, to the “space truck” that is the Shuttle. The last Shuttle mission, flown by Shuttle Atlantis, is scheduled to land on July 20, the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing at the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon.
Once Atlantis lands, the United States has NO way of launching astronauts into space. We hope to have private industry doing so “soon”, but that “soon” could be a decade away. In the meantime, we buy rides on the Russian Soyuz. “TAXI!”
JimmieJoe 
Atlantis lands, Shuttles retired, NASA’s next mission is… what?
July 21, 2011
Jim Reeves commentary, geek, Personal Atlantis, international space station, ISS, last shuttle mission, NASA, Shuttle, Space Shuttle Leave a comment
Space Shuttle Atlantis lands at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the pre-dawn hours of July 21, 2011. 42 years and one day after Apollo 11’s Eagle landed on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, the last shuttle to fly touches down on KSC’s runway 15.
It’s appropriate that this image shows the shuttle touching down in the dark, because the United States now has no manned access to space.
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