Does it bother anyone else who is around thirty years old that "space age" used to represent the cutting-edge of technology and human achievement, and now it's thirty years later and the shuttle is still the only way NASA's getting people into space? The shuttle fleet was never supposed to be in service for this long..

It's all about money.

Yeah, it is sad we haven't progressed as fast as I'd imagined we would as a kid, watching shuttle launches (I thought we'd be colonizing Mars by now , but it is still inspirational.

Budzos... I'm not 30 yet, and it bothers me. Some time ago, while watching some footage of a launch (not this one), I started thinking to myself... boy... these rockets, the way they shake and rattle, the steam they produce when the engine starts and burns the water on the pits below, the smoke it makes rising up, it all makes it look like a really really old fashioned technology, like steam.
It then hit me, just how primitive our space technology is. We're still in the steam engine stage. We've got a lot of work to do to reach the Maglev era

I gotta go see this in person some day.

Cool picture of the Space Shuttle launch, as seen by the International Space Station: - http://bp3.blogger.com/_Fa-NqGm0-Lk/RnVf3YuDAxI/AAAAAAAAAWQ/rgQrEnQYAyI/s1600-h/shuttle_launch.jpg

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