The space shuttle has made it's last launch and I wonder what has happened to this country.
As the last shuttle soared up, I couldn't help think that at the same time we're on the way to sliding down a slope to being a second rate, and one day, a third world country.

I'll tell ya what's gonna happen. The day will come when China will have a plan to get into space, and launch their own shuttles and spaceships to the moon and when these little yellow men land on the moon, they will claim every square inch as their own. As far as I know, there is no international organization that says who can/cannot lay claim to the moon.

I heard a commentator make an analogy at the last shuttle launch that the countries who discovered America weren't necessarily the ones who colonized it and laid claim to it, so even tho the USA was first on the moon, since the space program has been shelved by our US government, we won't be in the race to colonize it. We will be dependent on other countries to help get us into space.

All the expertise built up over the decades of the space program in the US, all the people who have dedicated their lives to learning how to master the job of space travel are out of a job, will scatter, grow oil, retire, and then the US if it ever wants to claim mastery again will have to start from scratch. Our space program was dismantled because of budgetary concerns. But spending--wasting-- trillions in a useless wars will keep right on going. This country is being run by idiots.

susil