Yesterday at Cape Canaveral at a little after 11:29 am, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off for the last time - the Shuttle program's 135th and final launch. Reaching speeds of 17,500 miles per hour, it headed for orbit and a rendezvous with the International Space Station. 355 astronauts from 16 different nations have flown on Space Shuttle missions over the last 30 years.
Our great Nation's Space program has been a cornerstone of America's greatness during the past half century. President John F. Kennedy recognized the role the Space program played in American exceptionalism in a 1962 speech at Rice University: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” This competitive urge seems to be missing these days. Our Nation seems resigned to the idea (not a fact, mind you) that we our a Nation in graceful decline. The end of the Space program is representative of that malaise (there's that word again). We must resist that feeling and that complacency and continue to strive to do great things. Some say that private enterprise will take over space exploration and do it even better than NASA has. We hope that is true and that government regulation doesn't stymie that effort.
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