As the old year passes, a new year begins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP5gykvTBpM

...so why is it that the Falcon program feels like a bold leap into the past?

I suppose it's because there was something very powerful about the fact that the Shuttle fleet launched, landed, launched again. Atlantis and her strangely beautiful sisters had the inspiring quality of being true ships rather than mere capsules launched off an expendable stick of explosive. Fine, you may argue that in reality they were the crosstown bus of space flight, but they felt like a logical step on the way to building the ships that we've read, written and dreamed about, the ones where happiness is Earth in your rearview mirror....

Slanagat, I managed to get through the pictures with only a lump in my throat. But your last sentence honestly brought tears to my eyes.

The romance is gone...

Hughes, Rockwell, Rocketdyne, JPL, etc.

The people involved with them, and many other organizations related to the space business, set the U.S. apart from the rest of the world with their genius, their vision, their inability to conceive of the thought "it can't be done". They truly did more with less, to an extent that many of those not alive before 1969 cannot fathom.

The world will never know how much easier life has been made for us by them. Without the space program, that tiny cell phone you take for granted may well not have been invented yet. Moore's law was coined during the hieght of the Gemini program, and a strong case can be made that the rate of miniturization of circuitry which Moore recognized can be directly attributed to the demands of maximizing computer, command, and control circuitry in spacecraft.

Safety systems, ergonomics, fire detection/suppression mechanisms, and many others, were advanced by the space program decades quicker than they would have otherwise, and our daily lives are the benificiaries of those efforts.

How much more could we be learning today if we were accelerating, instead of dismantling, the functions of the most beneficial governmental scientific agency ever?

Well, one man's opinion. That and $4.45 at Starbuck's...

I am planning to go see the second-last launch in September. Seeing one of those birds roar up through the sky has been on my bucket list since I was a kid. They are strangely beautiful, and I credit Christa McAuliffe for hooking me on them.

They mount a thread of smoke to reach the sky;
we hold our breath below. Recall of sight
of those before who lost their lives gives fright
until calm voice reports all safe; we sigh.
And so again we've sent them to the black,
explorers yes, but artisans as well;
carrying breath for later ones to dwell
there and move outward on their track.
Rejoicing's tinged a melancholy hue:
Atlantis will not ride again the fire;
her sisters are all soon to follow suit.
Though plan's not made, I hope some day a crew
will board a future craft to journey higher,
while giving these adventurers salute.

(Originally published on Making Light)

Who owns the rights to these images? I would very much like to have a large print of the lit gantry in the foreground and the shuttle behind it against the deep blue gradient sky.

I remember, as a kid, waking up very early in the morning to watch the Columbia launches, which tended to occur on weekend mornings. I even had my full metal replica of the first shuttle, with a full shuttle bay of modules and an the robotic arm.