Tuesday, July 12, 2011

the final shuttle has launched

arockalypse at flickr shares this wonderful photo of himself and his father at the first shuttle launch, STS-1, in 1981, and the final shuttle launch, STS-135, just a few days ago on July 8, 2011.

what wonderful moments to share!


reminds me of young me now me but with an incredible setting!

4 comments:

heroineworshipper said...

Unlike the photos of a single person aging, the sight of 2 different generations side by side shows how unavoidable & built into the universe age is. For all the progress in every other aspect, every generation is doomed to age just like the 1 before.

Unknown said...

its true - time moves on in an unavoidable way!

i dont consider myself "doomed" to age though - i quite look forward to the experiences that come with growing older.

Unknown said...

not all of them, of course, but a lot of them, yes!

Pete said...

And about what comes next. I'm not certain the US could develop and field a new rocket and capsule this decade.

One way or another the builders are the military-industial complex who take at least 10 years for a jetfighter and took more than 10 years to develop-launch the Shuttle:

"...NASA is pinning its hopes on commercial industry to build the next low-cost vehicle to take astronauts to low Earth orbit."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8634693/Private-space-race-heats-up-as-US-shuttle-retires.html.

Perhaps continued space cooperation with the Russians (now the only regular astronaut rocket owners) is preferable to space competition.

Pete