Atlantis Final Launch

Link to the final launch of Atlantis on the BBC news site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14085502

I can remember being at primary school and the class being taken to the "TV room" to watch the first launch of the shuttle. I remember it being delayed a couple of times and it was history in the making (at the time it was NASA getting back into manned space flight):

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8147866533180818812

Although much critiscised for not delivering the cheap reusable service, I think sometimes we forget that getting into space is still non-trivial. It will be interesting to see how the private companies do at delivering the same idea.

A high point for the shuttle must be the repair of the Hubble space telescope, and audacious repair from which it took some stunning pictures of the galaxies.

There is now a gap of a few years before any potential next generation launcher, so we are back where we were in the late 1970s. It remains to be seen whether nations such as China or India overtake the stranglehold that the US and Russia had on space flight.