Shuttle Endeavour in the air for the last time

[AE1PT]

The last of the shuttles finally finds a home. Endeavour will be housed at the California Science Center in LA.

A hundred years from now I wonder how people will perceive these birds...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/us/end...html?hpt=hp_c2

[PA5COR]

Saw the piccies too, the end of an very nice era.....

[W3WN]

Too bad there's no birds in the pipeline to replace them. Hopefully private enterprise will be able to step in and do what the politicians and bureaucrats have prevented NASA from doing...

[n2ize]

Private industry will do it if there is an ROI. But they're not going to send anyone into space just for the heck of it. On the other hand space exploration continues...

[N8YX]

Some day we're going to have to find a way off this rock. Hopefully not 6 months before a Chicxulub-scale or larger NEO is discovered to have Earth at the center of its cosmic crosshairs, either.

[K7SGJ]

And this was a very nice touch, too.


http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...alifornia.html

[n2ize]

Some day we're going to have to find a way off this rock. Hopefully not 6 months before a Chicxulub-scale or larger NEO is discovered to have Earth at the center of its cosmic crosshairs, either.

Then the best thing we can do at this point is to send lots of unmanned probes and space telescopes up to try and find a habitable planet.. Right now our solar system doesn't seem to harbour any planets that are any good for sustaining human life. Even Mars is extremely hostile to human life and to sustain human life would require having to live under artificial life support for however long it could be maintained. If I had a choice of having to live out the rest of my life on Mars or getting zapped by an asteroid here on earth I would chose the latter. For now we simply have to accept the fact that the human species may someday fall into extinction while we search the heavens for a new rock...

[NQ6U]

For now we simply have to accept the fact that the human species may someday fall into extinction

Sometimes I wonder if that would be such a very bad thing.

[PA5COR]

For the earth not such a bad thing, for us mortals it is...

[KC2UGV]

Then the best thing we can do at this point is to send lots of unmanned probes and space telescopes up to try and find a habitable planet.. Right now our solar system doesn't seem to harbour any planets that are any good for sustaining human life. Even Mars is extremely hostile to human life and to sustain human life would require having to live under artificial life support for however long it could be maintained. If I had a choice of having to live out the rest of my life on Mars or getting zapped by an asteroid here on earth I would chose the latter. For now we simply have to accept the fact that the human species may someday fall into extinction while we search the heavens for a new rock...

There are no habitable planets in our solar system, which is why we need to start colonizing other planets in our solar system; to either teraform them (Which at our current technology level, would take a century, at least), or to figure out a way to live on them.

There's many reasons for this: Huge assed impact object, inbound. Lower gravity on other planets, which facilitates launches (Majority of launch weight is fuel to break gravity). Etc etc.

We need to start now, not 100 years from now when we have 6 hours to impact.