The Shuttle Transport System is as old as I am, gestated in the late 1970′s and coming of age in the 1980′s; I have always lived with the Shuttle Program. In less than two weeks, the Space Shuttle program will end. On Friday July 8th, 2011 the last Space Shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. During her life, billions of dollars were spent, new techniques and technology were developed and lives were tragically lost.

Throughout the Shuttle’s short life the program inspired people throughout the world. This inspiration is not merely based on the technology – which is certainly very awesome; rather inspiration flows from the people who built, maintained and flew the Space Shuttle, who are an amazing group of people – both driven, and modest; rational yet creative; proud yet humble; forward-thinking yet aware of their great lineage. The Astronauts are but a single visible portion of the many thousands of women and men who make human space flight possible.

NASA is many things, both good and bad, yet the agency is certainly not done with human space flight. We might be near the end of the Space Shuttle Program, and until those four astronauts safety land, there is still work to be done.

I use the term with the team: ‘Stay hungry. Stay Curious.’ You keep that hunger where you are inquisitive.- Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations

American human space flight is not over, it merely is changing how we get to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). For awhile we will be paying the Russians for space aboard the Soyuz rockets to reach the International Space Station, but we will continue to have a permanent and continuous outpost in space. The ISS continues to be a centerpiece of our national science program – being the only National Laboratory not on US soil – for the next 15-20 years. NASA is working on the succession program to bring supplies and crew to LEO, and a new program to leave the gravity well of our home planet to touch the soil of distant asteroids, moons, and planets.

This is not a story of how we got here and where we are going, that is for another day. This is a story about honoring and taking part in the last Space Shuttle launch, as I was a lucky member of the STS-135 NASAtweetup, one of over 150, located at the press center at Kennedy Space Center.

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