Last Space Shuttle Launch

[Ivan]

Today saw the last space shuttle launch as the shuttle finally retires. I always assumed it would be replaced by some kind of super-space shuttle, lighter, faster, cheaper, and perhaps for for missions beyond the orbit of the moon. Instead, the Americans will be hitching rides with their old enemy Russia for the foreseeable future. Who would have thought?

[StBarnabas]

Indeed
could well be the Chinese who land on Mars first....

[biff]

they never came up with the dosh to fix katrina and all that dosh gone missing in iraq could have been i.o.u.s, like dumb and dumber they somehow got carried away and over time lost track of the i.o.u.s they put in the suitcase.
  then the chinese are looking for their money back."wu no pay wif wockets,,untill wu pay us back"

[Philip R]

I remember as a teenager in the 70s seeing on TV the trial glide of the Enterprise ( Not that of star trek, but named after a spaceship shown on President Carters favouirite TV series!!) off the back of a Jumbo jet back to earth. Also the first flight of the Columbia to orbit in 1981.

Since the end of the cold war, the US are using Russian technology rocket engines in some of their rockets. ( Russian Metallurgy and welding technolgy developped in Soviet Military complex during cold war very advanced, but not shared with other Sectors of cold war russian economy).

One day you might see the Chinese flag on the Moon, visible from the earth, like one of those moving images you see in N. Korean propaganda and  Chinese sports touraments.

Shame that Mr. Alan Bond, the designer of the Hotol engine could not get funding for the development of his machine. Had he been a US, German or French citizen, it would have been developped.

PhilipR