Space Shuttle Atlantis Takes Off For The Final Time. Sadness Time.

Today the  Space Shuttle Atlantis broke through the sky for the final time. Taking with it the hopes and dreams of millions of space-loving dorks like myself. Silently wondering just when the fuck we’re going to get up there again, take exploring the Universe seriously once more.

io9:

According to Associated Press:

“Let’s light this fire one more time,” Commander Christopher Ferguson said just before taking flight.

The shuttle was visible for 42 seconds before disappearing into the clouds.

It will be at least three years – possibly five or more – before astronauts are launched again from U.S. soil, and so this final journey of the shuttle era packed in crowds and roused emotions on a scale not seen since the Apollo moon shots. NASA has set of long-term goal of flying to an asteroid and eventually Mars.

“Take a deep breath. Enjoy a little time here with your families again. But we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got another program that we’ve got to get under way,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the launch control team after Atlantis reached orbit. He added: “We know what we’re doing. We know how to get there. We’ve just got to convince everybody else that we know what we’re doing.”

Phil Plait’s Take:

This may be the last launch of the Shuttle, but it is  not the final step for mankind. Private industry is there, other nations are still launching, and I have hope that through hard work America will once again lead the way to the final frontier. And it won’t just be into orbit, which is, after all, still bound to Earth. It will be beyond, back to the Moon, on to Mars, on to near-Earth asteroids, and eventually into deep space. It may take decades, even centuries, but the human-populated solar system I dreamed and read about, the one I still imagine,  will come to life some day.

We just have to choose to make it happen.

Let us continue to dare to dream of space, to spread outward into the cosmos.