last time (pic)

[n2doc]

Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station at 2:20 p.m. EDT on May 14. The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis. The Russian-built Mini Research Module-1, also known as Rassvet, or "dawn," will be delivered and it will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. The laboratory will be attached to the bottom port of the station's Zarya module. The mission's three spacewalks will focus on storing spare components outside the station, including six batteries, a communications antenna and parts for the Canadian Dextre robotic arm.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1664.html

[ceile]

1. I get chills when I see pics like this.

So much to learn....can we do it w/out Atlantis?

[Scuba]

2. A couple of billion dollars that could have been used to prosecute Cheney. What a waste.

..a rat bit my sister Nell,
with Whitey on the moon.

Gil Scott Heron

[baldguy]

4. I notice you're not writing your post in Portuguese

Or Dutch.

[Scuba]

5. Huh?

[baldguy]

6. Thank you for proving my point so eloquently.

[Kutjara]

3. In 1970, a human being stood on another world, 230k miles from Earth.

In 2010, the highest we can go is 600 miles in the Shuttle. When Atlantis is gone, that distance will be reduced to 250 miles (ferrying folks back and forth to the ISS aboard single-use rockets using tech from the 1970s). If the "privatization" guys have their way, space exploration will be reduced to 70 mile joyrides for the rich.

Mars seems further away every day. Unless you're a robot.

[Moostache]

7. I have lost faith in humanity anyway...this is just one more reason why...

Start with our poisoning of the environment in every way conceivable (air, water, soil...for Christ's sake, there is actually GARBAGE on the top of the world because of fucking people carrying shit up to Everest and leaving it there because it would take too much energy to bring it back down!!!!).

This obviously extends to the addiction to oil - which is REALLY a very small group of humans being addicted to PROFITS and not giving a goddamn second thought to ANYTHING unless it makes then richer. We are talking about companies and people who have amassed fortunes greater than the Pharohs of Egypt or the Tsars of Russia at their heights, and yet its not enough...they need LESS REGULATION and LOWER (or preferably NO) taxes. These people are also at the vanguard of climate change denials, and further more are PROUD of it!!!

Then move on to our disgusting glorification of STUFF...needless, pointless, resource-exhausting and planet-killing STUFF. The way we have transformed our society from agrarian to urban and our highest values from REAL family values to whatever the hell someone puts in an inane commercial next is truly enough to make anyone grounded in reality weep tears of blood! There is not ONE THING being sold on TV or Radio or Print or Internet ads that you MUST HAVE NOW...and yet, our jobs, our days and nights, our lives, our very existence as "productive members of society" require us to BELIEVE that we need all of it!

From there, look at the way we have abused antibiotics like a fucking school yard bully....using them indiscriminately and without any rational thought for what the consequences would be if and when the bacteria / school yard weaklings ever grow up / mutate...if we don't kill ourselves first, the bacteria are damn well going to be around in resistant strains to finish the job for us.

I only wish I had access to a time machine to see if the insects fair better than we have as the preeminent species on the planet. They can't possibly do any worse...unless too many of them become poisoned from feasting on our dead and rotting corpses in the next 50 years...