This is the last one for Discovery. I believe that there are two more launches scheduled for the other shuttles.
Call me a Luddite, but I wish they would quit before there is another tragedy. Although it has been a magnificent, if flawed, achievement, like the Concorde, someone called this kind of thing technological masturbation - i.e We Did It Because We Could.
40% of the shuttle fleet has been lost in spectacular accidents, and - other than the one outstanding achievement with the Hubble space telescope - the original idea, that the shuttle would be a kind of monthly delivery truck, taking stuff up to build a jumping-off station for Mars, was scrapped long ago. What we ended up with was a vehicle going up to the space station once or twice a year, with everyone holding their breath that it would return safely, conducting what turned out to be usless "zero-gravity" experiments on plants and worms, and others of doubtful practical use, and the station itself reduced essentially to somewhere for the shuttle to go.
I am probably in the minority here, but the many billions spent could have been used on at least a 20th-century railroad system, cleaning up the crime-infested slums, or something productive and useful to all. Maybe reducing the deficit.
