Shuttle Atlantis is the last shuttle to spread its wings in orbit, and it's really a sad day for me. I always expected my generation to shoulder the next major evolution of the space program, as our parent's generation transitioned from Apollo. I think of NASA with a sort of purity that is void of much of the economic or strategic military motives that seem the singular interest of the current political agenda. The official plan is to have commercial contractors provide transport services to lift cargo to the ISS and any other low earth orbit launches, but all this is technology that was effectively developed in the 60's. I doubt there's much profit to be made to advance our progress in space exploration, and such things really need significant state sponsorship to ever succeed. When I think about what defines us as great citizens of humanity, it is legacy of projects like Apollo and the shuttle, and not how many terrorist leaders we have killed. The NASA budget for 2011 is roughly $19 billion. The defense budget is $685 billion.