Friday marked the end of an era- the last launch of a space shuttle. I grew up watching shuttle launches on the Today Show while my family ate breakfast. I grew up in the era of Space Camp (the movie) and the Challenger explosion. These are important memories in my childhood, and it saddens me that similar new memories are not being made.

NASA still has plans. There is still the international space station, and we are getting closer every year to civilian space flights. But there will be no more space shuttles, at least not for the foreseeable future.