[Editorial]

The space shuttle Atlantis flew its last sortie to the International Space Station (ISS) on 8 July 2011. With the decommissioning of the space shuttle program, manned spaceflight faces a bleak future. While supporters of the program worry about what space programs will look like going forward, its detractors are at peace knowing that NASA will finally stop using the shuttles as expensive taxicabs to the ISS. Their biggest gripe—why solve celestial mysteries when there is an abundance of terrestrial issues to deal with? I admit that until a few years ago, I too was a detractor, and had very strong views against funding moon missions when thousands were dying of hunger on this very planet. When I took the Graduate Record Examinations test, I was serendipitously assigned the essay question of discussing the merits and demerits of manned spaceflight—a ball I hit right out of the park!