Atlantis Has Landed and With It We Saw The End Of an Era

I go to sleep and wake up every day with CNN on, have been a news junkie for about as long as I can remember, reading the Journal Herald newspaper at the end of my route each morning sitting on the steps of City Hall. This morning I woke up to the news that the space shuttle Atlantis had safely touched down, it's final mission to the space station over, the Space Shuttle program officially coming to a close.

How many of us recall President John F Kennedy's challenge to America to land a man on the moon in ten years? Remember the Apollo Program, and those immortal words, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" when we actually accomplished that goal?

I grew up watching the space program unfold, and knowing the space shuttle will no longer be lifting off into outer space leaves me with a certain emptiness inside. NASA goes on, but a part of it seems missing until we again have the ability to launch our own astronauts into space to continue our exploration of that final frontier.