THE ATLANTIC: The history of the space shuttle in pictures, a visual chronicle of 'dizzying inspiration and of crushing disappointment.'

GOODBYE TO A SLACKER SPACE PROGRAM: Brent Cox writes at The Awl of the thoroughly underwhelming space program now coming to an end. "The United States climbed space exploration and planted a flag in it like it was a mountain. In fact one of our noted alternative historians, Sarah Palin, claims that it was the space race in the '60s that toppled all the Soviet Socialist Republics. Our post-Sputnik dominance of space was an unmistakable emblem of the preeminence of the United States, of the exceptionalism that is now ingrained, of Americanism. There are guns and there is butter, but who else could devote a tenth of their GDP to accomplish something unimaginable and mythic? Who else put boots on the ground on something that was literally not of this Earth? That was us."