Warning: Verbose Rant Follows...

I just watched Anderson Cooper celebrate the success, wonder, and amazement of the last shuttle launch. The banner at the bottom of the screen reads 'Atlantis Launches Successfully'. All this is wonderful I think. It's about time the TV media started covering space exploration. My problem, however, is this - in the conversations they are having about the shuttle and the American space program they keep using the word 'is', when they should be saying, at least for now, 'was'. Including replays, CNN has broadcast this launch more times than any other launch. How many times did CNN cover STS-074? How many shuttles were launched in 1998? How many times did Anderson Cooper cover a shuttle launch at all? As he stated several times today, this was his first. His first and his last.

Indeed, this is a celebration. This is a celebration of the the most catastrophic failure of American political leadership with regard to scientific achievement since the cancelling of the superconducting supercollider, which if constructed on schedule in 1993 would STILL surpass the power of the LHC by 26 TeV, almost three times as powerful. When the experts today were asked about the future of the US space program, they talk about 1) slugging a ride with the Russians, and 2) developing an American ship that can return us to the ISS by 2015. Eventually, once technology advances, we hopefully will be able to produce a ship that will be able to take us past low Earth orbit and take us back to the moon and beyond. Getting past low Earth orbit, as they keep saying, "is the real prize". So, in other words, our first goal is to get us back to where we were in 1981, and our second, longer term goal is to get us back to where we were in 1969. Why is the US falling so far behind in Math and Science? Our government can't even get our astronauts in the air on an american made ship, and our goal is to be as good as we were when we were doing calculations on a slide rule. Anderson, you like to ask tough questions, why don't you ask them and stop celebrating failure.