http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG4yAktVNMs
I'm glad there were no problems for the final mission, lots of memories over the years, we lost some good people, let this be a tribute to them.


Space Shuttle Challenger

•Francis R. Scobee
•Michael J. “Mike” Smith
•Judith A. “Judy” Resnik
•Ellison S. “El” Onizuka
•Ronald E. “Ron” McNair
•Gregory B. ”Greg” Jarvis
•Christa McAuliffe


Space Shuttle Columbia

•Rick D. Husband
•William C. “Willie” McCool
•Michael P. Anderson
•Ilan Ramon
•Kalpana “K.C.” Chawla, Ph.D.
•David Brown, M.D.
•Laurel Salton Clark, M.D.





Fitting song; "Take Me Home"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE8PApo-cUc

Actually, I feel sad that there are no more space shuttle flights. It has been such an eyeopener each time it travelled, to ballance out the way space ships seem to be able to travel in movies.

After all, launch on the first day, docking on the third after an inspection round... it puzzled me each time, about the distance and the problems. And I think I am kinda glad that it took that long each time. Or we would have them much more often, creating many more holes in the ozon layer.

Don't worry Annajon, we can fix the ozone with PS

The exhaust from APCP solid rocket motors contain mostly water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and a metal oxide (typically aluminium oxide). The worst damage I can see these rocket launches doing is the possibility of creating a small amount of acid rain in the general vicinity of the launch. Certainly any environmental damage all the combined rocket launches doesn't even come close to the damage caused from all the vehicles driven every day, or even the amount of gasses and whatnot kicked into the atmosphere by a single large volcano eruption.