I agree with Tam 100% - Our tax dollars at work.

"If you're going to steal money from me at gunpoint, promise me you'll use it to do cool stuff like shake the ground with thunder and punch holes through the sky."

Good luck STS-135, sure has been fun watching all those missions. I can remember watching the first shuttle launch sometime around kindergarten or 1st grade, they wheeled TV's on carts into most classrooms and those without went into a classroom that did. We all watched with great wonder and awe as that spaceship blasted off and flew into the great beyond. I was enamored from that moment on, visiting Cape Kennedy and writing letters to NASA asking for mission patches (I got some cool stickers and a poster, but no patches, had to buy them at the gift shop, LOL).

On a related note, Congress is trying to defund the NOAA weather satellites, one congresscritter went so far as to tell the NOAA director at a hearing to just get the data they need by "turning on the weather channel". Apparently he doesn't know where TWC gets their data, where electricity comes from, or how to pull his head out of his ass.

God speed STS-135; heres hoping I see more space ships blast off in my lifetime.