Recently, the International Space Station marked its 10th year
of continuous occupation. The space shuttle Discovery took off
last Tuesday for its final mission into space, as the shuttle
program quickly drew to a close. It is certainly a transitional
period for NASA, and many advancements have been made in the
last decade. In addition to having man in space for 10
continuous years, we have also landed unmanned missions on Mars
and have manned missions exploring other planets from afar. We
have found planets of similar size to Earth outside of our solar
system. And yet, man has not been to the Moon since 1972, and
the fervor that once surrounded putting man into space has
quelled. NASA’s crowning moment, and perhaps the single most
important moment in space exploration history, was beating the
Soviet Union to place a man on the Moon in 1969. However, since
the space race fever of the ’60s, our passion for achieving
manned space exploration has simmered. The forays we have made
in space have been dampened by m