Hitchin' a ride with the Russians...

Today marked the end of the Space Shuttle program for the United States. For the foreseeable future, if an American wants to go into orbit he or she will have a multi-million dollar cab fare.

The picture attached was taken by the International Space Station crew as Atlantis made its final descent. It was the end of an era and the end of a sporadic, yet lucrative tourist trade in Cape Canaveral. What would Apollo astronaut Major Anthony Nelson think of all this? Not much. He's busy making out with Jeannie.

I'm not going to be too critical. It was time for the shuttle program to end. Government run space organizations and private enterprise have made leaps forward which would soon have made the shuttle obsolete. Is that vague yet specific enough to make me sound like I know what I'm talking about?

To commemorate one of the most successful endeavors in human history, I present you with some fun facts (conveniently copied and pasted from The Huntsville Times.... Hey! That's where Space Camp is!).

An Xbox 360 has far more power than the flight computer

The flight computer aboard the space shuttle has less than one percent of the power of an Xbox 360 game console. Astronauts load programs directing the phases of a mission - liftoff, orbit, landing - into the computer one at a time after removing the program for the previous segment. Why hasn't NASA upgraded the computer? The agency values its 30-year history of reliability. That said, astronauts don't go into space with only one computer. Crew laptops and other laptops also make the trip.

Thank 'Star Trek' for the first shuttle's name

The space shuttle has a "Star Trek" connection. Fans of the original TV show flooded NASA in the 1970s with letters urging the first orbiter be named for the spaceship in the show, and the White House responded by changing its planned name to Enterprise. The Enterprise, however, never had an engine and never flew in space. It was used for tests to prove the craft could fly through the atmosphere and land. What was the name originally planned for the Enterprise? Constitution.

Night launches rare

The space shuttle launched at night for 34 of its 135 total flights, counting the scheduled last launch on July 8.

Gas sucker

If the orbiter's main engines pumped water instead of fuel, they would drain an average-sized swimming pool every 25 seconds. Because liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel the main engines, the majority of exhaust produced is water vapor.

4.5 million pounds of shuttle

The space shuttle "stack," including the orbiter, solid rocket boosters and external tank, weighs more than 4.5 million pounds at launch. It has 3.5 million pounds of propellants that will be entirely consumed in liftoff.