l. pickering of a stack of books with stunning photos chronicling the u. s. a space program including hot off the press this week, picturing the space shuttle the early years. you can get it on amazon long time space journalist john disney. john, as richard branson and jeff bezos lived to tell about it, and eli and musk is the next space cowboy. i've wondered, should we have retired the shuttle? was it technically and or economically obsolete beyond update? i think it just run its course hall and remember the shuttle was designed, believe it or not, in the early to mid seventies. that's almost 50 years ago. now it flew for 30 years and then a lot of good. one reason we developed the shuttle it was because we knew the ability to get up and down to orbit on a relatively routine basis with a cargo capability. and the shuttle provided that big sections of the space station were put up and assembled. and now we have the international space station, some temporary science, big laboratories were carried aboard the shuttle. but again, with a fully functioning space s