This evening the Space Shuttle landed at Edwards AFB in California after 15 days in space.  They were scheduled to land yesterday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but storms in the area kept that from happening.  Then, this morning two more landing attempts in Florida were canceled because of weather.  They finally touched down at 8:53pm EDT.

After a few hours when they've become re-accustomed to life on Earth, I wonder what the astronauts will be thinking.  For most of them, their families are in Florida, and they are certainly anxious to get back there.  The problem is that they are about 2,500 miles away!  So how are they going to get home?  They're going to take an airplane!  Don't you know that's an adrenaline killer. 

That's like riding The Borg roller coaster at Carowinds ten times in a row, then capping it off with a thrilling ride on the Merry Go Round.  Or, it's like enjoying a cold, refreshing bowl of your favorite ice cream and then drinking a glass of warm water.  It puts the brakes on all that is fun and exciting.

But the fun and excitement will soon end for the Space Shuttle.  There are only six more scheduled missions with the last one scheduled for sometime in September 2010.  After that there won't be another US manned space flight until at least 2014 when NASA's new Orion debuts.  This spacecraft closely resembles Apollo from the 1960s and 1970s, and is significantly different than the bus-like Space Shuttle.

As Jack Horkheimer would say, "Keep looking up!"