NASA has a nifty little “picture of the day” feature that you can add to your Google Homepage.
A picture that came up just yesterday shows the shuttle lifting off against a gray sky. Here’s a snippet (from http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_940.html):
But the thing that struck me about this is how much our space program is beginning to resemble the Millennium Falcon.
The rusty tanks, the patchy paintwork, using a stapler for repairs. It’s starting to look like the shuttles may have made the Kessel Run a few times themselves.
(Detail from above)
Compare to this 1983 picture from the Wikipedia entry:
And this about 20 months before the first shuttle launch (again from Wikipedia):
Clean and sparkly
Cripes, it’s 2007. Shouldn’t we be flying something like this:
from www.starwars.com
and not this:
