Live From Washington, DC: The Space Shuttle Era is Over (Thank God!)

So the space shuttle Discovery has flown its last mission; it's been

towed over the nation's capital like a bruised Chevy after a

demolition derby before being deposited at the Udvar-Hazy air and

space musuem in northern Virginia.

Other space junkers -- Atlantis and Endeavour -- are being retired like

Brett Faver in a pair of Crocs, too, bringing to end an underwhelming

three decades of fruitless and tragic exploration of low-earth

orbiting patterns.

Let's face it: Once we beat the Russians to the moon, the national

rocket grew limper than Liberace at a speculum convention. NASA has

been dining out on a single 1969 hit longer than Zager and Evans.

The good news is that amateur hour is now over and the private space

race has begun. Where two Cold War superpowers failed, let a thousand

business plans bloom!

The future of space is in the hands of the guys behind Amazon, PayPal,

and Virgin. The force of competition will create endless possibilities

and unimaginable technologies. No more talking about how the space

program brought us Tang and Tempur-Pedic mattresses. We're going to

Mars, baby, in business class.

Virgin's Richard Branson has already signed up more stars than there

are in heaven and his regular press releases read like the headlines

at TMZ: Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, and Angelina Jolie have all

reserved space on the first civilian flights to the great beyond.

The International Space Station will continue as a government run

intergalactic DMV, but at least the spaceships shlepping materials and

mouthbreathers to and from it will soon be operated by private

vendors--at an expected 90 percent discount. That should put plenty

more celebrities --and civiliams-- in the mood to join the 30-mile-high

club.

The founder of BudgetSuites, Robert Bigelow, has already launched

experimental modules and is dreaming of putting affordable hotels

--complete with bedspreads soaked in alien DNA—in orbit and PayPal's

Elon Musk has said he wants to die on Mars. Preferably in a colony

established by SpaceX, his company that's hell bent not just on

leaving Earth but getting to the Red Planet in style.

Nobody knows exactly how private space exploration and

entrepreneurship will play out. But's its a lock that the next 30

years won't resemble our government-run space program's decades-long

failure to launch anything more inspiring than Josie and the Pussycats

in Outer Space.

Space out!

About 2:30 minutes.

Filmed by Joshua Swain and Jim Epstein. Edited by Meredith Bragg. Written by Nick Gillespie and Kennedy, who also hosts.

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