Murals Commemorate Space Shuttle Legacy (Update)

Good images. But is this the first time a big display of the Challenger and Columbia crews has been raised in a Shuttle ops area? Seems to me like it shouldn't have taken this long?

Folk:

You don't suppose these murals will ever be available to the public, do you? If not, well, maybe a bunch of us can raise a stink about it. After all, NASAs space program belong to all of us... including the tears.

tinker

To whom it may concern:

Thank you.

tinker

Nicely done, especially the first two.
Pretty sure these a Computer Graphics, excellent work.

Alas, we don't have a Robert McCall around anymore , I am sure he would have done something astounding!

By the end of 2011 the USA will have made it's last manned access to LEO , for a some unknown delta of time unknown.

2012 will be the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's Friendship 7 orbital flight.

In 2012 we will not be able to do what we could do in 1962.

Respect to the shuttle era and especially to the great folks and accomplishments in LEO but it's gone on too long, this focus on LEO. Hopefully the end of this will eventually lead to beyond LEO, current political climate notwithstanding.

I think these murals are great. Anyone who's followed the shuttle program knows how much dedication it took from hundreds of thousands of people to make this thing fly. It was also a herculean task to still go forward after both accidents.

NASA is changing, like it should.

LEO can go to the startups and other countries, NASA will go beyond.

>>LEO can go to the startups and other countries, NASA will go beyond.
Not when they throw away the Space Shuttle for no better reason than that they can't remember why we built it in the first place. Doesn't anybody remember why Apollo was cancelled? It's because Nixon pointed out that sending a few lucky astros to the moon (or an asteroid, or Mars) on throw-away rockets was much too expensive to be of any practical value. It still is. Bush cancelled not only our first and only reusable launch system, but the entire RLV program. And fired the thousands of workers who after decades, finally have it working safely, destroying the corporate knowledge that could have made a new generation of RLVs that would be safe and practical in cost. I've devote most of my life to the space program, it pains me to say this. But cancelling the Shuttle at the very point when it is finally working well will go down in history as the stupidest thing NASA has ever done.