Rich Lowry says that it’s time to retire the Shuttle. He doesn’t really say anything new. Or wrong, as far as it goes.

But he hurts his case (at least with me) by citing Gregg Easterbrook. And there seems to be no recognition in his post of the potential for any non-NASA space activities, though it’s not possible to come up with any kind of sensible policy prescriptions without such a recognition. I also find it frustrating that these calls for ending the program are for the wrong reasons, when the best reason is (and always has been) that the program is a ghastly failure from the standpoint of cost and making spaceflight routine, which was its original goal.