On a side note, talking about jobs. we should be building mining ships. to go out there and bring back asteroids for mining. you could create millions of jobs that way. Iron, gold, steel, and maybe even materials we dont even know exist yet could be harvested.
@timtrueman we will never be able to build a ship that lets astronauts escape in case of emergency. we can try, but if the liquid hydrogen decides to explode for whatever reason, there is nothing you can do. it simply expands too fast for there to be any kind of reation, even a computerized automated ejection.
EDIT: by the way, I dont care what country is out there exploring space. i have no loyalty for any country at all, i see it as humans exploring space. not USA vs Russia vs China vs Europe, its just humans. and this, the end of the shuttle, is basically the largest and so far best that humans have coming to an end.