Is there a better symbol of willed American decline? The pity is not Discovery's retirement - beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate - but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on - the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon — was suddenly canceled in 2010. And with that, control of manned spaceflight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China.
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