It's T minus 6 for the space shuttle as Endeavour exits the Earth's atmosphere and enters the universe.
At the end of 2010, the space shuttle will be retired. With its retirement comes the return of sending man to the moon. Instead of using Saturn V rockets this time, NASA is launching Orion and Ares I to propel future missions. The retirement of the shuttle also marks the return of the Cold War mentality - on an extreme micro-scale.
When expeditions outside of the atmospheric boundaries began, it was sparked more by competition than curiosity. The desire to be the ultimate superpower - dictating control over not the planet but the universe encompassing it - drove the United States and the USSR to scurry toward space, and observe from above. Since then, however, the ideologies driving space exploration have shifted, now with the promise of "the benefit of all."
The concept of "for the benefit of all" exploded with the photographs captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, which serve as a reminder that the desire to dominate one globe of people - one facet of life - pales in comparison to the constant changes evolving in the Milky Way and other galaxies.
The triteness of the 20th century power struggle, as glorified by the telescope, served as an inadvertent catapult to the International Space Station. Acting as a catalyst to enhance our comprehension of the science scene, the ISS has yielded medical breakthroughs, complementing our ability to provide a heightened sense of life here on Earth.
In 2020, when the projected lunar missions are slotted to begin, the ISS will be the link between us and the moon, acting as the springboard to promote curiosity and advancement, not crazed competition. Though, if it weren't for that initial pride and heated competition, it might have taken a few more decades before we realized we're not the biggest matter in the universe. We're not even close.
It's one small step.
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