Its good news about STS-135 but all good things must end, I would give my right arm to keep her flying but cannot see that happen.
A lot of people would give arms and legs, but just without to realize the real problems inside NASA.
I will be able to tell my grandkids in 40 or 50 year about the time humans learned to use fire to make rockets and then live in space for months/years at a time. By then we will have used up most of the oil/gas and we will all be back living in caves all because somewhere along the way we forgot how to imagine what could be.
It's unlikely that there won't be oil anymore until the 2050's. Promises that the oil reserves are comming to an end "soon" are being made for 100 years already. In 1919 they estimated that the oil reserves will come to an end in the 1930's. In 1948 they said that the oil reserves will come to an end in the 1960's. Since then they always predict ~35 years. It's partly a market mechanism and partly based on environmentalism. Scaring people can be useful for making more money. It works well and it's not only related to oil reserves. It's also about more natural disasters and an upcoming climate catastrophe (all caused by New Zealand cow farting), more crime, more war, propagating global epidemics by verbally turning influenzaviruses into something like deadly killer viruses etc... (and even this is not a new mechanism of the pharma industries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASibLqwVbsk, and as for catastrophic climate change prophecies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvsAIyUAGyY).
The future always is going to become worse, never good. It seems that this is natural human thinking (and business as well as media induced thinking anyway). In fact, the world does not become worse at all. The worst things we already got over (inquisition, oppression, education only for aristocrats, WWI, WWII, the cold war, etc.). And it's also a misconception that humans never learn and that history repeats itself. People who always say so actually have no clue of history, i.e. human progress.
As for the oil again: "
We have grossly underestimated mankind’s ability to find new reserves of petroleum, as well as our capacity to raise recovery rates and tap fields once thought inaccessible or impossible to produce". Abdallah Dschum, CEO of Aramco (the biggest petroleum drilling company). He is convinced that we have lifted less than 10% of the oil for now. But anyway, by the time when the oil is going to come to an end, which won't happen within any foreseeable timeframe, we will be able to cope with. The world is not going to end suddenly only because we can't use oil anymore
