Regardless of your political views, rave if the Space Shuttle makes you proud to be an American.

Especially since it was built in what I consider my hometown, Palmdale, California. One of the last places I worked there before moving was the Shuttle site at USAF Plant 42. When the first one landed at Edwards AFB there were around a million people to witness it. For the second there were nearly as many. Sadly, it became so routine that as more missions successfully returned less and less folks showed up. I happened to be working at Edwards when one of the last missions to land there came in. I got some pics but they all looked MUCH bigger and closer in the viewfinder than they really were, and I ran out of film :( Much of my life has been tied to aerospace as Pops worked for Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, and North American Rockwell. Roughly have my working life has been associated with the Shuttle, U2 and SR-71, F5/T-38, A4 Sky Hawk and A6 Intruder, B1 and B2 bombers, and numerous aircraft I can't really talk about at both Edwards and the "Skunk Works". One of my parents best friends was the head of the SR-71 project. Very cool dude for an old guy lol. My ex was an inspector for Northrop on the B-2 inspecting parts she had built as a mechanic YEARS before final assembly and went on to be the first female inspector on the flight line at Edwards. I have witnessed Saturn-V booster tests at China Lake NWC. I have watched a test pilot bring the B1 bomber in seconds after breaking the sound barrier and pull three barrel rolls at about 250 feet off the deck and at about 600 miles per hour. It was the ships maiden flight. I have watched a U2 take off in less than 300 feet of travel. It starts generating lift as soon as it starts moving forward. I've watched them change the engines on an SR-71 and have it ready to fly again in less than 10 minutes. I have watched them intentionally put F-16's and F-15's into the supposedly dreaded and unrecoverable "flat spin" and recover, as well as pull the noses up so hard that they intentionally stall, start falling back to earth ass end first, and relight the engines at under a 1000' feet from the deck and kick it back in the ass and boogie out to do it again. I watched the maiden flight of the first B2 bomber. I have seen the SR-71 take off in both the dawn's early light and into the setting sun at dusk. Such sights are indescribable, they have to be witnessed first hand.

Am I proud of our aerospace achievements? You're Damn right I am!