Headlines like this continue to remind me that NASA is the biggest make-work organization in the world. While I agree that the 'space race' of the 1960's was an important show of technical prowess to the communists, since then, many missions are largely unnecessary. While science is important, I don't think that seizing taxpayer dollars at the point of a gun in the interest of scientific achievement is the best way to go about it.

NASA continues to try to grab headlines for the 'first' this, and 'longest' that, just to keep people interested and keep the money coming in from legislators. People in Cape Canaveral, Florida and Houston, Texas would probably argue for the other side, but only because their local economies depend so much on the large taxpayer funded organization.

The simple fact remains that a large amount of the work, especially simple satellite deployments can be done with unmanned rockets and not more expensive shuttle launches.