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[hribek]

I guess this is related: http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/why-houston-did-not-get-a-shuttle/

 

[GoForPDI]

The shuttle is a machine, just a piece of material like a car is a piece of material. It doesn't have a soul or a brain. It is a tool, it served its purpose, and that is that. I live in Houston, but I won't lose any sleep over where an inanimate object is located.

The object itself is inanimate, yes. But this collection of nuts and bolts carries the hard work, the personalities, the blood, sweat and tears of those who conceived her, built her, flew her, and to those that flew on her sisters, the thousands of people representing a nation that helped prepare her and her sisters, the humans that lost their lives aboard her sisters in this whole great endeavour of human spaceflight.

This may sound a bit like the speech Tom Kelly gives in ''From the Earth to the Moon'', but thats exactly what I was thinking about typing this

Its due to the above reasons that I see the final flight of Endeavour being the final flight of Challenger too. The final flight of Atlantis will be the final flight of the programme, the final flight of everyone involved in the space shuttle programme, even extending back to the X-20 Dyna-Soar project, or the flying bathtub. Every single human being that contributed in some way or another. This is their final few flights.

And that is why an Orbiter is not just a ''machine''.