With rock music blaring, fifth graders count down from 10-9-8 to the rocket boosters’ firing up, and blasting the computer-generated astronauts toward space.

“Hey, the future looks good, huh?” says Ken Larson, jumping to center stage at the new Exploration Space exhibition here.

"Celebrating" is an ironic choice of words, given the current and future sorry state of the US manned space program.  Maybe virtual space travel really is the only future, unless we get some leadership with vision and balls.  To read the rest of the article, click here.