NASA's Final PR Flub

What's with scheduling the final Space Shuttle landing in the middle of the night?  It's almost like they were ashamed that the program was ending (which, by the way, they should be).

One more orbit would have put the Shuttle landing in the bright daylight of a Florida morning and would have been carried live on all the morning shows.  Instead we got a barely visible orbiter landing in the dark of night during hours when most Americans were still asleep.

When the final Apollo moon landing mission, Apollo 17, launched in 1972 NASA went for the big statement and lit the rocket off at 12:33 am Florida time, a blast that was visible for a couple hundred miles.  As I recall the launch was scheduled a bit earlier but had some delays in the countdown, however it was planned from the start to go at night when the huge flame trailing the vehicle would be the most visible.  That's going out with style.

Today the Shuttle just seemed to sneak home hoping not to be noticed.

Have watched manned space launches since the very first Mercury launches in the early 60's, I can't believe the country that put men on the moon can no longer launch our own people into space, but instead must rely on other nations to get us there.

It is not a proud day for America.

At least now NASA will have more time to worry about global warming.