John F. Kennedy, out of all the presidents, was the most direct in linking the U.S. space program to breakthroughs in science and technology necessary to keep the nation in the lead. By Ronald Reagan’s presidency, space was just another front in the fight against the Soviet Union: space-based nuclear missiles could strike from angles undetected by conventional radar, and lasers, part of his Strategic Defense Initiative program, could potentially be developed to destroy incoming rockets in mid-flight. With the Cold War over, however, much of the reason for going to space was lost.

On this day, July 8, in 2011, the last of the United States shuttle missions, the Atlantis was launched. Subsequent flights into space would come with the Russian cosmonauts, at a cost of $63 million (compared with the $1.5 billion estimate for every U.S. shuttle launch.)

President Barack Obama made the decision to have the next generation of space vehicles designed by private industry, and many others similar faulted NASA bureaucracy for wastefulness and lack of vision. Polls taken around the time of the flight found more than half of Americans still wanted the U.S. to maintain some kind of a space program, and the NASA has maintained its long-term goal of reaching an asteroid by 2025.