Shuttle Endeavor departs from Cape Canaveral today. Along with ordinary onlookers, Barack Obama also hosts it.

In a few hours, the shuttle Endeavor will depart for its final flight. More than half a million people gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch the shuttle launch. US President Barack Obama also plans to visit the cosmodrome.

Now NASA has only two shuttles left in service - Endeavor and Atlantis. The program will be phased out by the end of the summer. But America is not giving up on the idea of manned space flights, notes Igor Lisov, a columnist for the “Cosmonautics News” magazine.

“The United States hopes to abandon the purchase of services for the delivery of American astronauts to the station by Russia,” he noted. “The development of the flight vehicle continues, and money for bringing it to flight status is allocated in next year’s budget.”

“In parallel, the development of either three or four private American manned spacecraft is underway,” the expert also recalled.

Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics Alexander Zheleznyakov is confident that manned projects are needed, but not in the form in which they exist now.

“Programs that focus on space research in near and far space, such as the Shuttle, Buran, in a modified form, that is, not of the same size, not of the same scale, but they definitely need to be developed. Maybe not today, but tomorrow There’s no escape from this,” he believes.

The United States and the Soviet Union began developing manned flight programs almost simultaneously.

The first prototypes of reusable ships in the USSR and the USA have been developed since at least the 60s. However, during the first 20 years of development, all projects either failed or showed modest results.

The first successful prototype was the Columbia shuttle, which flew in 1981. The Soviet Buran entered orbit 7 years later, in 1988. Moreover, unlike Columbia, the shuttle operated in a completely autonomous mode, controlled exclusively by automation. However, for the Buran, the first flight ended up being the last.

Once the shuttles are finished operating, they will be sent to museums. However, according to unofficial data, anyone can buy a decommissioned space shuttle for about $30 million.

Barack Obama waves to the shuttle