Ulrich Walter

“On one hand I’m sad about the end of the Shuttle flights, because I think it’s a good Shuttle, but on the other I understand that we don’t actually need the Shuttle anymore. It was used to build the ISS, but we don’t need it to support the ISS.

"However, there will be no US manned space vehicles for about 5–6 years and this is a big loss. Because only the Russian Soyuz will fly to the ISS there will be a lull, but I hope that after this lull we will go to the Moon and do other things.

"For unmanned spaceflight, this is a totally different story with great scientific missions coming up. But the public doesn’t view these the same way, so all spacefaring nations should rethink whether to do more manned spaceflight because this is where most of the general public interest lies.”