Video break: The shuttle ‘cool factor’

Leave it to an organization full of engineers to take a perfectly cool and spectacular view of a space shuttle launch and give it the perfectly horrible name, “Ascent Imagery Highlights.”

NASA has released this production of the space shuttle Discovery’s launch late last month. The shuttle, as you probably know, landed yesterday for the last time.

The video almost restores the “cool factor” in its entirety to a part of the country’s space initiative that seems to have lost it.

Update 4:58 p.m. – In the first hour of NPR’s Science Friday tomorrow on MPR, there’ll be a segment considering the future of spaceflight.