Space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Kennedy Space Center, Orlando Sentinel

"...the launch came amid major worries about NASA's future, as the agency has been told by the White House to consider cutting its 2011 budget by as much as 10 percent. Based on the agency's proposed 2009-2010 budget of $18.7 billion, that would equal roughly $1.87 billion.

That kind of cut would end human spaceflight for at least the next decade -- and likely longer -- according to a presidential space panel that recommended last month a $3 billion-a-year spending increase so NASA could run a "meaningful" manned-space program."