A Nasa employee who was actually on one of the launch consoles at Kennedy last night writes me with his dream:

“After the launch, I was still in the firing room and the launch director gave a little speech, ‘Tonight, my fellow welfare queens, the tax dollars of your productive friends and families have been shot into space. I take pride in knowing that this money will be frittered away on useless research and wildly expensive boondoggling in low earth orbit, rather than being spent on killing innocent foreigners in Iraq and other countries.’ It brought a tear to my eye!”