The Constellation Program is supposed to pick up the ball that NASA dropped in the early 1970s and send the United States triumphantly back into manned space flight. The Space Shuttle will be retired in 2010 with a mostly successful record of going into Earth orbit and returning safely. There were a couple of Space Shuttles that didn’t quite make it and that was the news that everyone got to see. The routine launches and returns were, well, a bit dull and their missions seemed pretty pointless. We are all members of the Science Fiction Generation, we are living in…