flight again? how do we continue this nation of exploration? tom jones, former nasa astronaut, spent a lot of time on those shuttles, and he joins me now. good to have you here. >> hello, martha. martha: hello there. you wrote a beautiful piece about this today, and in it you say when you worked on the international space station, it was supposed to be a beginning when it was completed that would then launch us to the outer reaches on a regular basis in this country. there's a picture of you. what do you think about that now? >> well, we can be heartened by the excellent, perfect mission that atlantis flew. those were wonderful words from chris ferguson and his cap-com at mission control. it expresses the feelings we all have of pride in the accomplishments of the space shuttle program. it was great to be a part of that, and it was a privilege to be able to fly on the shuttle. we're left looking towards a future that's very uncertain. there's the near-term goal of getting americans back to the