Shuttle Endeavour blasts off

There currently are no U.S. vehicles to replace the shuttles, which began flying in 1981. For the near future, NASA is buying rides to the space station from Russia, which charges $50 million per seat on its Soyuz capsules.

NASA has been working on developing its own capsule called Orion that could travel to the moon as well as the space station, but with costs outpacing available funds, the Obama administration last week proposed cancelling the program.

Instead, NASA would spend $6 billion over the next five years to help private companies develop space taxis.

Shuttle managers, who expect to lose their jobs, said the more people involved in building spacecraft, the better.

"There's no reason that just the government should be the one building and operating (them)," Moses said.

However, he said, "It's not as simple as it looks ... To go really high and fast takes a lot of effort, especially to come back down from there. I wish everybody the best of luck."

(Additional reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Eric Beech)