History Officially Ends With Last Space Shuttle Launch

Tell your grandchildren to watch out for this bugger

8,000 years of human civilisation officially ended today at 0856 Eastern Daylight Time, with the final launch of Endeavour - the last remaining space shuttle in operation – from Cape Kennedy Space Center.

“Well, guys, I guess that’s end of the line for the human race,” announced NASA mission director Randy Von Braun as Endeavour separated from its rocket booster. “It’s all downhill from here.”

With the end of the space shuttle program the only way for astronauts to reach the International Space Station will be old-fashioned rockets, although the European Sapce Agency is working on a manned version of its space truck – thought to be an old Ford Transit, although Britain is keen to promote its own Commer Van – as soon as it can figure out how to get the brakes to work at 25,000mph.

Futurologists awaiting their P45s say that global warming is already becoming less of a worry for people, although they fear a mini Ice Age will occur in about 700 years. Before that, however, they warn that the Earth will be plunged into two horrific world wars in the next century - the first beginning with two nuclear strikes on Japan, and the second ending only when the heir to the four-year-old Austro-Hungarian Empire is assassinated.

There is some good news to come from the reversal of history, though. Mobile phones will become less and less irritating until they finally fall out of use altogether in around 25 years’ time, when nobody will be able to imagine how such a gadget could be ever made small enough to fit inside a briefcase.