Sigh.

CNN botches a report on the space program. In the piece entitled What will inspire tomorrow's rocket scientists? Lauren Russell writes

Ferguson and most other astronauts paid for their shuttle tickets with post-graduate degrees and years in the military.

But, if commercial organizations take over NASA's suborbital shuttle missions, the next generation's astronauts might purchase their ticket as they would a bus or plane ticket.

The only problem with this is that the space shuttle does not perform sub-orbital operations - it was designed and is used for low Earth orbital missions. Perhaps I'm just being pissy, but this kind of thing bothers me. Reporters should know the subject that they report on.

NOTE: Several hours after I first spotted this mistake it is still up on their website. I've saved the page just in case.