The heroic era spanned only eleven years (1961–72) compared to the shuttle’s thirty, with a much longer list of firsts, and this fact contains an important lesson about the history of American spaceflight as well. We did a lot in a very short span of time, and then we did a lot less for a lot longer. Soon, of course, we’ll be doing nothing at all.

Really? Nothing at all? And list of projects developing new hardware both for manned flights and for launching payloads isn't long enough?

This is the paradox of growing up in the shuttle era: the vehicle is more complex and advanced, its reusability makes it much more cost-effective, and its versatility makes possible missions the Saturn V never could have accomplished, such as repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope and construction of the International Space Station.

Really? Saturn-V couldn't carry a mission to repair Hubble Space Telescope similar to Soyuz mission to repair Salyut-7? International Space Station couldn't be build using Atlas and Delta, Proton and Ariane alone - especially after Mir was built by Protons? You're kidding, right?