No more space shuttle missions

I heard an interview with Buzz Aldrin the other day, where he philosophized about the future of space exploration. Very interesting! Among many other things, he mentioned that in his opinion the focus should be more on unmanned space travel with robots and all that instead of shooting people up there. You don’t have to worry about one leg of the trip, it just makes more sense to not put people into harms way, and also it’s much cheaper.
Well, maybe that’s one reason why NASA decided to end the shuttle missions. Somehow I feel a bit sad about that though. Well, there’s still the Russians to shoot people up! Although that raises some questions, like, can you redeem frequent flyer miles from the Shuttle on Soyuz rockets? Or what happens to the scientists on the ISS, if the Russians decided to end their program too?