For the last few years, librarians have increasingly seen people use online search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace them. Yet only recently have librarians stopped lamenting the trend and started working to close the gap between traditional scholarly research and the incomplete, often random results of a Google search.

The man at the controls called it “a mind-blowing experience — awesome.” But everyone who saw test pilot Mike Melvill become the world’s first people’s astronaut Monday was calling it history.