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First Public Shuttle Engine Test

Posted by timothy on from the things-that-go-ROOOOOAAAR-in-the-night dept.

Guppy06 writes: "NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (Mississippi, near the gulf coast) will be opening its doors to the public for the first time this Saturday. As part of its celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the first space shuttle launch (as well as flight-certifying a Pratt & Whitney fuel turbo pump), there'll be a 520-second static test of an SSME around 2000 CDT. Translating that into English for the non space geeks, that means they'll be lighting up a space shuttle main engine (attatched to a large steel frame, grounded in a big chunk of concrete so it doesn't go anywhere) for about 9 minutes around 8:00. The press release is available here. Now if only they did stuff like this more often, there might be more interest in NASA ..."

3 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. marshmallows on a stick? by grammar+nazi · · Score: 3
    Can we bring marshmallows and skewers?

    Guppy06 - please spell check.

    --

    Keeping /. free of grammatical errors for ~5 years.
  2. Sounds like fun... by Vuarnet · · Score: 3

    Tour guide: On your left, we have the Research Building, the restrooms and the caffeteria. On your right...

    FWOOSH!

    Tour guide: Er... we have, or rather had, the souvenir stand. Thanks you all for coming and, uh, here's a free pin for y'all, and please let's keep this a secret betwen ourselves, OK?


    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I

    --
    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
    Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
  3. Update by Guppy06 · · Score: 3
    I don't think the state of Mississippi has seen a larger congegation of people in one place since Vicksburg. They were NOT prepared for the crowd that showed up. Personally, I'd say more people showed up for this than usually show up along NASA Causeway for a shuttle launch.

    The scheduled firing was scheduled for 8:00. I got to the gate around 7:00, and spent the next hour stuck in traffic along the five-mile stretch to the designated parking area. In that traffic jam, most of the lisence plates were from Mississippi and Louisiana. There were plenty from Alabama (70+ miles away), too many for them all to be military. There was even one from Ontario.

    Upon reaching the parking area (where the people trying to organize parking ran out of designated space), I joined the crowd of 400-500 people waiting on about 4-5 busses (and I only saw one bus owned and operated by NASA). 8:00 came and went with no firing, and around 8:45 (still in line for a bus) somebody started moving through the crowd with a bullhorn saying something about "indefinately postponed" because of technical difficulties.

    I can't really blame them for not expecting the turnout they got. I don't know how well the press release was covered in the Biloxi area, but I know that the bit barely got three paragraphs in some sidebar in New Orlean's Times-Picayune. I guess everybody wanted to get an up-close view of part of that thing that sets off everybody's car alarm whenever it comes in for a landing.

    There's been no official word that I can see yet when they'll try again, and whether it will be public again or not.

    All in all, anybody who think Americans don't care about their space program deserves to get smacked hard.