NASA Plans Discovery Launch May 15

Haxx writes "More than two years after losing the space shuttle Columbia and its seven crew, NASA said Friday it has set May 15 as its target date for once again launching shuttles into space." Reader gollum123 writes points out Reuters's version of the story, which says that "May 15 was chosen as the launch date for Discovery and its seven-member crew because of lighting conditions and thermal issues related to the shuttle's launch and docking at the International Space Station."

Comments

Re:What about Atlantis?

[redheaded_stepchild]

So instead of one highly-trained crew and gobs of expensive equipment stranded in space, we can have two? Seriously - if they're that worried about the first flight, how can they be confident in the 'rescue' flight?

Re:Been there, done that

[DerekLyons]

I think most in the USA have a "been there, done that" attitude towards our human spaceflight programs. Sure, the space station is supposedly laying the foundation for future manned exploration missions, but right now, all we're essentially doing is a repeat of the 1980s. Weren't they doing 0 gravity experiments back then too?

Long term human endurance research combined with research into ameliorating the bad stuff? Nope. (The Russians theoretically were, but they were lax on documentation and even laxer on experimental controls and protocols. Frankly, their 'scientific' approach to this research wouldn't get past a 6th grade science teacher.)

And what do we have to look forward to? Mr. Bush's plans to boldly return where we went 40 years ago? And after that grow some money trees so we can somehow get to mars?

Frankly, about 1% of our (America's) social budget, (or about 5% of the DoD budget) would increase NASA's current budget ten-fold... More than enough to go to Mars even at NASA's inflated costs. No need for money trees at all.

Unmanned spaceflight has made great strides and clearly had a far, far greater impact on the public's love of space than our boring, so-tired manned spaceflight program. It's time to get creative, or else leave the mission to the robots.

Real exploration *IS* boring. The robots make the news because they are unusual, but Hubble (which has been doing real science and exploration for over a decade) doesn't. Like most people, you don't actually want exploration, you want "Fear Factor meets Survivor... In Space!". Decades of NASA propoganda and Star Trek has completely warped your sense of what 'exploration' really is.