Slashdot Mirror
Shuttle Discovery Lifts Off
An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting that the Space Shuttle Discovery has lifted off, marking the United States' returned to manned space flight for the first time since the Columbia disaster in February 2003"
"There are large vultures circling the launch tower, we've got to ask ourselves if they know something that we don't". Jackass.
hooray for nasa!
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Where?
Here's hoping to United States' returned to proper grammar and editorial spellchecking.
What was fascinating about this launch were the number of cameras catching the action. Watching the orbiter separate from the main tank from the tank itself was fantastic.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
That was incredible, sitting in my chair at Australia watching the live NASA TV really gave me goose-bumps. God speed to the crew, and a few rounds of applaud to the people at Nasa.
The footage on Nasa TV was the best I've ever seen, keep it up Nasa - Fantastic work!
Takeoffs are optional, landings are mandatory. Let's hope they have a successful mission and a safe return.
/. spaztech
Now I'm sad.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
With a slingshot. This way, they will not have to worry about troubbles re-entering the atmosphere, as they won't leave it in the first place.
The Beeb has also an article (ofcourse)
Kudos to all the Nasa engineers!
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
I was just in Orlando this past week, 45 minutes away from Cape Canaveral. I flew home last night, so if it had launched just a day or two earlier I would've been able to see it live...darn. Either way, I'm glad that this launch went smoothly, any more problems would be very very bad for NASA at this point.
I watched live coverage on the BBC until the tank separation, it looks like everything went smoothly, and they have more cameras than F1 now. Probably all these delays were just one big media trick.
or any landing where all seven astronauts walk away from it.
I saw the live feed from NASA.. I must say congrats.. but I'll give the conspiracy theorists something to ponder.. from the t-minus 30 minutes that I caught it, there was no switch to internal cameras to show the crew on-board.. this was not the case on the feed from the scrapped launch weeks ago. plenty of live shots on the crew that time. hmmmmm.. perhaps this mission is humanless??? hmmmmmmmmm???
or perhaps they're sending te backstreet boys, cause they needed funding.
RIAA FUNDS NASA!!
hehe
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
I propose a toast:
To Apollo One!
To Challenger!
To Columbia!
To all those we have lost in the pursuit of human understanding and knowledge!
Long live exploration!
Long live science!
Long live Earth!
LONG LIVE.... DISCOVERY!
First, suprised it took this long to get a /. thread up about it because...
/. poster would have a comment to a good feed but.....
Second, couldn't find a damn feed of the liftoff. Nasa's page had both Real and WMP feeds but Real needed update after update and WMP just fizzled. CNN had the same clip it had since this morning. Yahoo was alright but very choppy. Was hoping a friendly
I heard there was a practically a media city down there but I barely saw it. sigh.
oh, btw, congrats NASA!
-Teiresias
Did anyone actually hear the CNN broadcast of the launch they mentioned that the seperation of the solid rocket boosters is the equivlent of throwing a cigarette out of the car...lol
To think, I thought NFL Broadcasts were bad.
We can go to the moon! ... oh wait, Wallace and Grommet beat us there. Darn...
After two and a half years, this launch made my hair stand on end again. All the best to the crew and their families.
Man, what it must be like to ride one of those things.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Let's hope they have fixed the landing, too.
I can see the exhaust trail from my office in Jacksonville, FL. It's quite hazy today, though. Wish I had a camera, of course it's not that impressive looking.
See the distance
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Big congratulations to NASA and everyone who made this (again) possible. I watched liftoff from the web and it was spectacular. Good luck to the crew and NASA for the remainder of the flight and the upcoming ones.
RedVortex
The missing link: Spaceflight Now's Mission Status Center (text version).
... spent four months living aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1998." So he's got experience patching up balky tin cans in space...
Darned Dallas newspaper printed the 10:39 time as though it were local, so I missed it. The Mission Status Center is the next best thing. Interesting tidbit: "Mission specialist No. 3 Andy Thomas
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"Oh no, not another boring space launch. Change the channel. Change the channel!"
Some of us were lucky enough to watch it in High-Def on HDNet!
I got to watch the liftoff while at work, at a place where many of the parts of the shuttle were built. It was pretty cool watching it next to guys who had helped build it! All their explanations definitely made the launch even more exciting. God speed to the crew and lets hope they have a successful mission and a safe return!
For the astronauts and for the future of manned spaceflight.
I wonder if the amount of $$ being spent on running the current space shuttle program is worth it.. or if that money would be better spent in not going to space for the next 5 to 10 years and developing something to replace the current shuttle program.
Even after all the precautions, there were still NASA employees crying foul at today's launch date - which raises the question, "What will it take to convince all NASA employees so the general public can be then convinced to fully back this program?"
Best of luck to the current crew. Hope they fly high and land safely.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
Miles O'Brien's Launch Blog
Shuttle Details
Return to Flight
do.what.promptcmds
Tried to watch it launch live via space.com but was getting about 8b/s on the live feed. Works great now that it doesn't fucking matter.
Question everything
No worries, it'll be announced again right here on Slashdot within 24 hours. I can hardly wait!
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
No words can describe the relief felt when seeing the Space Shuttle launch successfully and the External Tank jettisoned without any hitches. :)
Now it's just the anticipation for the days to come where the STS-114 crew go about their mission and approach and docking with the ISS.
Wish the entire crew of STS-114 and NASA luck on their mission and their safe return!
Scene: me and 50 coworkers at a NASA subcontractor watching the webcast a la MSN Video on an XP box.
20 seconds before launch, the feed goes blank. Way to piss off a bunch of rocket scientists, Microsoft. Way to go. We ended up watching the rest on NASATV on a puny TV, which was ahead of the webcast by a minute. In other words, by the time the webcast went blank, back on the regular TV, we had already missed ignition and lift off.
ARGH!
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
I just couldn't watch or listen to the launch. I was just too worried about it.
I am keeping fingers crossed that all goes well with this mission. There is so much at stake.
Nice to see a successful launch - and the fresh groceries will be most appreciated.
http://photobombers.com/ Funny pix
Here's hoping the footage from those 117 cameras or so that NASA placed around the Shuttle to check for damage is eventually made available to the public, once it's been checked by the engineers. Imagine 117 angles on a Shuttle liftoff...
And good luck to everyone aboard Discovery.
From the NASA TV page http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Real Player had much better audio but the MS Media Player had better sharpness and shadow detail in video. This was over Comcast broadband in Chicago.
I assume the video feed was the same from NASA.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Here's to NASA's return to flight.
They were lives lost to managerial short-sightedness and corner-cutting.
It's one thing to take a calculated risk when you understand the odds. To take your fate in your own hands. It's totally different to put your fate in the hands of others, who then don't treat the situation with the diligence it deserves.
You wanna try your luck with the Russian space program?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Now we will FINALLY know if ants can be trained to sort tiny screws in space
Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket.
Eileen Collins, James Kelly, Charles Camarda, Wendy Lawrence, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, and Andrew Thomas.
Good luck and come back safe.
By loading up X-Plane and flying the Space Shuttle to a nice successful landing.
Pity X-Plane won't simulate the launch... or the ISS, but oh well.
Personally, I still find it absolutely amazing everytime the shuttle launches. It's just a marvel of engineering. And it's damn beautiful.
To everyone who didn't get to see the coverage (or live, you lucky bastards), you seriously missed out. Yeah, the commentators were kinda annoying, but the amount of camera coverage (and the fact that I could switch between all the major networks to find a different view if they switched to one I didn't like) was really cool. I've seen launches in person, and frankly, I'm torn as to whether seeing it live or this way was better. I mean, live, you see the first 20 seconds, 30 if you brought binoculars, 40 if you brought a telescope. Today, I got to see the main booster separate, *live*.
I wanna be one of many to wish the astronauts best of luck with their mission, and a happy return.
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
just watched the shuttle launch on NasaTV via yahoo's WMP stream on my work XP box, NO glitches at all, full screen was impressive... had a bunch of co-workers in my office all cheering the return of the shuttle to space flight
god speed to the crew of the discovery
a fleet of large interplanetary vessels; a project like that hopefully can stimulate advancements in propulsion, power, and computers like the Apollo program did. The Apollo Guidance Computer was one of the first embedded systems. It was also one of the first to use ICs, having 4,100 of them (5600 NOR gates).
Kudos to NASA for a successful launch!
The final chapter of the space shuttle fleet has begun.
Let's get us a new fleet under construction!
Visualize Whirled P.'s
...marking the United States' returned to manned space flight for the first time since the Columbia disaster...
That is not true.
From the Mission Briefing
As much as I wish they were putting money into something other than the ISS, it's fantastic to see that the shuttle is fully operational again.fsh
From Spaceflight Now:
1512 GMT (11:12 a.m. EDT)
T+plus 33 minutes. A few seconds after solid rocket booster separation, a large chunk of something broke free from the external fuel tank. The onboard video camera mounted on the tank showed the object flying away from the vehicle without striking Discovery.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
They still haven't circularized the orbit yet: if they don't circularize they are ballistic (IE: they come down. hard.)
-everphilski-
I'm guessing they'll be doing maintenance and repairs to the space station? How many missions before they get back to doing scientific research?
Did anyone else notice that a large piece of .. something.. fell off just after the SRB's separated? It looked black in the tank camera view, and flashed very clearly in the view for short time on the left side (seen from the camera) of the shuttle. I doubt it was an SRB because they had already fallen further away a few seconds earlier.
I bet we will be hearing a lot about that in the next few days as people start looking more closely at the camera recordings!
T+plus 33 minutes. A few seconds after solid rocket booster separation, a large chunk of something broke free from the external fuel tank. The onboard video camera mounted on the tank showed the object flying away from the vehicle without striking Discovery.
Want to bet that chunk of film is going to be looked at rather closely?
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
RealPlayer crapped out on me just as the shuttle cleared the tower... and I couldn't get the stream up again until just after SRM seperation. Damnit!
(I started with the Yahoo viewer but it crapped out on me multiple times during the countdown...)
I envy my wife... she's at home watching it on NasaTV (on Cable)
-everphilski-
Check out msnbc.com for video of the launch.
So you see what had happened was....
Perhaps, Tokyo should consider using Japan's arsensal high-performance computers to advance the state of the art in fighter aircraft and space vehicles. Designing these devices requires intensive numerical simulations which are ideally suited to such high-performance computers, which have been relegated to more mundane tasks like terrestrial simulations (e.g. weather simulation). Building the precursor to a starship seems to be a tad more interesting than terrestrial simulations.
NASA TV transmited it live. They are replaying it now. .asx
NAsa TV
I think Ecliptic does the onboard ET video. They're website is here: http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/ I would imagine they'll post video soon like they've done for other launches. http://www.eclipticenterprises.com/gallery_rocketc am.php
Was it me, or could you see tiles falling off the left wing before and after the fuel tank was released? I know that some tile loss is normal, but it seemed like quite a few from the same are that gave use trouble with Columbia. Anyone else catch this?
or if that money would be better spent in not going to space for the next 5 to 10 years
That was the original rationale for the space shuttle program. There was a 7 year flight hiatus. What good did it do? We really need a more incremental program. This is something we should learn from the Russians. The new NASA administrator is behind the idea. I think you will see a new Crew Exploration Vehicle launched by a shuttle-derived booster, sooner rather than later.
an ill wind that blows no good
Here's to a successful mission AND an equally successful landing.
Digressing...
I can still vividly recall the Challenger disaster vividly. I was in highschool in NH. Not the one Christa McAuliffe was from, but then NH is a small state so everybody was psyched. A friend told me he heard about the explosion on the radio. We listened for a little while before going to the cafeteria for lunch. One of the women serving lunch asked if I was ok (I guess I looked really pale) and I told her what had happened. She chuckled & said I must be joking. I snapped back at her, and I still remember it clearly: "Do you have a radio in here? Then turn it on!", then left. When I came back for more food a little while later they did have a radio on and she was incredibly apologetic. That's one of those days I'll probably remember for the rest of my life.
What happens if the space shuttle gets slashdotted?
Now lets wait for the return flight! If they don't fry then we can surely say NASA solved the problem.
That is an incredibly tasteless and juvenile thing for a news reporter to say.
This vessel is manned by a mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and a statistician. How can you call that boring??
Glad the webcast coverage held up. Was watching space.com, and got disconnected a few minutes before launch, but it came back. Not like SpaceShipOne launch...pretty much missed that whole thing!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
How many m/s is that?
Of course the ET sep on the TankCam[tm] was the best part.
Then later I got to see a replay of the launch, and noticed that you could see 39A from the TankCam[tm] shortly after liftoff. I knew what it looked like thanks to Google Maps.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Sky News (UK) have clearly shown an object falling onto the tail of the shuttle as it left the launch pad. The tail knocks the object with enough force to push the object upwards. Question is, is it the same type of object that was shown falling away at booster seperation?Hopefully no damage to the shuttle tail.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Spaceflight now has an image from the external tank video that shows a piece of debris falling off from the external tank, just after the solid boosters separated. It doesn't seem to fall in the shuttles direction.
- comment made by my two-year-old daughter as she watched the launch. :)
I was fotunate enough to watch it from Johnson Space Center. It was an overwhelmingly emotional launch without any errors. The long preparations have culminated in the safest space shuttle launch to date.
Being funny is my sig nature.
Everyone at Teague Auditorium in Johnson Space Center was so quiet until the SRBs broke off the shuttle. Then there was a resounding applause followed by much rejoice! I know everyone here at JSC appreciates the support of NASA by all you Slashdotters and the like! Keep watching the launches and supporting the exploration of space!
Or if you prefer, turn it off.
Sorry to rain on the parade, but why exactly am I supposed to be excited about this?
You answered your question in your own post:
I have a son of my own.
I just watched the liftoff with my six year old son. Despite his significant language delay, he told me that he wants to go in space and see how big the earth is. That's why you're supposed to get excited!
It's time for me to apply to NASA.
For those like-minded people who were curious about how much propellant/fuel the launch used after being struck (as always) by the awesome power produced, I did some searching and came up with a figure of around $500,000 for the propellant costs (liquid oxygen/liquid nitrogen).
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
It was not scheduled to launch for another four months, it was in its hanger, and no one was aboard at the time.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
All the engineering camera footage. While I've been watching they've gone from cameras 150 to 171, one after the other; all the grainy, low-quality video recorded by every single diagnostic camera all over the launch site.
NASA TV is so wonderfully geeky --- I love it...
...what a disconnected and apathetic moron you are. You are a prime example of what is wrong with America, and the world in general. The Columbia broke up on re-entry over two years ago. The shuttle launch today is the Discovery. If you don't care even enough to get the basic facts straight, you shouldn't even bother wasting keystrokes to type a comment.
That's the speed at which 4.5 billion years passes in 7 days. (6 days working plus one of rest).
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Watched it live on CNN, and via NASA-TV and RealPlayer.
Of course, at T- 1m the RealPlayer stream cut out due to the load.
The EFT separation was FANTASTIC! I would love to see footage of the thing falling to Earth, though. You know someone... somewhere at NASA has got to have it.
But the most interesting tidbit gleamed this morning I think was that Lou Dobbs is actually the founder and CEO of Space.com according to Miles O'Brien when he was introducing him. Never knew that.
Second paragraph "Under a blue, nearly cloudless sky, the spacecraft lifted off at 10:39 a.m. ET, as scheduled."
Look at the accompanying picture -- "nearly cloudless sky" that ain't. It is more like "partly to mostly cloudy".
CNN is supposed to report news, not wax poetic.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
SpaceflightNow reporting
- An image from the external tank video shows the chunk of debris breaking away from the tank just after the solid boosters separated.
See the image here
- Sh!t
Okay. It's kinda on topic.
Bart: Go, Dad, go!
Lisa: "How doth the hero strong and brave,
A celestial path in the heavens pave."
Everyone: Huh?
Lisa: [quiet] Go, Dad, go.
Quote from Simpson's episode titled
Deep Space Homer
just got done watching the NBC live feed of the launch. It was far better then watching a news channel where you would have to deal with crappy comentators and commercials.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
Amen.
China's second manned orbit is scheduled about Oct 1, 2005 (their July 4). At the rate NASA was scrubbing, China could have launched first. Good luck to all astronauts, taikonauts or whatever.
I for one would go out and finally buy an HD TV and subscribe to a channel that consisted solely of Earth views from an HD-capable camera placed in orbit permanently. Or you could just bolt this on to the side of the ISS. How hard could this be? And you could use the footage for MSN Maps (ka-dunk!)
I have a small pile of "Earth View" tapes from early shuttle missions that NASA used to sell for cheap. Good viewing, slap in a tape and put your favorite space music on the CD player. Not very HD but an excellent use of my tax dollars.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Wow, that's neat! Would you mind reworking that calculation for 13.8 billion years?
hi all,
Direct from NASA-TV, retransmission of audio 145.585 in the south San Francisco bay area. Video is also retransmitted on the K6BEN-ATV video repeater.
For more info, see
http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/AARCatv.html
Mike
It's 11:42 and I'm listening to NASA TV. Eileen just radioed in that they got great pics of the tank and the reply from Houston was, "That's awesome."
It's time for me to apply to NASA.
I've been watching NASA for more years than many people have been alive. I saw the World First Moonwalk - LIVE!*
* Except for about a two-second speed-of-light delay.
Tag lost or not installed.
Reflector 925 Channel 2 gave me nice clean NASA audio with no dropouts. Can't say the same for the Yahoo's video feed.
--fatboy
amen
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Way to go NASA! Clean liftoff, NASA is the best!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
all of them
I suppose American astronauts just snuck aboard those Russian flights to the International Space Station for the last two years? Guvmint knew nothin' about it?
Your Parent post is talking about a piece of something hitting the tail, as the Shuttle leaves the launch pad. The thing breaking off the tank happened well into ascent, as the boosters were seperating.
I hope the chunk-of-whatever-from-the-tank didn't hit the orbiter anywhere, or that if it did the air at that altitude is thin enough that it didn't decelerate it enough to cause much damage.
I live in central FL, so I got up this morning and drove 45 minutes to New Smyrna Beach, which is probably 60 or 70 miles north of Canaveral. It was incredible. So many people turned up to watch.
What you see is a little red blaze followed by a huge trail of smoke, and it abruptly stops as the shuttle gets too high. A minute or two later, we could actually hear the roar of the shuttle over the ocean. Fantastic.
I thought that he was referring to the politicians that were attending.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sure: The speed at which God would be moving that would result in 13.8 billion years passing in 6 days is 0.99999999999999999999999929053887c. All things considered, 0.9999999999999999999999993 is good enough for sig. figs. I used the Lorentz transformation and solved for v/c. I needed to know the ratio of the two time periods. 13.8 billion *365/6 gives you the ratio of days. I'm ignoring leap years, but it's insignificant. Now, that's a large number, and you take the reciprocal, square it, and then subtract it from one. The square root of that should give you v/c.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Any /dotter with video links for moon?
TheIrs.
No way is it an even bet if humans can compete with the Earth's systems for extinction events.
History shows that the planet is WAY better at it than we could ever hope to be.
Even if we popped all the nukes on Earth, it'd not register on the list of extinction events.
Science@Nasa Shuttle Tracking. very slick link. Also check out the J-Track 3D for most every unclassified item up there in realtime 3D.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
I guess Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie's 2004 flights out of Mojave don't count then?
Landings can be killers too.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's incorrect.
All ETs are just short of orbital velocity. To avoid pelting more brown people in the world with explosive objects (other than by design, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan) NASA ensures that its trajectories in the flight plan take the ETs to reenter and drop their remains in the Indian Ocean. Likewise, the SRBs drop in the Atlantic not far from the Cape for recovery and reuse.
It IS possible to place an ET in orbit (such as to be remade into some kind of Skylab-esque primitive space station, but otherwise we'd get more space junk up there, causing a hazard.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
It's a Shuttle launch, so... a Rush reference is always appropriate.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Fun calculation ... although you could use 365.25 days/year if you wanted to take leap years into account.
I mean, it launched, cool. But what's the purpose besides proving the point NASA is not going to replace the cost-inefficient vessel with anything more modern within any reasonable time? Usually the shuttles have some missions. Put a satellite in the orbit, deliver supplies/equipment to the space station, perform some 0g research, repair/readjust satellites, that sort of stuff. So does she fly to do something useful or is this just a launch to prove it can be launched?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
With those error bars and the question of "was it exactly 6 days, or like 5.95 days" I decided it wasn't worth going back and reworking the calculation.
Well, that and it's a joke....
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Absolutely. For sheer excitement and beauty I'd put it on a par with watching the launch of the first Shuttle launch in '81. I was 9 then, and watching today I didn't feel a day older. One of the most magical moments of television ever.
boakes.org
who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun. -TL
What?
True, which is why I didn't bring up Leap Seconds.
so does this mean we can go and fix hubble now? It would be sad to see that equipment they made for it go to waste.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
If you're really interested, you can see exactly what NASA's budget entails for the Space Shuttle here:
A Budgetary Analysis of NASA's New Vision for Space Exploration
The link for the next five years is the interesting one:
NASA's Current Five-Year Plan and Extended Budget Projection
You can see how the funding for the shuttle is decreased fairly quickly while the funding for the Crew Exploration Vehicle increases. The main reason the shuttle hasn't already been dismantled is because of our commitment to the International Space Station. The Russian Progress ship is okay, but can only ferry a couple people at once. In order to fully staff the ISS, the Space Shuttle is required.
fsh
I've read about a paint which was developed that is much more efficient than the thermal tiles NASA currently uses- but NASA wont use them because they are not weather proof.
My question of course is: why not put the paint on UNDER the tiles?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
To talk to Montgomery Scott, you would need the services of John Edwards.
(e.g. weather simulation). Building the precursor to a starship seems to be a tad more interesting than terrestrial simulations.
Alternatively, if someone manages to throw enough computing power at the problem to finally calculate the weather, we could schedule launches for sunny days, instead of worrying about this storm or that hurricane showing up and ruining the launch window.
hoping is not the same as waiting
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
SpaceflightNow's status page has nothing, Space.com's coverage has nothing, and NASA's official Return to Flight page has nothing, whether in coverage or in the videos. So I'm calling shens.
BTW, I just heard on talk radio that Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home today. Truly an American icon.
Launching scale versions of the shuttle would probably answer a lot of safety problems while being a lot more amenable to risky tests such as re-entry with missing tiles.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Not sure if this is really the reference he's getting at, but there's a Marathon 2/Aleph One level called "Kill Your Television". That, however, may also be derived from something else.
It looks like one of those heat shields. Uh oh.
Perhaps, Tokyo should consider using Japan's arsensal high-performance computers to advance the state of the art in fighter aircraft and space vehicles. Designing these devices requires intensive numerical simulations which are ideally suited to such high-performance computers, which have been relegated to more mundane tasks like terrestrial simulations (e.g. weather simulation).
I always hear people saying stuff like, "more powerful computers will allow us to build better aircraft and conquer cancer!!!!!"
The truth is that a faster computer doesn't really give you much more capability, it just delivers that same capability to you faster. It's still people who need to feed the computers the information, and we are limited by our ideas.
If we gave people in the 1940's a supercomputer, it wouldn't really have made their aircraft much different because they didn't even come up with many of the formulas yet. They didn't yet know what breaking the speed of sound would do, or what effect it would have on the plane's control surfaces. They need to discover the principles first, made formulas out of it next, and only then can you feed the formulas into a computer.
Obviously this wouldn't apply if you were comparing a computer that was *so* slow that it couldn't perform the calulations in any decent amount of time, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
There is only so much that computer calculations can do. They only solve problems that we create.
It's been years since I saw one, but it was impressive. At first, it's just a little dot in the sky, kind tough to find. Then, as I was starting to feel diappointed at how tiny it was, my eyes started playing tricks. Something in the back of my head noticed the depth perception, realized it was further away than any plane I'd ever seen. Only then, when I began to understand the scale of the distances, did I start to get a real feel for how fast the thing was moving.
A very cool sight, much of which is lost on a video screen. It really is best seen firsthand.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
There is nothing in the text at Sky News webpage about the launch that mentions anything falling at the launch pad and hitting the tail TODAY, no images I can find either.
They do mention it happening -- last time, when they scrubbed the launch.
I haven't found any "close up" video anywhere (Sky News is a paid subscription site, so if Wonderkid has the subscription -- screenshot please?)
Maddening....
Not mine, not sure whose, but good pics I found via technorati.
Shuttle Takeoff
Remember Nedelin!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I wanted to watch it until it fell back through the atmosphere.
That was a cool new perspective!
I watched the launch LIVE on BBC, ITV and SKY (switching channels to see how they covered it) and SKY then replayed the launch several times, clearly showing something falling from the external fuel tank onto the TAIL of the shuttle while it's leaving the launch pad. When you watch the launch from ANY source you can see it. I am not refering to the object that falls off the tank at booster seperation. DIDN'T ANYONE WATCH SKY NEWS IN THE UK? I NEED SUPPORT! Else this is a major cover up, although thanks to TiVO and VCRs, it's won't remain so.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
NASA just confirmed that the early launch video shows the tyvek covers (which keep moisture out of the RCS thrusters) falling off exactly like they were supposed to. They were supposed to fall off just as the vehicle cleared the tower. They were very lightweight (the same cloth-like stuff some FedEx envelopes are made of), detached at low speed, and were actually designed to parachute to the ground.
More significantly, it looks like the external tank did hit one of those vultures that MSNBC was talking about.
We need a "+1, Inspirational" here.
...let's wish the seven in Discovery wuck with the wanding too. With those three debris pieces flying off, I think they still need it.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I tried to watch this stream, but as the hour of the launch got closer, it got TOO slow. Guess the akamai and yahoo servers weren't enough to cope with the load. In my firewall, I noticed that it was trying to communicate with only 2 different servers, at least one of them was in Europe (where I am). So maybe in other places it was usable, I don't know...
Fortunately, I managed to watch it on TV (CNN)...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
You can see pictures of the TYVEK covers, as well as the bird, at http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/050726ima ges/
That's what he meant...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
A handfull of astronauts die in a space-ship accident which they volunteered for, knowing it was dangerous... makes national news in US & Canada, whole country mourns. Space program shut down for 2 years.
Thousands of troops die in Iraq due to stupidity of leadership... some nerds and a few anti-war protesters notice. Stupid leaders re-elected.
GET YOUR BLOODY PRIORITIES STRAIGHT.
Andy Thomas is an Ozzy!!!!!!!!!!
Not only that but he's from my old University...
Hey, we're only 20 million people but by God do we ever punch above our weight!
Go shuttle !!!!!!!!
Bart: Oh no, not another boring space launch. Change the channel. Change the channel! Homer: I can't! I can't! [Bart dives for the plug and tears it from the wall] [He and Homer both sigh]
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You wanna try your luck with the Russian space program?
Why, that would be like Russian Roullete!
David Schneider-Joseph
... but the programs were very closely connected at the time. Research into rocket propulsion was part of the space program, even if it was also being used to propel ICBMs.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There are always vultures there. I went on a tour of the facilities a while back and there were vultures all over the place especially flying around the VAB. I asked some employees there about this and they say the vultures get great thermals there because of the huge building.
This just in, courtesy of Spaceflight Now. Note for the unitiated: buzzard == vulture
1810 GMT (2:10 p.m. EDT)
NASA believes the bird struck by Discovery's fuel tank was a buzzard. These large birds can have a wing span of more than six feet and the average weight of a full-grown bird is 6.5 lbs.
"It was in the wrong place at the wrong time," a Kennedy Space Center spokesperson said.
NASA has long assumed that the noisy launch pad environment at the time of main engine ignition would cause bird to fly away from the launching shuttle.
Workers had not located the carcass of the bird but not all areas of the launch complex had been searched.
Images of the strike are available here.
Subscribers of our Spaceflight Now Plus service can see a video clip of the bird strike here.
The incident is one of several NASA is studying from yesterday's launch, along with the chipped nose gear door tile and external tank debris-shedding event.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
NASA has now grounded all Shuttle flights, following foam falling off a tank during launch again. It's obvious they rushed to launch before they were ready. I hope the Shuttle gets back safely, despite the reckless risktaking NASA is willing to do for the cameras. I hope you're clapping as hard as you can, because you're the one eating up their unprofessional dicerolling.
--
make install -not war
Take that into account when reading that comment.