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Discovery Heading Home
Kailash Nadh wrote to mention an ABC News article discussing Discovery's departure from the space station, heading for Terra Firma. From the article: "Once undocked, Discovery looped around the space station for the first full photographic survey of the orbiting outpost since the last shuttle visit in late 2002, and then sped away into the blackness. Discovery's astronauts awoke Saturday evening for a day of storing away equipment for their upcoming return. They also planned to take down an antenna, which they have used to transmit video images of the mission. "
..that the future of space exploration is going to be really, really boring?
[quote]Discovery looped around the space station for the first full photographic survey of the orbiting outpost since the last shuttle visit in late 2002, and then sped away into the blackness.[/quote] classified as a drive by shooting :-)
http://www.heavens-above.com/countries.asp
Better be quick though. It's getting prety light here on the east coast.
--
Fairfax Underground: Fairfax County message board and chat
Can anyone tell me what they were doing there anyway? It sounds to me that it was just to show the world that shuttles still can fly.
Pretty expensive P.R.
I was already looking forward to hundreds of ill-informed posters asking "Why won't they just let it all burn up in the atmosphere?!?!?!".
Oh, just wait till the poles of the earth reverse will you, than you have the Aurora. The space shuttle fireballs are restricted to northern hemisphre only, but maybe the chinese are willing to let some of their equipment spin out of control so you get a fireball at the southern hemisphere too (I know, china is still on the northern too, but still a bit closer to the south, so maybe you just get lucky).
Meteors: Just wait, there must be one which will hit the south one day again, you have Ayers rock just to remind you of a really good fireball.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Good Luck and God Speed Discovery.
... that this will likely be the last Shuttle into space and more than likely the last non-commercial manned mission into space (because I'm convinced that Virigin Galactic will get there before NASA does again) I think we should all pause and think what has been achieved by NASA in the past years. The global impact of men on the moon, satellites providing worldwide telecoms, fun with gyroscopes, all those cool sci-fi movies, their rather long software development guides, Richard Feynman's star turn at the shuttle inqury ... it's been fun.
Without manned missions NASA will probably shrink rapidly in the public mind and return to its military roots. Thanks for the memories!
How do you regain confidence in the shuttle mission? Stage a crisis and get the crew to 'repair' it ...oo Apollo 13 all over again ...
Okay, so they say taht the shuttle will be fine for this re-entry, and I don't know about everyone else, but I want the astonauts to come back safely. Seems to me that having to fill even more positions may make the little tykes with visions of their futures really take a look at being a doctor or a teacher, so they don't go up (or down) in flame. Well, that, and being glorified refuse handlers.
Let's face it, the Shuttle design is inherently too complex to be safe. Only one heatshield tile breakage may cause the complete destruction of the Shuttle, and we are now starting to be aware ("we" as in, outsiders) of how fragile these tiles really are. I know space travel will always be more dangerous than any other kind, but I think the Shuttle is unnecessarily unsafe.
In addition to this, it has proven to be MORE expensive to launch, per payload, compared to previous designs, not cheaper!
The "upgrade" to the Shuttle reminds me a lot of the great push towards Windows NT (and away from UNIX) that went on a few years ago, even in companies where it was clear that such a move would be overall bad in the short and long term.
Sigged!
I wish the astronauts a safe return however, once they are on the ground, these questions must be asked and answers obtained from the NASA bureaucracy:
1: How can the USA spend close to 2 billion dollars and have so little to show for it? The shuttle underwent so many upgrades but all in the industry were surprised that stuff was falling of the shuttle.
2: Would it be a better idea to let those who can do much with so little (read Russians), do our space work since they can do precisely that? After all, a good number of our industrial base is being out-sourced.
And then stop this incredible waste! For what they spend on one totally pointless 'mission', real space science could do many probes. The 'bang for the buck' in the Shuttle program (literal bangs not included) has been total crap. The bloodthirsty NASCAR crowd, a pillar of support for the current stupidity administration, must be the core audience.
So cool.... two little star like dots drifting across the sky in the twilight...
(i'm in Houston)
Best NASA site for tracking:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/
The last time I watched the shuttle past to the north of my house it was entering the atmosphere( a few years ago). The most cool group of air and space craft I have ever seen. One shuttle two helocopters, one jumbo jet and a small plain; all in my view at the same time. So Cool...
The local news is saying that NASA will not renter over land anymore?
So sad that I we will never see it renter over land again. What is NASA afraid of? Another rain of bodies? Not likely. NASA please reconsider; rentry is such a sight to see.
Thank You NASA; May darwinism not shine on you today.
If GOD then: Godspeed.
If not then: Best wishes!
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Mr. Scott, turn the engines to Godspeed.
It's absolutely correct.
Give it time...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Enormously expensive, horribly unreliable, ill conceived. OBSOLETE. Far to big and stupid to fly. NASA's spruce goose The way forward is incremental improvement. The Chinese are using updated, but tried and true Russian technology. Imagine if the investment made in these enormoud lemons, was put into improving and updating Apollo technology. But now at the begining of the 3rd Millieum, the US is still throwing good billions after bad. Look at what NASA can achieve for the cost of just one of these useless shuttle flights. (Restocking the ISS is useless, as it's only there so the shuttle has somewhere to go) IANAA (American), so it's not my money being directly thrown away, but I was born the same year as Neil put his Footprints on the moon, and a probally older than most of you reading this, I find the lack of useful progress in Human Spaceflight astonishing. It's like watching someone spend three times the value of a new car, repairing some horrible rustbucket, and even after the money is spent, it will have a fraction of the safety features of a new vehicle. Why cannot we rid ourselves of this Lemon ?
This is NOT a signature.
Yes and add: Nuclear Weapons Pollution Dodgy countries as long as Indonesia doesn't count Terrorists (apart from Bali)
I suspect they instead did a short blast from the attitude control thrusters. There's no way the Shuttle can "speed away" using those rather gentle thrusters. More like a gentle and slow and stately separation. .... "into the blackness."
More likely this was done with full undiluted sunlight on one side, and rather bright reflection from the earth on the other side. Not exactly "blackness". "They also planned to take down an antenna" "Down?" There's a down up there? A little poetical license may be okay, but when it conflicts with the facts, hmmm......
I landed a 5000lb rocket on the moon! Deliver the cash or I'll blow it up!
There is an Aurora in the Southern Hemisphere - its called the Aurora Australis.
Of course you have to be further south than Aussie to see it, try the Siuth Island of NZ, or souther Chile or Argentina.
No one seems to remember this flight was specifically called out as a TEST FLIGHT. They made major modifications to the external tank and oberserved the improvement. And its looking like this flight shed 80% less debris.
That is a remarkable improvement. Zero foam loss was never stated as a goal, and nor does it need to be. There was one major anomaly and guess what. Its going to be fixed.
Forget South America, the auroral oval never reaches Cape Horn's latitude:
Some images of the auroral oval from NOAA.
So, my suggestion is New Zealand for the Aurora Australis (of course antartic bases are ideal)
Anyway, if you visit souther Chile or Argentina in january or february you can see Noctilucent clouds. Southern noctilucent clouds are far less known than Northern noct. clouds... but also are very beautiful
Take a look at one:
Southern NLC, maybe the only picture on the net...
How do I know that? Well, I'm from here!
NASA should just say that as long as the crew wants to fly, the shuttle should fly and everybody else should shut up.
I'm sure that the flight crew is perfectly able to judge the risks for themselves. This time they found lots of minor problems because they LOOKED harder than normal. Every single flight may have had similar problems that only someone who read the post flight technical reports knew about -- if then.
Does the US really want to be paying China rent on a spacestation when they decide to go back into space after wimping out?
Hey, just to be ultra-nerdy, here's the Realvideo server info from NASA-TV's Realvideo streams:
Server: Helix Server Version 9.0.3.916 (linux-2.2-libc6-i686-server)
Thought you might like that, you Linux-loving OS bigots. ;)