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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. "
They were helping to repair the station gyros and delivering supplies among other things. Yes, it was a proof to determine the shuttle can still fly, but it did have a purpose. Whether or not that's to show that a better system is needed we have yet to see.
Americans should remember that America is not a synonym for World.
Imagine if the investment made in these enormoud lemons, was put into improving and updating Apollo technology.
IIRC, Apollo was at the time seen by engineers as mostly a foolish PR-driven detour on the road to a sober and sensible aerospace vehicle, which would look a lot like -- the Space Shuttle! That is, the best general model of orbital access has always been considered to be some kind of rocketplane that would fly to space in controlled, gradually accelerating flight, and be piloted to a landing, and, of course, be re-usable. Hence Dyna-Soar, the X-15 project, and ultimately the Shuttle.
This whole Mercury-Gemini-Apollo interregnum in which monkeys and men were stuck in cans on top of modified ICBMs, the candle was lit, and everyone prayed while hanging on for dear life was widely considered the unfortunate result of an irrational sudden national urgency to get a man in space any way at all following the embarassment of Sputnik and Gagarin.
So, after we "won" the race to the Moon, the idea was that we should return to the unglamorous but sober business of building rocketplanes to orbit. Hence the Shuttle.
By the way, when you speak of "improving" Apollo technology, just what the heck do you have in mind? Updating the OS on the computers? Using composites in the crew capsule skin? Reshaping the windows to improve the view? See, any easily imaginable "improvements" are the merest cosmetic fluff that won't take us one step closer to the real Grail of spaceflight, which is cheap spaceflight.
After all, it's not hard for a major government to get a handful of national heroes to space every year. That isn't the issue at all. The problem is that, if space is ever to be anything more than a curiosity, it has to become easy and economical for your average firm to shoot up your average mid-level exec, a couple of average cubicle dwellers, and a few tons of hardware to support their mission, whatever it is. It's very hard to envision how going back to the Apollo model of 40 years ago is going to bring us significantly closer to that goal.