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Shuttle Discovery Lands Safely
Tuxedo Jack writes "CNN and NASA report that the space shuttle Discovery has landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Concerns for its safe return were raised when spacewalks were necessary to repair the vehicle when external components were damaged; however, the shuttle landed safely with Commander Eileen Collins at the control yoke."
At least it all landed at once this time...
fp
Welcome home Discovery. Hmm... wonder if any of the crew are /.'ers?
one small step for her - one giant step for womankind.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
hooray.
woohoo
Just curious...
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Neeerr!
Thats good news but what about the future of the shuttles, given all the problems?
Who cares. I wished they had died.
They finally decided to land after I woke up at both 4am Eastern yesterday and 5am today to watch it land, to no avail. I suppose they HAD to land sometime.
Perfectly good waste of Tax payer's money. Think how many people the odd $200 million per launch could help feed /cloth / educate our own citizens that are in dispair and financial ruin, etc.
It'll be interesting to see what damage has ocurred...
If the damaged areas they noticed in orbit, are worse after re-entry...
Cheers,
Richard
I hope safe returns in the future aren't news but instead are commonplace. Hopefully NASA's shift in ideology regarding spacecraft design will usher in a new era in incident free missions.
I slept thought my 5 AM alarms and was going to be late for work, but the sonic booms woke me up. I wonder how many people forgot or did not know about the Space Shuttle landing. My family thought it was an earthquake.
so what?!
But after having done this since 1961, you'd think that we'd be at a point where getting "those brave souls" back to Earth in one piece was mundane.
Though it would be wonderful to have the space program re-examined and reformulated with realistic goals, unencumbered designs, and brave (not foolhardy) leadership, I doubt that we'll get anything more than another round of shuttle flights until the next one breaks up. Then we can expect more hand wringing, indecisiveness, and basically a whole lot more of nothing.
Space is the biggest challenge Mankind will ever embark upon. It's sad to see that almost 45 years has passed and we're still crossing our fingers hoping that things go okay.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Excellent job by the shuttle crew and everyone at NASA behind them on this successful and safe mission.
One word sums it up: YeeHaw!!!
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Now how do they get the shuttle back to FL so it can be launched again ?
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Eileen Collins
It's important that we have female shuttle pilots.
I mean, what if the core of the earth suddenly stopped spinning, and we needed to send a team down to jump start the core? If the core did that they could probably make a movie about the core doing that...
They could call it "The middle of the planet"... or something.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I wonder what the cost of landing at Edwards vs. Kennedy is. Now that have to put it on top of a 747 and truck it back to Florida. That can't be cheap, and they're not exactly rolling in dough.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
-Mark
Well I'm glad they made it back safely. Those astronauts are some of the bravest people I know of, along with those in our Armed Forces.
Congratulations Discovery!
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
I love this page, and it seems to be an opportune moment.
Land the shuttle yourself you macho.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I was watching it on the BBC's site.. good old works time. Had no audio so it seemed to be miles away for ages and then suddenly on the runway with parachutes out behind it. all good, anyway.
I thought it was interesting how none of the major networks planned ahead to have some people at the alternate landing sites. It was likely that the shuttle was to land at Edwards instead of Kennedy due to weather
Being funny is my sig nature.
There is something inherently sexy about a female space captain. Even Janeway got me bothered every now and again.
On backing up the shuttle, eight trash cans and a tabby were trampled. I blame the lipstick.
I also reply below your current threshold.
>the shuttle landed safely with Commander Eileen Collins at the control yoke
according to Feynman the shuttle pilot does only 2 things:
1. pushes the button for which base to land at
2. lowers the landing gear
and they only do number 2 because they don't like to feel completely like passengers.
the BBC says the pilot made a perfect landing. these guys do a lot of stuff, but they don't land the shuttle.
...does it run Linux?
While I am the last person I know to ever really complain about this or that. I am rather tired of spending everyday this past week reading about the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Everyday is a new article it seems about this or that. The most pointless to me was the article about how Discovery can't land due to clouds.
I honestly think you can beat a dead horse to death a second time. This was successfully completed by the continuing coverage of Discovery.
I think it would have been better to have reported that Discovery had some issues regarding the tiles and that Discovery landed safely. That would have been all I cared about.
who said that they were waiting for a nice picture perfect sunny landing were wrong, as they landed before dawn.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
I hate to say this, but I'm glad this is over, and we can stop getting the minute-by-minute news reports of every damn thing the crew did.
"This just in: Shuttle still in space. NASA still monitoring."
"The inner airlock hatch will be shut now. Then, later, the outer hatch will open."
"The shuttle just vented 11 mL of waste gas into space."
"Commander Eileen just burped."
Sheeesh.
(Note well: I'm not slamming NASA, the space program, or our astronauts. (Not in this comment, anyway.) I'm slamming our culture of media sensationalism and short attention spans.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
simple solution Crrek, abysmal fear the reaper They are Come on
During the approach, there was an article on cnn.com that said something along the lines of "when the shuttle speed drops from supersonic to subsonic, there is a sonic boom ..."
Yikes. Horrendously bogus physics, on international news.
that has grown u4 since we made the as fittingly another troubled Ofiicial GNAA irc
It will probably never fly again anyway. It took 2 + years to rework it the first time and they didn't fix the problem, by their own admission. What makes you think it will take less time to fix it right the second time? By the time another few years have passed, I would hope we have something better to blow the billions of dollars on than this thing.
With the good news out of NASA this morning, everyone has forgotten about the the CCBB! ;)
Thankfully the media "Deathwatch" comes to an end. Ever get the feeling that they are hoping for disasters to happen? They are.
"But after having done this since 1961, you'd think that we'd be at a point where getting "those brave souls" back to Earth in one piece was mundane."
While I agree with the rest of your comment, it's worth pointing out that 45 years is a drastically short period of time in human history. How long did we sail the seas before trans-oceanic travel stopped being experimental and perilous? We're so used to the incredibly fast pace of recent technological advancement that we forget that not everything comes quick. Expecting spaceflight to have become mundane in so short a time may not be reasonable.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
according to nasa's site:
8:07 a.m. - Discovery's wings leveling as it approaches the landing site. Now that the orbiter has gone subsonic, Commander Eileen Collins has assumed control. She'll fly Discovery on a 194-degree right overhead turn to align with runway 22.
=More than press a button
My wife and I were just getting the baby back to sleep when this loud BOOOOOM blew the curtains in a little. (Baby slept through it.) We just looked at each other and I went off to check the CalTech Earthquake advisory site for local quakes. My wife suggested the shuttle, but then pointed out it was to land in Florida. No quakes obviously, then I waited to hear sirens rushing to the site of a gas explosion. None of that either. Maybe one of the Perseids was a little bigger than normal--but there wasn't any light. I finally saw that Discovery landed safely at 5:12 PDT at Edwards AFB--about two hundred miles away. Pretty cool.
blarg.
The space shuttle program has been allocated 3.2 billion per year over the last three years. We have seen 1 successful shuttle mission in that time. With the program currently grounded, again, we will not see another this year (it is pretty safe to say). So by their own published number, this mission cost us taxpayers 6.6 billion. That's a bit higher than the 200 million estimate.
I'm as happy as the next person that the shuttle landed safely and things went OK. However the success (?) of this mission does not change the hard reality that the Shuttle is a piece of outdated, unsafe and overpriced hardware. It guzzles up valuable resources in terms of manpower, time and money and has precious little to show for all the efforts.
I only hope that some bureaucrat in Washington doesn't feel that "Alls well that ends well. A little more money and the shuttle program can be up and running again."
Personally I feel that NASA should focus on whats its good at which is space research. Lets leave the manned bit of things to the private sector.
. . . to Edwards' South, West, or North gates will take
What?
It really makes me wonder... how many of these 'safety' problems have manifested themselves before. I have a strong feeling that the heat shield on the shuttle is more robust than they make it out to be. I refuse to believe that in all 100+ missions, gap fillers and thermal blankets have never shaken loose. Look at it this way, it took a chunk of foam blasting a hole in the heat shield before it failed.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
Earlier I mentioned that faith in the astronauts and faith in Jesus Christ would land them home safely. I was ridiculed and persecuted. It now looks like I was correct, the astronauts are safe.
Normally the shuttle lands in Florida and launches in Florida.
The other cost associated with Edwards is the sand - the runways are sand runways, they have to clean out the shuttle with a fine toothed comb. The original mission profile was to launch in Florida, land at Edwards, to keep everyone happy, but after STS1 they said screw that, this damn sand is too much trouble... now Edwards is just a contingency.
-everphilski-
The other cost associated with Edwards is the sand - the runways are sand runways, they have to clean out the shuttle with a fine toothed comb. The original mission profile was to launch in Florida, land at Edwards, to keep everyone happy, but after STS1 they said screw that, this damn sand is too much trouble... now Edwards is just a contingency.
-everphilski-
I have watched so many of these landings, and it still amazes me. I remember watching the first launch in grade school, and the first landing.
I was tuned into NASA to when Columbia launched and heard mission control talking about the foam impact on the lead wing. That whole mission I kept shaking my head at follow up reports that the damage was inconsequential. I got up just in time to watch Columbia break up that morning. It was a heart-rending thing to see happen live.
This morning was fascinating. NASA coverage on the web just absolutely rocks. Even with the visual on the shuttle the whole way down, I still have a hard time conceptualizing that nature of that descent, from 17K mph 220 miles altitude to wheels stopped on the ground in a hour.
Incredible. Flawless. Heroic.
Great work NASA, JPL, Discovery crew! Welcome home. I hope you fly again, soon.
-rcmiv
they face death every day
They will need to work around the blackout dates however.
I watched it this morning. I damn near cried with relief and happiness.
SYS 64738
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4134986.stm for those want a read, 'tho its only mentioned in passing.
according to Feynman the shuttle pilot does only 2 things:
1. pushes the button for which base to land at
2. lowers the landing gear
and they only do number 2 because they don't like to feel completely like passengers.
Neither point is accurate and somewhat condescending. Rather than going by somebody who claims to be an expert on everything, why don't you look at the source?
Start with NASA MISSION EVENTS SUMMARY and scroll down to "Deorbit" and "Entry" to see what the shuttle astronauts really do when the shuttle leaves orbit (a lot more than just press a button).
As to the landing gear control, this is a safety of flight issue and is discussed in SHUTTLE AVIONICS Design Constraints and Considerations in the "GNC" section. The decision to make the gear down command a manual operation has nothing to do with making the astronauts not "feel completely like passengers".
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Their survival rate has so far been 98%.
The commentator on BBC made an interesting observation. It's better at this point to scrap the shuttle and use the Russian Soyuz program to re-supply the ISS, and move men up and down. We need a few more shuttle flights to complete the work on the ISS, and then we can move to Soyuz. A 40 year space program works better than a 30 year old one does. Thank god the cold war is over, huh?
PHEW
An assumption means, I think, that she's not certain and is just winging it.
Also the fast progress which is made in a lot of areas is pretty risk free. You do not plummet down to a huge piece of rock from several hundreds kilometer high with as only break air resistance.
The only promissing technique which is being develloped (or actually mainly discussed) is a space elevator. Since that is a really controlled piece of equipment, it should make it a lot safer.
Then again, I do not want to live near it when it fails, if the "rope" comes down, it will certainly mow down the surrounding before settling down.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I can't believe no one has posted a picture!
I bet its a relief that they finally got something to go right. Can't really blame them for having trouble with a spread out budget and 40 year old technology.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
Why does the foam on the external tank need to be there? Or more to the point, can`t they use a lighter material that won`t cause any damage even if it falls off? Or was the last shuttle mission just a freak accident similiar to the Challenger I wonder?
As long as you don't look too closely you can make yourself believe the program runs fairly well. But once you beef up the testing and monitoring, suddenly you find the place is full of problems and you wonder how it ever could fly.
Things were pretty bad before the Challenger. Then they improved drastically. After Columbia they improved drastically again. Right now nobody feels safe with this machine anymore. With reason, but I think it's very much safer than it used to be.
The computerized autopilot handles all of those banking manuevers. A human pilot, generally the commander (not the "shuttle pilot") then takes the flight controls about 3-4 minutes from touchdown and manually flies the craft from the last portion of the descent to the airport, around a semicircular base leg (in today's landing it was a right-base) of the landing pattern and straight on down final thru the flare and touchdown.
The "shuttle pilot" handles the maneuvering of the craft while in orbit, and is a "co-pilot" during takeoff and landing where the "commander" is the actual pilot.
In today's landing, Eileen personally handled the landing.
Huh? Discovery? I thought it was, "The EAGLE has landed"...
It must suck to step out of the shuttle and realize that you have to wait for the parking bus to take you 2500 miles back to your car.
The foam that destroyed Columbia was BX-250, which used CFC-11 as a blowing agent. Columbia used Lightweight External Tank 93, an older model.
On tanks constructed after ET-93, NASA replaced BX-250 with BX-265, which used HCFC 141b as a blowing agent. BX-265 is not without its problems, however, and NASA is working on replacement formulae.
I can't understand what you're saying, with my cock in your mouth
Living in Austin, TX, we once found out that a night landing would take the orbiter overhead, and saw the most amazing sci-fi movie special effect of its plasma trail, followed several minutes later by a faint double-boom.
We went in to watch the landing, and the plasma trail was still boiling away overhead (faintly) when it touched down at the Cape just NINE MINUTES LATER.
Then we realized just how blazing fast this thing drops in for a "landing", since it traveled 1000 miles in under 10 minutes, and made a perfect landing. Rocket scientists deserve their title.
Let me preface my later remarks by saying, "Great job crew! Congratulations and welcome home!"
Please tell me why the future of the space program is uncertain? I it because 14 people died in 113 flights? More people died building bridges and monuments in this country. That hasn't stopped us from building them. In fact the idea of NOT bulding brides or monument would have likely been scoffed at. The space program, not unlike our bridges, are a natural extension of our efficiency and quest for resources. It would be a mistake to question our mission to expand beyond our known boudaries.
I understand safety is a grave concern. But let's not second guess ourselves. We are a technologically advanced culture that advances more than a "small leap" by learning from our mistakes and our successes. Let's not forget the 1980's...which was our most prolific period of manned space flights. I welcome a return to those times.
Thank you NASA for continuing to go where our collective consciousness fears to tread.
Mod parent up! It's funny, dammit!
"Lois, you know it's illegal for women to drive!"
10100111001
Am I the only one who finds it really sad that this is the most exciting science news in the media these days? Watching a guy in a space suit pull out a piece of paper from between two tiles does not need to be on CNN for LIVE coverage. News worthy science stories should capture the imagination.
Landing on the moon = cool,
Finding life at the bottom of the ocean = cool
Finding over a dozen new planets past Pluto = cool
Rolling around on Mars = cool
Discovering big bang/dark matter/universe expansion = cool
They are cool because they alter our understanding of the universe.
Touching up the shuttle in orbit while talking to the president of Japan = totally boring
Maintenance trips to the space station = boring
Looking at panoramic views of Earth from space for the 5 zillionth time = super boring
Doesn't mainstream media have anything better to report on in the science world? Is the problem with the reporting or the slow progression of scientific discoveries?
See various FAQs; "wb" is "welcome back", "ty" is "thank you".
Where's the kaboom? I was expecting an Earth-shattering kaboom!
I guess this is off topic in one sense but not in that it /. post. But I'm curious how the editors
applies to this
see something like 'shuttle has landed' as something that
belongs? I mean come on..
CNN/FOX/MSNBC/CBS/ABC/NBC/BBC/SKY/AP/ and any other tv/wire
service had this the moment it happened. Perhaps if there
was some value added to the post it would be relevant but I
just don't get it when the editors put up stories that are
simply statements of the obvious from an extremely well
reported event.
it landed safely. I wanted some excitement.
Linux sucks. It is an underground OS that is completely unstandardized. Linux geeks, get the fuck over yourselves.
I was all on board the idea of giving up on the OSP and getting a simple capsule, but then I saw something.
The inside of the shuttle is -big-. Capsules are small. We can stuff 7 people in a shuttle and they have more than enough room to hang out in. The cargo bay is big and roomy. There's plenty of stuff in there.
So, I'm going to come out and say that yes the shuttle is a hideously complicated system, aging technology, but we should keep in mind that we have a working orbital space plane.
Instead of building a cramped little capsule, why not design a newer shuttle that:
a) can be configured for lunar orbital missions
b) rides on top of a booster, rather than its side
c) has its own onboard jet engines (avoid the need for deadstick landings)
d) has a more reliable thermal protection system than the shuttle.
e) works to address designed in defects of the shuttle.
There's a huge amount of design knowledge around the shuttle, and just pitching it for a capsule seems like a waste.
This is my sig.
because travel between two points on earth's surface is something practical. Almost everyone needs to get form Point A to Point B for some reason, and in many cases flight speeds make such travel more economical. (Is it financially better to pay $500 for a four hour plane trip between LA and NY, or to drive that distance?)
Travel between earth's surface and the moon, for example, is less a matter of pragmatic considertation, and more one of scientific interest.
If rockets were the only way to travel between points of practical interest, they would have "won."
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
During the Pope-death-athon everyone was actually waiting for the guy to die. This round of constant monitoring gave me more of a NASCAR feel, where nobody wants a crash but everybody wants to be watching if one occurs. It's nice that there was no crash. I'm sure somewhere the shuttle pit crew is spraying champagne all over the place while wearing lab coats and doing backflips.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
If it doesn't make a "purty pichur", John Q. Sixpack isn't interested. If John Q. Sixpack isn't interested, then neither is the mainstream media that caters to John Q. Sixpack.
Regards;
....courtesy of the American Public School System. :P
Regards;
Surprise!! We're already in outer space right now.. So where did they really go?
Is this serious?
Right... and how may other pharmacies were within driving distance of that asshole? C'mon, man... One asshole does not a trend make...
Frickin' sweet! Now that medical personnel can deny care "because they feel like it", I can't wait to see... "sorry, kiddo, I know you've just been in an auto accident and a transfusion would save your life, but as a devout Jehovah's Witness, I can't countenance blood transfusions. Better luck in the next world!" Or how about "sorry, toots, but as a devout Scientologist I can't in good conscience give you your antipsychotic meds. See, Scientology teaches us that psychology is really Xenu babble E-meter El Ron blah blah. Would you like to take this free personality test?"
Or, a little more relevantly, "What do you mean, you were just viciously raped, you don't have a car or any other means of transportation, the next pharmacy is six towns over because we're in the middle of Gawd Country, and you'd like a 'morning-after pill'? You slut! You're lucky I don't set you on fire, Pakistan-style!"
But, hey, I guess since things are a lot better than they were, we can't complain. I mean, shutting up and not engaging in activism have worked in the past, hasn't it?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I gotta drop a comment here, if only to make a weak attempt at balancing all the twelve year olds telling you to get back in the kitchen.
Then again, I'm a tech and I can still poach a decent chicken dish, so that doesn't really say much, now does it?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Lots of things that are trivial to do on Earth are quite difficult to do in space. NASA sometimes belabors every baby step because those steps can be really hard, AND because it took huge amounts of talent, energy and cash to get up there just so you can DO those things.
I think another reason is because they do all these drawn out, precisely choreographed procedures in space. That gives the mission commentators on the ground a lot of dead air to fill.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Maybe a pilot can explain it better than I can, but the difference is somewhat like this: a yoke has two different types of motion: you can rotate it like a steering wheel, and you can push/pull it. A stick is like the video game joysticks we all know and love. The shuttle is flown with the latter when under human control (although it's still connected via a digital fly-by-wire system).
If you look at pictures of the shuttle cockpit, you can clearly see a stick there. I suggest comparing the cockpit interiors of Boeing and Airbus (except the A300) commercial jets on airliners.net for an illustration of the differences.
From the great JSR monthly report.
http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html
Shuttle and Station
-------------------
The Shuttle has completed its return-to-flight mission, but continuing problems with debris marred the otherwise successful flight.
Discovery was launched at 1439:00 UTC on Jul 26, reaching a 54 x 229 km orbit at 1447 UTC. The OMS-2 burn at 1517 UTC raised the perigee out of
the atmosphere, with a 155 x 230 km orbit. NC-1 and NC-2 burns resulted in 226 x 285 km and 270 x 287 km orbits, as the Shuttle slowly matched
altitude and speed with the Station in a 350 x 356 km x 51.6 deg orbit. Meanwhile, external tank ET-121 fell back into the Pacific with reentry
at around 1550 UTC.
Spectacular camera views from the External Tank showed minor tile damage during ascent, and the loss of a half-meter piece of foam from the ET at
the time of SRB separation. Although the foam did not hit Discovery, the failure to stop large foam loss (a 15-cm piece was also lost from near
the bipod ramp) will have to be investigated and fixed before Atlantis can fly the next mission.
On Jul 19 the Station crew flew Soyuz TMA-6 from the Pirs docking port, undocking at 1038 UTC, and redocked with the Zarya docking port at 1108 UTC.
On Jul 28 at 1118 UTC Discovery docked at the Space Station. Hatch opening was at 1250 UTC. The first spacewalk was carried out on Jul 30
and saw tile repair tests in the payload bay, and installation of a mounting bracket for the ESP-2 stores platform on the Station's Quest module.
The second spacewalk on Aug 1 saw replacement of the Station's CMG-1 gyro. The third spacewalk on Aug 3 saw installation of the ESP-2 platform,
and the removal of two protruding pieces of tile gap-filler material from the Shuttle's heat shield.
Discovery undocked from Station at 0724 UTC on Aug 6 and landed safely on Runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base at 1211 UTC on Aug 9.
Animoog.org
How dare you suggest the shuttle was protected by anyone other than Her Greatness, The Invisible Pink Unicorn! I prayed to Her that the shuttle would take off safely! I specifically asked that she protect the orbiter from foam that may break off the fuel tank (don't ask why I didn't request She keep the foam from breaking off in the first place which would have been much easier. I HAVE MY REASONS, which are beyond your understanding). I asked that She demonstrate how She was caring for the astronauts, and She arranged the protruding gap filler so She could guide NASA in finding it, and show Her benevolence in allowing it to be easily removed.
And of course the weather in Florida was Her way of protecting them from what would have happened had they tried to land there. DON'T ASK! You are not pure enough to know Her mind.
Oh yeah, and everything else that ever happened to anybody that involved them not dying, that was Her handiwork too. Any other obvous causal relationships are just how She accomplishes these things, and because she's magical and invisible and omnipotent you won't be able to prove otherwise.
I can't see the shuttle anywhere in that picture.
:-) for the humor impaired.
Wasn't Captain Janeway the first female starship captain or something like that? She managed to get her ship and whole crew hopelessly lost, didn't she?
Oh wait... Yeah. Well, anyways.
[I have no name!:/]# _
I am Asian. I was in the passenger seat of a car driven by a female friend of mine. We're waiting for this guy to pull out of a parking spot and he's being really slow and tardish. I make the crack, "Damn, is it a chick driving that thing?" He pulls out and it's a man. I remark, "Hmmm. No, a guy." My friend then asks, "Is he Asian?"
Touche, Patricia.
I can't see how slashdotters can take positions so fiercely pro-Open Source and anti-patent, anti-copyright then wish for the private enterprise to take over spaceflight. With NASA in charge, everything they do is PD: you can get all the facts, the pictures, the videos, the data. You can draw any space vehicles you want, put the Shuttle (or Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) in a homebrew game and nobody tells you anything.
When the private heads take over, look out for patented orbits, trademarked flightpaths and C&D letters to kids who dared draw "the distint likeness" of their copyrighted vehicle for a school assignment.
Here comes the STAA (Space Traveler Association of America): All your base are belong to us!
We need a P2P shuttle...
Everyone seems to have taken offense to me pointing out how much the shuttle program has spent since it's last mission and not pointed out that I multiplied the numbers incorrectly. It is actually 9.6 Billion, not 6.6 Billion. 3.2 per year times 3 years is 9.6 not 6.6. oops. (Blame it on that stupid MS calculator I was using ;)
I've recently wondered why they can't put a thin membrane over the foam to keep pieces from flying off, might help with the drag coefficient too..
But then I'm just a clueless non-rocket-scientist wannabe anyway.
Last time, I was misled:
washingtonpost.com
Columbia Streaks Toward Florida Landing
By Marcia Dunn
AP Aerospace Writer
Saturday, February 1, 2003; 8:28 AM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With security tighter than usual, space shuttle Columbia streaked toward a Florida touchdown Saturday to end a successful 16-day scientific research mission that included the first Israeli astronaut.
The early morning fog burned off as the sun rose, and Mission Control gave the seven astronauts the go-ahead to come home on time. "I guess you've been wondering, but you are 'go' for the deorbit burn," Mission Control radioed at practically the last minute.
Ilan Ramon, a colnel in Israel's air force and former figher pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.
"We've taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly," said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.
Columbia's crew - Ramon and six Americans - completed all of their 80-plus experiments in orbit. They studied ant, bee, and spider behavior in weightlessness as well as changes in flames and flower scents, and took measurements of atmospheric dust with a pair of Israeli cameras.
The 13 lab rats on board - part of a brain and heart study - had to face the guillotine following the flight, so researchers could see up-close the effects of so much time in weightlessness. The insects and other animals had a brighter, longer future: the student experimenters were going to get them back and many of the youngsters planned to keep them, almost like pets.
All of the scientific objectives were accomplished during the round-the clock laboratory mission, and some of the work may be continued abourd the international space station, researchers said. The only problem of note was a pair of malfunctioning dehumidifiers, which temporarily raised temperatures inside the laboratory to the low 80s, 10 degrees higher than desired.
Some of Columbia's crew members didn't want their time in space to end.
"Do we really have to come back?" astronaut David Brown jokingly asked Mission Control before the ride home.
NASA's next shuttle flight, a space station construction mission, is scheduled for March. The next time Columbia flies will be in November, when it carries into orbit educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, who was the backup for Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe in 1986.
[End of the article]
Contact was lost at 9:00AM, 32 minutes after the Washington Post published this.
The reference to Challenger at the end is just creepy.
Lastly, as far as I'm concerned you can stay up there as long as you want David - RIP.
Scrap the shuttle. Move the money to private industry (ala Burt Ruttan, Scaled Composites, etc.) In 5 years, we'll all be in space just like the airline industry made air travel fast, safe, and affordable!
Soyuz is great for getting people up there and some supplies. Progress can cram a bunch more supplies on it, but for some things, like ACTUAL ISS HARDWARE, you cannot fit into a Progress of Soyuz module. Sorry to say it, but the shuttle does not have a replacement at the moment. Not only that, there is no current way to take things back. For instance, they had several radios that were just too expensive to toss into a Progress to get burned up on reentry.
A lot of the european countries are really worried that we'll retire the shuttle leaving billions of euros of ISS hardware firmly planted on the Earth.
The primary reason the Soyuz works so well is because it has one single job, bring 3 cosmonauts to space and back. That is *all* it does. The shuttle had an unrealistic number of expectations placed on it. It is capable of a lot of things although may of the original design intents are now too dangerous to risk life for. That's things like orbit very large intelligence satellites, etc.
Another reason the BBC commentator's comments are ignorant are based on the fact that until very recently, NASA was unable to pay for Soyuz and the Russians didn't have the cash to send more than the minimum. NASA couldn't pay for Soyuz due to a law passed that banned NASA for paying for any space related hardware to persuade Russia to stop helping Iran on it's nuclear weapons program.
I think that's a great quote that I'd like to save, but I can't find it anywhere on the web... can you find a citation for me?
They called the Concorde an SST, but only STS space shuttles can blast people out of bed with sonic booms at 5 AM.
..I can flip the coin and present it in terms that the other side urges for.
I hereby mandate that every store owner must sell firearms. After all, we don't care if you're morally opposed to selling them - we have a right to bear them granted by the second amendment. Who are you to decide that your morality overrules my right to bear firearms? Who are you to decide that following your conscience is more important than fulfilling my desires?
If a pharmacist is morally opposed to being a conduit for chemical abortions, who are you to decide his morality is inferior to yours and compell him to act against his conscience?
SYS 64738
...have a stick, not a yoke. And the wiggly-wheel is supposed to be under the tail, not under the nose.
Comic-book-guy at his computer:
Oh, Captain Janeway. Lace: The Final Brassiere. Oh hurry up, I'm a busy man. Ugh, this high-speed modem is intolerably slow...
The ISS is a huge waste though.
The ISS is the ONLY way that the astronauts aboard the shuttle would have been able to survive any length of time while waiting for a possible rescue if the shuttle had indeed been damaged enough to make reentry unsafe.
Sooner or later there will be hotels, transit points and repair stations in orbit. The ISS is a precursor to that. Take a look at the facts: The fact that the ISS was there enabled NASA to get complete 360 images of the shuttle's surface by doing a roll in fornt of it. The ISS helped the repair of the tile gap fillers by providing a vantage point to see what the astronauts were doing.
Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth have been simply the two first paying tourists in space at the ISS hotel. I guarantee you that if there weren't such a load of bad noise about the shuttle that there would be more multi-millionaires willing to go up.
Apart from all that, the ISS is the only way that science can learn how humans react to very long stays in zero gravity. This is highly important to future travels in the solar system.
The ISS is by no means a waste.
...my roommate is a cop, volunteer firefighter and army reservist. Guess he likes facing death. ;)
It isn't friction. It's called "Ram Pressure".
Basically a meteor (or space shuttle) compresses the air in front of it, which causes it to get extremely hot (think bicycle pump). The space shuttle tiles are not as strong as you might think. The heat comes from the compressed super-hot air in front of the object. This is what causes the surface of a meteor to melt.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
More like dropping a pebble and praying to god. I wonder waht the discussion was like:
"Houston There's a lot of vibrations and some stuff falling out, maybe a little coolant leaking... are you sure this thing is ok?"
"Copy Discovery thats normal... stuff falls off that hoopty all the time"
"Ok houston, that encouraging.. this is one ROUGH ride."
"Discovery, are you holding the oh shit straps we installed?"
"Houston, you guys suck you know that?"
Armstrong had rehearsed a slightly different statement that he fumbled on the moon. What he intended to say was "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." That actually makes some sense. What he actually said, if you think about it, don't make much sense... but I suppose it has that profound aura that made the statement it so historical.
I lived in SoCal all my life and this is the first landing that scared the shit out of me. Is there a reason why this landing was so much louder then the others?
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Ah, you're right the PILOT does those two things. The PILOT is actually the CO-PILOT.
The COMMANDER is the person that does the flying after re-entry and lands the beast.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Room is not about the mathematic definition of space. For lifeforms, it's about resources and shelter. Outside our planet, there are no resources nor shelter we haven't taken with us from the earth. And taking one kg of resources up there, costs millions kg of resources on earth. Using it down here, is far more efficient. About the shelter thing: in space there is no protecting atmosphere. There is no warmth: it's far too hot or far too cold. There's fierce radiation, meteors etc.
As i said, there are giant spaces down here on earth, with lots of resources, and much more shelter than in space. The waters. We have all the technology to colonize them, yet we don't do it. A few people really live on the surface of the sea, but they are more and more replaced by robots. Most of the people just travel over the water, and they always want to return one day to the shore. (i am a sailor, believe me)
So, before you are so sure about mankind conquering space, explain me why we don't take that far more easy to colonize room down here.
Trust me, I work for the government.
~and the first from his country to die in space~ RIP Colombia Crew. You took the walk amoung the stars most of us wish we could, now they are yours to walk through for eterity. Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former figher pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
The big runway I see is 04. Is the other end of it 22? I can't make it out because of all the tire marks. I'm a bit uninformed as to how they name runways.
I guess it could be runway 22 the other way as the shuttle had to make a greater than 180 degree turn
I think that if they need to worry about missing tiles or a little insulation hanging off the ship, then the design is broken.
I mean, come on, those ships in Star Wars take off and land at will.
I find it interesting that several people have replied to my message commenting on how "we" should have safe, cheap, reliable, common space travel by now.
I have to wonder why all these people who are such experts on spaceflight are posting on Slashdot instead of working at NASA.
Second, it's folly to assume that because the overall pace of technological advancement is fast, a particular field should be fast. Now, maybe we should be making faster gains in spaceflight. Unlike everyone else here, I'm no expert, and won't make a claim one way or the other. But I do know that drawing specific conclusions from a general trend is rarely a good idea. "Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns", as they say in the investment business.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Believe it or not, some people are interested in this. I've had NASA TV playing on my computer for the past two days."
Well, sure. If you want continous coverage of spaceflight activity, you tune in the NASA channel. That makes sense. My complaint is about the mainstream media and web media, both of which have featured non-stop commentary on every little thing, with no insight as to what is important and what isn't, and with plenty of "lay experts" giving their two bits. That isn't news.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Lots of things that are trivial to do on Earth are quite difficult to do in space. NASA sometimes belabors every baby step..."
:-)
As I said, my comments were not directed at NASA. Pay attention.
As you point out, NASA has good reasons for what they do. Even the constant radio chatter about what people are doing is by design. Most times, the Mission Controllers cannot see what is going on, so they need that commentary to keep the "picture" in their minds accurate. It also establishes a record of what is going on, in case something bad happens and they need to look back. It also allows others to double-check what is going on, and possibly stop a problem before it stops. I'm not complaining about that.
I'm complaining about the media obsession with STS-114. If it wasn't for the fact that the last STS mission ended in a disaster, the mainstream media wouldn't give this mission two seconds of attention.
Blech.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
That's doubtful considering K&R was written in 1978, and this was the first public spec of the language. ANSI C didn't even come along until the 80's.
The initial developement of C wasn't even done until 1973, so unless you were at Bell Labs with Thompson and Ritchie in 1969, I think you're just making shit up.
You're either really senile, or must've fallen very far in life to go from the forefront of Computer Science in the 1970's to trolling on Slashdot.
(Peter, Joe Swanson, Quagmire, and Cleveland are sitting in a boat, at a table)
Peter: Okay, imagine none of you were married. If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?
Joe: I'd pick Muriel Hemmingway.
(others moan in disagreement)
Joe: No, she's beautiful in a classical way.
Quagmire: Yeah, but you could cut a roast on her face!
Cleveland: I'd pick Margaret Thatcher.
(others moan in disagreement again)
Cleveland: Oh, so no one finds power sexy. Not one of you finds power sexy?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This is runway 22... Need proof? just scroll east and continue out untill the runway ends (which is about the middle of the lakebed), and you'll see a 22 inside a circle at the end of it.
"Everyone's afraid to have a newly married woman in a position of responsibility on a project because they're afraid she's going to have to go on leave a year after the project gets going."
...if the Shuttle needed to be parallel parked.
Wow I didn't even look out that far. Thanks for the info, now I know they're different numbers in different directions.
The runway is designated as Runway 4/22.
If you're on a heading of 220 degrees, it's Runway 22.
If you're on the reciprocal heading of 40 degrees, it's Runway 4.
After approaching from the west-southwest and making it's 196-degree turn, the shuttle was on a heading of 220 degrees and therefore landed on Runway 22.
Interesting off-topic bonus factoid: There is a story told at Edwards that the runway is *officially* 20,000 feet long. In reality, it's closer to 19,999 feet long. When it was being lengthened years ago, the Test Wing commander directed the last foot of concrete be diverted to his house to build a swimming pool. Somebody ratted him out to the Inspector General for fraud, waste, and abuse of government property and he was relieved of command. His old house is now used by the local chapter of the Civil Air Patrol for meetings; in the back yard is a swimming pool - filled in with concrete at the direction of the commander who replaced him.
HTH
What?
it's a "Rotational Hand Controller".
It was made by Thrustmaster, which later sold a version to the public that is usable with a home computer for flight simulation purposes.
Thrustmaster Millennium 3D Interceptor - Review
i am a soviet space shuttle
Does anybody else want to see the shuttle do a roll just before the landing? Just for fun?
I figure NASA would get more from that than anything else in the current political and administrative world : ) It worked for Boeing.
there needs to be a very basic change in the policy at NASA that allows them to DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to ensure the safety of their own vehicles that carry people on board-- in 1997, they were overridden by the EPA under the Clinton Administration, that changed the way that the insulating foam was applied to the external tank, which DIRECTLY led to the loss of Columbia-- that change caused the foam to become like huge sheets of peanut brittle-- NASA needs a policy change that allows them to tell other parts of the government like the EPA to in effect "go screw themselves" when they attempt to arbitrarily change operating procedures at NASA, such as under the Clinton Administration in 1997!