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Shuttle Launch Postponed To July 4th
mkosmo writes "NASA has yet again delayed Space Shuttle Discovery from launching due to growing weather conditions. Next launch attempt is the afternoon of the 4th of July." From the article: "Windows of opportunity are determined by the path of the orbiting international space station, the shuttle's destination. With each passing day, the time for a launch gets earlier by 22-1/2 minutes. That could be good news for NASA because summer thunderstorms are less likely to be a problem earlier in the day."
there arn't any billion dollar firework displays
god speed
It's a bit of apples-to-oranges comparison. Russians do not currently operate a shuttle fleet. They launch the much smaller Soyuz / Progress vehicles, which in turn need less stringent launch conditions.
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
The "space program" doesn't end in 2010, the "shuttle program" is scheduled to be over in 2010. Folks are working on other vehicles to take over. Also yes, other countries (Russia) can make trips to the ISS also.
Of course, the shuttle can take a much, much larger payload than anything else currently available (I think).
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
Nobody ought to make jokes until AFTER the shuttle launch, since we don't yet know the morbid details soon to play out that will make the jokes funny or not.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Yes, the illustration you provide is simple, clear, and wrong.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
US space program lost 14 people in missions, in two Shuttle accidents, one on launch and another on descent.
Both programs had various accidents on the ground, not in missions.
Myth: Americans realized that they couldn't right with a pen in space so they spent millions of dollars developing one that could. The Russians just used a pencil.
Fact: Both Americans and Soviets initially used pencils.
Fact: The Americans (and probably the Russians as well) realized that having all these little broken tips floating around in space probably wasn't a good idea.
Fact: Graphite can conduct electricity, so having the graphite dust floating around wasn't good either.
Fact: The wood and graphite would burn easily in a oxygen rich enviroment
Fact: Fisher Pens developed the space pen on their own using their own capital. Only after developed a working pen that resolved the above issues (as well as a few more) did they pass it on to NASA to evaluate.
Fact: Both NASA and the Russian space agency have used the space pen in flights since 1968.
Energiya was a modular design, and could be configured to lift up to 400,000 lbs from the ground. It was flown twice in 160,000 lbs configuration (one of those flights launched Buran, which weighted about 80,000 lbs.) Given Energiya's thrust, Buran could lift up to 60,000 lbs in its payload bay, but that never happened because nobody was interested - we are not building starships yet.
Energiya as such is not manufactured now, but it's engines - RD-180 - are used on Atlas V. The "heavy" option can lift up to 50,000 lbs to the LEO, or 26,000 lbs to the geostationary orbit.
This just in.. Weather conditions are growing all over the world. Visual, and radar data combined with realtime satellite imagery have proven without a doubt that weather is growing! Scientists have so far been unable to explain why the weather is growing however recent CERN experiments have concluded that if left unchecked weather will soon sweep the entire planet@!
Save Yourselves!
Ah, but it's a way to appease fate, not tempt it. All the little rockets are a sacrifice to the God of Explosions. They make it safe for the Big Rocket to launch.
Shuttle has to worry about rain because, unlike the Russians, the shuttle heat shield is 1) exposed during the entire ascent instead of being tucked safely between rocket stages and 2) is made of silica glass that is glued on to the orbiter's belly. Rain=BAD
"Shuttle has to worry about rain because .."
It isn't rain but lightning that is the problem. The column of ionized gases ejected from a vehicle in assent is highly conductive and makes for a very good earth. Apollo 12 was hit twice in just such an incident. The strike affected the parachute deployment system among other things. They didn't know for sure if it would actually work until the final moments of the descent.
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