Shuttle Atlantis Finally In Orbit

Klaidas writes "After delays, the shuttle Atlantis has finally been launched today as expected. NASA reports: 'The shuttle Atlantis is in orbit, headed for a challenging new phase in the construction of the International Space Station. Commander Brent Jett and his five crewmates will install a new 17-ton segment of the station's truss backbone, adding a new set of giant solar panels and batteries to the complex. Three spacewalks are planned.'"

Comments

Penguins!

[NotQuiteReal]

The nickname for Atlantis is the Penguin - "What's black and white and never flies"...

Look it up!

...ducks...

Delays... of the Slashdot kind...

[strredwolf]

It really says something when the "It's scheduled to go up" post appears when it's launching, and the "It's in orbit" post is 12 hours late, after all the comments in the former post say "It's in orbit already. Had your coffee yet?"

I was watching MSNBC's shuttle coverage with 2 minutes left on the clock until launch when Cowboy Neal's "scheduled" post hit the front page. As Richard Hammond of BBC's Top Gear would say, "Oh no this is bad..."

May I propose a "This is going to happen within X hours/in the future" option for the submit on logged-in users, sorta like what Pud does for F*ed Company? That way they can get more priority, those who abuse it get banned from using it, and makes things work better.

Anything fall off?

[Che Guevarra]

Seriously, did anything go wrong? It almost always does. Near misses, falling foam, inspections ... Hate to troll, but everytime I watch a launch now my heart races and I break out in a cold sweat whenever I see a thruster flare or a t.v. screen artifact near the shuttle. NASA tries to project confidence, but don't we/they really want a next gen orbiter without all the worries?

Re:Anything fall off?

[cyclone96]

NASA tries to project confidence, but don't we/they really want a next gen orbiter without all the worries?

We (I'm a NASA engineer, and I work on manned systems) absolutely do. The Orion vehicle will be a lot safer since it will have realistic abort options through all phases of flight, not have the complications of a winged vehicle, and will have an escape rocket. The crew will be on top of the vehicle away from falling debris (where, as Mike Griffin said, God intended them to be).

That being said, human spaceflight is never going to be "worry free", at least not for awhile. Riding rockets to orbit is still a very dangerous business, with even the most reliable launchers in the world turning in a 1% failure rate (imagine if aircraft had that...). Most rockets (including the shuttle) carry explosive charges to terminate the flight. The requirement to have those range safety packages are a reflection of the relative immaturity of the launch business.

While great strides have been made in the nearly 50 years orbital launches have been occuring, once or twice a year we have an explosion or failure to reach orbit that reminds everyone it's tough to get into space. Everyone I know in this business (whether their payloads are robots or humans) spends a great deal of time worrying about the ride uphill.

Reverse space race?

[Will_Malverson]

1960's: We sent people to the moon
1970's: We put a space station into low earth orbit
1980's: We had frequent flights to LEO with a reusable craft.
1990's: We had occasional flights to LEO with a reusable craft.
2000's: We managed to get people into orbit with a craft that might get used two more times before the end of its life.

Re:tag = pointless

[DrKyle]

More pointless than war in Iraq, and more deadly if you're an American. (Something like 7% of astronauts have died on the job, a significantly higher death rate than the US military.)

The main difference is that they need to use the same astronauts over and over again because they are highly trained, and they either have a safe mission or a deadly catastrophe. Soldiers on the other hand are easily replaced (it's not like there are only 10 people in the world to do the job) and way more likely to get non-lethally injured. It is stupid to make the comparison looking at a sample of a couple hundred astronauts to millions of soldiers. If you want ridiculous comparisons, 8 Presidents out of 43 have died in office, that is a nearly 20% chance you will die if you become President, now who would be stupid enough to want to take that risk?

Downloadable recorded launch video.

[antdude]

For those who hates streaming video and want to see the launch, here is a 14 MB MP4 file that can be downloaded.

Re:space station work

[segfault7375]

...internet connection...

Silly, they don't make tubes long enough to reach into space.

Re:Does anyone else care?

[Abcd1234]

Well, if there was a "-1 Persecution Complex", I'm sure you'd get that instead.

The job of the astronaut sucks.

[Animats]

Being an astronaut is an incredibly hard job and I salute the brave men and women who risk their lives (and sanity) in the name of science.

As a job, being an astronaut today is not that great. The guys who go up on the ISS are being worked really hard for their whole tour, because it's now so hard to get people up there. The workload has increased substantially since the number of flights declined. There's a good chance the tour of duty in space may be longer than expected, due to problems on the ground. (The Soviet-era cosmonauts had it even worse; one guy was up on Mir for 438 days, being unfortunate enough to be up during the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

But that's not the worst part. NASA has too many people for the flight slots, so many of the "astronauts" will never fly. Right now, there are 100 flight-eligible astronauts, most of whom are doing mid-level management jobs. (NASA's phrase is "will serve in technical assignments until assigned to a space flight.") Or worse, filling the daily "lunch with an astronaut" slot. NASA is no longer training new astronauts.

Being an astronaut doesn't make you famous any more. Here's the list of active astronauts. How many have you heard of?

Re:tag = pointless

[Rei]

In general, ISS's lifespan is more dependent on funds to maintain it than on the actual lifespan of its parts. We're looking at reboost costs, crew and supply delivery/waste removal costs, etc . Some parts will wear out, but in general, ISS is not expected to structurally fail until we let it reenter the atmosphere. I believe it is expected to be 1.3B$/yr, and we've only budgetted $13B (ten years). Many of the modules have lifespans of 30+ years, and as we see on (still operating) Spirit and Opportunity (and many other probes), the real, physical lifespan may well be much longer.

I really hope we don't do the whole Skylab thing again. "Okay, we've burned a ton of money and fixed all of the glitches. Lets let it burn up now!"

Re:tag = pointless

[dclatfel]

I wouldn't call it more pointless than the war in Iraq. That's pretty damn pointless. But clearly - the value in the space station, and probably the space program in general isn't from it's direct research value, but from the spinoff from it. Here's what I think the indirect benefits are:

1) Pumping large amounts of money into defense contractors - particularly important for those contractors during peacetime. FWIW - I say take the 100's of billions of dollars we're pumping into Iraq, and divert it to NASA. Then you'd see one heck of a manned space program.
2) All of the spinoff technology that come from doing such innovative things. Need I mention integrated circuits, advances in lightweight composites, Tang or the Nintendo Powerglove? Come on, where would we be without our Tang?
3) National pride. Critics will argue the ephemerality of this one, but I would argue that it has real measurable effect. National pride is a factor in both the perception of America in the eyes of the rest of the world and maybe even our own perception of ourselves. Both of these are ultimately, in my eyes, good for America doing business in a world economy.
4) Finally, the longest range effect (but maybe most important) is the increase in students pursuing science and engineering education. In fact, it probably translates to great numbers of students pursuing higher education in general. And this, I would argue, has the potential to be the biggest and most lasting effect for our economy.

Anyway - just IMHO.

Re:Purpose of it all?

[Free_Meson]

2. There is no economic value of such a object at current time (aside: I agree, but see my last aside; science doesn't always have immediate economic uses: anyone think Gregor Mendel would have thought he was pioneering a multi-billion dollar industry with those peas?).

If there was immediate economic value to the ISS, the government wouldn't (and shouldn't) be doing it -- private industry would be doing it instead.

For whatever reason, a lot of people complain when the government "wastes" their money on projects unlikely to be profitable in the short term. That's clearly the only thing the government should be spending money on, as anything likely to be profitable in the short term will be accomplished by private industry, likely more quickly and more cheaply. If you are mad about high taxes being spent on botched, potentially profitable ventures, blame the $400Bn pork barrel project also known as the Department of Defense.