Slashdot Mirror
Discovery Lands in Florida
duh P3rf3ss3r writes "As reported by the BBC, the space shuttle Discovery safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2232 GMT. Discovery's 13-day mission is being called a success after astronauts undertook four space walks to install new wiring and to do battle with a recalcitrant solar panel. The next scheduled flight is the Atlantis shuttle in March. A video chronicle of the mission, including the landing, is available at NASA's video gallery."
land the shuttle too! http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1758
And Christer Fuglesang was our first Swede in space. He's :P
a national hero.
And he did all those space walks.
Welcome back!
Välkommen hem!
First swedish astronaut ever. I'm so proud!
Even cooler is the fact that he is funny (not some deeply overserious physics guy)- I very much enjoyed the interview with him from ISS.
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
They can put a crew up in space, but in order to watch a clip of the landing you have to download the newest RealPlayer...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Maybe if they could launch a dozen a day it would be a useful thing, otherwise it's just a way to keep NASA employees employed.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Why? About a fifth to a third of the textbooks I want aren't available when I want them. They either aren't in the library collection (inter-library loan here we come ...), or they are on loan. The campus bookstore doesn't stock them (surprise) and they'll take weeks to arive if they are in print, or I have to chase them up on Amazon because they're out of print or in backorder.
So ... I'd be very happy with the ability to print any book in the catalogue in 7 minutes. This means of course that we would have the permission of the publishers, but given that I'd be happy to pay for out-of-print or even back-order copies I suspect that the difficulties will be resolvable.
Should this happen then I think that a good case can be made for having the Library install the machine and signing deals with publishers so that the machine can print _copyrighted_ books which the Library would otherwise have to keep in its collection. I can think of several out-of-print-but-still-useful mathematics books that would benefit from wider availability.
And yes, I often want a physical book instead of a file. I much prefer reading text from paper than from a screen, (and thanks to the publishers electronic articles aren't searcheable because you get them as images, so no advantages to be had there), and because I tend to scribble in my books (*coughs* with pencil of course *coughs*), mark passages, and take them with me.
When is the Hubble service mission going to happen?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Space geeks waste billions of dollars each year to live out their Star Trek fantasies. Time to cut off their money and spend it on someone more worthwhile. Sea exploration would yield far more benefit than space exploration. Maybe we should even consider NOT cutting social security benefits each year instead of paying for garbage like the Iraq war and useless trips into space.
Of all news sources, why the random BBC link? Why not link to the shuttle website?
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
That would have been an awesome sight, that thing landing in the (relatively) lonely desert. One of the promised features was supposed to be the ability to land anywhere. Unfortunately, things have not turned out that way.
Mods, mod the troll poster (parent) a troll.
In Florida you say?
Some people will find the negative in anything. Nothing wrong with a safe, routine KSC landing. For the record the shuttle has an 1100 mile cross range. It was in a highly inclined orbit, so its landing opportunities were limited. Also there are only a handful of runways in the entire world that can handle it, none of which are equiped with crane needed to place the orbiter on top of the carrier aircraft. A White Sands landing would have added 2 months to Discovery's turnaround for the next launch. If you really want to see a shuttle landing at White Sands, dig up the video from STS 3.
an ill wind that blows no good
I tried and failed to get the old game from the "underdogs" to run under WINE/Crossover. Downloading Orbiter now to try it. Did anyone have any success with getting any of the games to run under Linux? Anyway, congratulations to the Shuttle crew!
Of course.
Four torrents currently:
What did you expect? :-)
Why is legitimate criticism of the futility of permitting NASA to continue leading the vanguard of spaceflight modded as a troll?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
I was hanging out with a couple of buddies here in Tallahassee yesterday after workb and heard a "boom boom" sound which pretty much shook the whole house. All the dogs in the neighborhood started barking. We thought it was an explosion or something off in the distance, I guess this could explain what it was. It was right around 5:30 PM EST (give or take a few minutes).
I don't mean to be a spoil sport, but Shuttles landing safely isn't all that intresting to me anyomre.
I read the headline & thought maybe Florida shot down a UFO, or a larger than usual space rock landed with never before seen minerals, or somthing else that doesn't happen often.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
For all you space fans out there, I suggest you make an effort to watch these shuttle launches, landings, and ISS construction missions when they happen. There are only 14 more space shuttle flights planned before retirement of the entire fleet in early 2010. All except one (the Hubble Telescope repair mission) will be construcing and resupplying the space station.
Spaceflightnow.com has a nice manifest of future flights (see link below). Number 3 on the manifest just finished.
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts116/fdf/maniYes the shuttles have enormous problems (huge costs and long turnaround times, for example), but they are really the most versatile and capable spacecraft ever sent into orbit. After the shuttles are retired, we'll be going back to Apollo-style craft for the foreseeable decades. I for one am glad my child is old enough to be able to see and remember these shuttles flying in their final years.
Because you obviously do not understand the complexity and (gasp) dangers still present in space flight. When Columbia burned up, remember the cries for a moratorium on manned space travel? The tortoise won the race, while the hare died in a fire.
How come YOU aren't leading the charge into spaceflight, if its so easy?
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
Thrillseekers Waltz
"Because you obviously do not understand the complexity and (gasp) dangers still present in space flight."
Of course I do.
"When Columbia burned up,"
Proving NASA's inablility to do the job...
"remember the cries for a moratorium on manned space travel?"
From fucking idiots. What does that have to do with me.
" The tortoise won the race, while the hare died in a fire."
You mean Apollo 1, right? The pad fire?
Hey, how could we get from the Earth to the Moon in less than a decade, but NOT GO BACK THERE NOW IF WE HAD TO?
"How come YOU aren't leading the charge into spaceflight, if its so easy?"
Getting NASA out of the process is the first step. Why are you resistant to progressing past the "Apollo Engineer Perpetual Employment Program?", which is now the "Shuttle Engineer Perpetual Employment Program", or maybe the "ISS Engineer Perpetual Employment Program".
How about DEVELOPING some new decent hardware. For the BILLION DOLLARS they waste on a shuttle shot to just LEO, they could spread it around to some hungry emergent tech companies, and see some REAL RESULTS for our investment.
I'm thinking, why do you equate the rightful criticism of NASA to stopping going to space?
NASA is NOT the only way to outer space. In fact, we've seen that NASA is anything but.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
"How about DEVELOPING some new decent hardware. For the BILLION DOLLARS they waste on a shuttle shot to just LEO, they could spread it around to some hungry emergent tech companies, and see some REAL RESULTS for our investment."
The restrictions on a private company are even higher than on NASA. It would cost more money than it does now. Having said that, NASA subcontracts significant portions of its work to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Honeywell, ITT, etc.
In addition, any part sent into space must be highly tested, so they do not use emergent technologies when it is unknown how they will respond in the space environment. Only fully tested and proven parts are used. This applies to everything from the paint used to paint identification numbers on discrete parts to the most complex electronics.
You obviously don't understand the restrictions the government places on anyone who receives government funding.
brilliant plan Milestones,H telling
NASA's bloat is a big fucking waste, see spaceship 1 for details.
This couldn't have been done without the heroic efforts of Christer Fuglesang.
The video crashed my Firefox browser twice.
However, you can go straight to the streams from the NASA TV landing page and pick your preferred format from among those three.
"You obviously don't understand the restrictions the government places on anyone who receives government funding."
So we spend tax dollars for the express purpose of stifling progress?
How did we ever develop the technology and processes to actually land on the moon and return?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Don't be a turd burglar. Spaceship One almost fucking crashed on it's "successful" flight.
...on any ISS construction mission on Nasa TV, whenever a spacewalker tightens a bolt or moves a plug from one socket to another, Mission Control goes into absolute paroxysms of congratulation? Is it really that difficult? These guys are in an air-conditioned environment, and as well as having trained for years to be able to do it in their sleep, have their 'boss' tell them exactly what to touch at every single minute step along the way, with no distraction from other work colleagues.
I reckon a vast majority of slashdotters shoved into that spacesuit and given a pouch full of toolbits would be capable of doing the same thing, without the years of training.
I can only wish I had a boss like Nasa leaning over my shoulder and congratulating me for every line of code I write!
I don't know about you, but I'd love to see some pictures of this "Florida" place.. I mean, if the shuttle has actually landed there safely, are the astronauts going to finally walk on the surface of florida? Are they taking samples back to earth? This is truly a historic day.. the first steps on the alien soil of "florida"...
wtf. What's with the slownewsday tag? A successful space mission isn't news for nerds?
I hope they ran all kinds of multi-phasic scans to check for invisible aliens cuz we don't want them sneaking back to earth on them.......what?!....well what are you thinking of between Stargate Seasons?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
With X-Plane you can simulate re-entries as well. Not sure how realistic they are, but it's an otherwise very interesting sim - worth a look. It's also available for Win, OS X and Linux.
Does anyone know the process by which they get a Shuttle mated to a 747 for transport? Amazing feat.