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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
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
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
How are you going to get a space shuttle into a library?
Software patents delenda est.
Of all news sources, why the random BBC link? Why not link to the shuttle website?
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It's currently planned for STS-125, which won't happen earlier than May 2008.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Don't worry - you didn't miss anything ... the Florida voters did a recount and it turns out that Discovery actually landed in Maryland.
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
Of course.
Four torrents currently:
What did you expect? :-)
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).
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."
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
Normally they aren't that interesting to me, either. But this is different.
You see, after the Discovery had launched and was in space, it was discovered that something had hit the wing and maybe damaged some wiring. When I heard about that, I was afraid then that we might get another Columbia incident.
They set a record on spacewalks this mission because they had to take an extra spacewalk to fix that wing.
And then, this shuttle landed on the very last day it could have safely landed. There was bad weather in Calif. and bad weather in Florida continually up to that day. If it had tried to land through bad weather, it risked crashing. If it had stayed up another day, it would have ran out of fuel and become a very large piece of space junk. So the people in charge of landing this shuttle took a gamble.
So yes, the Discovery landing safely, in one piece, and with everyone onboard alive is news. Excellent news, but news nonetheless.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
...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!
wtf. What's with the slownewsday tag? A successful space mission isn't news for nerds?