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Launch Date Announced for Shuttle Mission STS-117
chuckpeters writes "After a two day Flight Readiness Review in Florida, space shuttle managers have announced an official launch date for STS-117 to be June 8, 7:38 PM. The launch window will run in two parts — from June 8th to the evening of June 12th when the shuttle must stand down for a June 14th Atlas launch. After that the windows opens again on the 17th. This first opening gives the standard four attempts in five days. If they have not launched by the 12th, they will replenish things such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen for the fuel cells to prepare for the 17th attempt."
Imagine you are taking your Civic from Maine to Califorina and it's winter. You have 18" dubs and semi-slick tires, so you are looking for a day with no precipitation. Good luck. Maine has bad roads and permanent black ice, so you are stuck in your mom's basement until June 8th. But you have to start driving before June 14th, when all the cops are on the roads, giving out tickets to any driver not wearing a beret to celebrate Bastille Day.
During the Bastille Bash, you did burnouts in front of your house so you need to refuel your car and put in some sweet NOS before leaving on the 17th.
Mars by 2020? Forget it, we can't even launch a freakin' shuttle in a descent amount of time!
Can't agree more- they're far too bulky and inefficient to be doing the work we ask of them- we wont become a cosmicly interesting species until we develop better spacecraft.
because sitting here on this little speck of dust we call Earth is not an evolutionarily wise choice. there is only so much you can do as a species by sitting on your home planet. we can send probes places, gather dirt/gases what have you and send it back but that doesnt really tell us much about the places the probes went to. even after several probes sent to mars we still dont know much about its geology, the possibility of underground life or if it is even feasible to expand onto the planet. by sending people there we can get a literally hands on experience of what we're dealing with. the technology we devolop to get there along with the in flight experience of long term space travel will prve very useful if we intend to expand outward through space. for that matter, we need a backup home- Earth is just too much of a gamble. there are asteroids, overpopulation, wars and a number of other things we should keep an eye on along with having a way to survive far away from such things if we intend to survive as a species. even if that isnt enough of a reason, just think of all the other times we had a chance to explore- what would have happened if we had not gone- unthinkable. humans are curious-especially now and with good reason- instead of being relatively technologically backward on our planet from a lack of drive, we should push forward, outward and beyond into space and everythign we learn from going where no one has gone before.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
She was to launch back in Feb./March. time frame. But was hit by a freak hail storm. Rather than use a new fuel tank, they "repaired" this one. It is possible that this may end up being a spectacular launch. Hopefully not.
This particular mission is not that big of a deal, other than others are lined up and waiting on this. In particular, the ISS needs POWER. This will increase it a bit, but current net is actually down. The reason is that P6 was rolled up to allow for this transfer. It is only after the NEXT shuttle that we will see major increased power. In addition, EU's ATV is waiting for this to be launch, but they will launch before the columbus goes up. Apparently, they have no desire to pay for the whole thing if they have a mistake. Almost too bad that we do not have a single unit up there for them to try against and vet everything. Oh well.
All in all, by the end of this year, we will see major expansions to the ISS.
Now, if there is a way to get CAM restored to there, which is one of the few really good uses for the ISS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Technically speaking, the boosters are solid fuel, you insensitive clod. That large orange external tank on the other hand stores the Liquid Oxygen/Hydrogen. And, the poster really appears to be talking about the internal fuel cell ones for electricity in the shuttle.
The last time NASA really rushed things, they killed three astronauts and landed twelve people on the Moon.
Challenger and Columbia weren't so much due to rushing things, but to rushing things for no reason and doing everything really half-assed.
If Challenger had happened back in the old days, those engineers would have stood up and said, "Hell no! I won't sign off on this, if we launch then that thing will explode!" If Columbia had happened back in the old days then as soon as the shed foam was discovered, NASA would have asked for and received pictures of the damage taken from spy satellites, then when the full extent of the damage was discovered they would have put Columbia into ultra-conservation mode, started a mad rush to prep Atlantis for a rescue mission, and started seeing if they could steal payload space on unmanned rockets to launch supplies.
Instead, the Challenger engineers shut up and sat down when told to do so, and the Columbia management refused to even ask for spy sat photos to evaluate the problem. Result: 14 dead people for no good reason.
I say, go off, rush things, take calculated risks, and kill some more astronauts! But do it because space travel is inherently dangerous, do it because they're accomplishing amazing things, don't do it because you're too dysfunctional to admit when you have a problem and you're flying a crippled, dangerously flawed design and going in circles in low-Earth orbit.
"Imagine you are taking your Civic from Maine to Califorina and it's winter."
Correction: Imagine you are taking your Civic from Houston to Orlando and it's winter, and you're wearing astronaut diapers...