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Historic Shuttle Spacesuits to Meet Fiery End

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the burn-baby-burn dept.

collectSPACE writes "While some museums bid for retired space shuttle orbiters, the real prize may be the spacewalking spacesuits, at least if NASA's plans for them hold true. The now-reusable extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) are soon to become disposable, allowed to disintegrate as they reenter the Earth's atmosphere inside spent cargo ships."

4 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. I just hope.... by edwardpickman · · Score: 5, Funny

    they take the astronauts out first.

  2. Re:Hey! Tax money paid for those by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They are talking about after Orion replaces the current space shuttles. Orion does not have the ability to carry as much weight as the shuttle; thus, some things can not be brought back. One of these will be some suits that are stored on the ISS.

  3. Gasp! My heart just skipped a beat. by sdo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Egads people. The shuttle is scheduled to launch today. Could you please not post a front page story with words "Shuttle", "Space", and "Fiery End" all together? A quick glance at the sentence made me gasp and ask "WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?"

    A half second later, I understood the context, but it took a few moments for my heart to slow back down...

    -S

    --
    --- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
  4. Re:Hey! Tax money paid for those by R2.0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "And if they can't even BRING BACK THEIR STUFF, then they've failed completely."

    Which is exactly the kind of narrowminded thinking that brought us the Shuttle in the 1st place.

    The whole concept of shuttle "reusability" came from the idea that *OBVIOUSLY* reusing the orbiter would be cheaper. But it wound up costing more to basically rebuild the shuttle and SRB's every time. Real economy there.

    Sometimes, it actually makes more sense from an engineering economics standpoint to throw something away. If it is cheaper to build something for 1 time use, and throw it away after that use, that's OK.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson