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Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement
schliz writes "Nasa has announced that it intends to officially retire the aging space shuttle fleet by 2010, four years before it has a replacement craft ready. The space shuttle fleet will make ten more flights, mainly to add modules to the International Space Station and carry out repairs and upgrades to the Hubble orbital telescope. The retirement will leave the US without orbital capacity for at least four years, until the Ares booster programme is complete. European and Russian launchers will service the space station in the meantime."
NPRs been running this, as have the Orlando area news media for a while now. Why am I reading this on /. from a source in Australia?
Gaaaa!
We'll outsource NASA, just like everything else.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Don't forget pilots.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I'd rather be an astronaut than a lumberjack.
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I believe at this point Lenin is supposed to break out of his glass case and zombie "MUST CRUSH CAPITALISM"
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
"When a nation is no longer able to excel in a technology they pioneered, it's very difficult to come back."
Yeah , its a shame what happened to Germanys rocket program.
I think I can say that Americas education system has never produced the quantity and quality of talent necessary for real innovation in space. The US has always relied on immigrants. Your victory in the space race was in part due to the fact that World War 2 drove the best rocket scientists out of Europe.
It got us out of WW2 too. Frankly, our German scientists were better than their German scientists...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I want to die quietly, in my sleep, like my Grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
-Peter
Yeap, them where the good ol' days all right. You didn't spend your time worrying about some religious freak taking your ass out with a car bomb. Our worries ran along the line some computer error taking out the whole damn planet. Nothing like the fear of global Armageddon to keep your mind focused.
I lived in Huntsville at the time which was a major strike area. I had at least 35 megatons pointed in the general direction of my ass for several years. I still have most of my nuclear war party pack. A folding lounge chair, a beach umbrella, sun tan lotion (SPF 45), straw hat, a pair cheap sunglasses, some flip flops, swim trunks, a bottle of tequila (the rest of the margarita fixings are long gone), salt, and a cassette of Jimmy Buffett (Songs You Know By Heart).
Yeap, I was ready.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
That's 'cos we got the Jewish ones.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?