NASA’s Contest To Design the Last Shuttle Patch

rocamargo writes "The space shuttle program is on its way out, but the core of people who built and maintained it will live on. To honor them, NASA gave its employees the chance to design the patch that will commemorate the shuttle program, which is slated to end in September, after STS-133 flies. From the designs of 85 current and former employees, the Shuttle Program Office has selected 15 finalists. The prospective patches, presented here, will be voted on internally by NASA employees and judged by a small panel." I've been thinking a lot lately about the end of the Space Shuttle. For someone my age, the shuttle really *IS* space travel. I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land.

Comments

why have an extra panel at the end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they trust the vote?

On the bright side...

[Rockoon]

On the bright side, commercial space flight is nearing the point of practicality.

Re:On the bright side...

[eln]

Depends on your definition of "nearing". Private companies have, so far, sent a man into suborbital flight (technically "space", but not high enough to do anything useful, like sustain an orbit). That was almost 6 years ago. Since then, there's been a lot of talk about space tourism, but nothing concrete has materialized. Sure, some companies have taken deposits from people who want to go up, but it's still all suborbital, and it's still unknown when they'll actually make even that happen. They've talked a big game, and taken some pictures of some nice looking airplanes like the carrier for SpaceShip Two, but it's still basically all vapor so far.

Yes, private companies are pretty good at sending small satellites into orbit, but there's no real indication they'll be able to send people even into LEO anytime soon, and you can forget about them doing any kind of exploration.

Number Three...

[GypC]

... is the best by far. Most of those entries won't embroider well at all.

Re:Number Three...

[llZENll]

Only a few are good, but patch #3 is the best design, five shuttles, and each star represents a lost crew member. An excellent design. Its clean and stylish and represents several ideas.

Re:After the naming contest what would you do?

[TapeCutter]

Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.

Agree with you, CT

[Camaro]

It's really quite sad to see another step backward in human spaceflight. I grew up in the '80s when the shuttle was exciting but thought we'd have progressed beyond it by now. As a child a space station meant a large circular wheel with a central hub that thousands of people were living on and which was stepping off point for missions further out. Much as I appreciate the science going on with what we have, it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.

Re:Agree with you, CT

[khallow]

I disagree. I think unmanned spaceflight is the REAL future, and will provide us with far more useful information than putting meat sacks in a tin can and blasting it into a vacuum.

Ok, here's a challenge for you. How much would it cost to duplicate the scientific output of the Apollo program with unmanned missions? Your budget is a heady $130 billion dollars (the inflation-adjusted cost of Apollo program, possibly including Skylab). Key things you need to be able to do:

1) return 382 kg of samples from the Moon in at least six missions. You can conduct far more missions, if you desire.

2) At least three of those sample return missions must use rovers capable of traveling up to 40 km to conduct the sample collections. At least three more should have some means of collecting samples several up to several hundred meters away from the landing spot.

3) Drop off and deploy maybe up to two thousand kg total of equipment (not sure of the mass figures, but a bunch of long sensors and other equipment were deployed by astronauts with each mission).

4) Return a bunch of pretty video while you're trucking along doing all this work.

5) In order for these to be proper "flag and footprints" missions, plant six Apollo-sized US flags to flap in the lunar breeze. Leave something (like rover tread marks) that can be classified as a footprint.

6) Include development costs for any launch vehicles or other infrastructure you need (like payload integration facilities), even if they already exist (this is to provide a fairer comparison since virtually all Apollo and Saturn development and infrastructure had to be built from scratch).

The question is how much cheaper and better can you do this with unmanned probes?

Re:How Many shuttles?

[frith01]

I knew that Enterprise never made it to space, I was just surprised that internally at NASA they werent counting it. ( The same as some of them start the project in 1976, instead of 1981)

Shuttle Wasted 30 years

[thrich81]

"For someone my age, the shuttle really *IS* space travel. I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land." -- Well for someone MY age, the Shuttle with its false promises of cheap access to space is what destroyed the Apollo-Saturn progression of vehicles and stagnated real manned space exploration for 30 years. Good riddance; it is time to get back to business with Constellation or some other Apollo type vehicles which will take us beyond LEO.

Re:Shuttle Wasted 30 years

[sir_eccles]

Or was it Apollo-Saturn with its promise of quick and dirty into space before the Soviets what destroyed the progression of the X-15/X-20 spaceplane program and stagnated space exploration for years.

Oh really?

[copponex]

Have they sent anything into orbit? Have they made a trip to the ISS? Private space companies haven't even achieved what the CCCP did with the Sputnik over fifty years ago.

I had a conversation with one of the people who works at Canaveral. He said it's sad that they're about to destroy decades of work and knowledge of a community that knows how to build, maintain, and successfully launch vehicles into space. A lot of the real brains there are getting old, and if they aren't able to pass on their experiences to the new generation of spaceflight engineers, we are going to find ourselves severely behind in space travel and technology in general.

It's really a pity. The American idea of progress has turned inside out. Investment in spaceflight and the technologies to improve it is apparently is not equal to a month of spending for foreign military invasions. Not exactly a way forward if you ask me.

Re:Oh really?

[FleaPlus]

First off, SpaceX and Orbital don't "only engage in suborbital flight," but has designed and launched orbital rockets; in contrast, NASA hasn't successfully designed and launched a new orbital vehicle in around 30 years, despite plenty of attempts which have become case studies in poor program management.

Additionally, you're confusing two different issues: having space exploration entirely privately funded, which hardly anybody is advocating, with the issue of having transportation to low-earth orbit handled commercially (i.e. NASA, scientists, tourists, etc. buying trips to orbit), which many people are advocating. Even if a portion of the R&D for the rockets has been paid for by the government, what's important is that there's a competitive commercial marketplace for manned launches. That way multiple new approaches can be tried in parallel, proving new and more efficient systems with unmanned launches before transporting humans on them. Government-controlled monopolies tend to be suboptimal, to say the least.

Bah. "Space Travel" Was Heading To Other WORLDS.

[smpoole7]

I've been thinking a lot lately about the end of the Space Shuttle. For someone my age, the shuttle really *IS* space travel. I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land.

.

And for someone as old as me, "space travel" was the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, when we put men on the moon in less than a decade. That was when NASA wasn't afraid to take risks -- yes, to put it bluntly, when we accepted that there would be some casualties.

I'm not making light of the shuttle program, but "Space travel" ... i.e., the Space Program -- is a weak shadow of those heady days. Back when I was a kid, everyone wanted to be an astronaut. That was the highest goal for a young geek like me. I actually dreamed that one day I might have at least a fractional chance of setting foot on Mars, or Titan, or Ganymede. Nowadays? Since the "Space Program" has been pared down to a safe, repeatable, predictable, Do-The-Same-Boring-Things and Haul Satellites Into Orbit again and again, no one cares.

Right over our heads are all the raw materials and resources we will need for the conceivable life of the entire human race. Copper? Gold? Iron? Even some basic Organics and aromatics? They're all out there. If we had people with the guts to do "unsafe" things, in spite of what some Nanny Stater might think, we could even encourage private exploration -- and the payoff might be astronomical (pun intended) for the first prospector to lay claim to an asteroid filled with gold, or rhodium, or some other precious metal. (And yes, it's statistically possible ... even likely; look it up.)

Bah. Most kids don't even know what "Space Travel" is. The closest they get is watching Apollo 13, assuming that they're watching special effects and a half-fictitious, dramatized story, when it truth, it was actually a lot tenser than was portrayed in the movie, especially the first 24 hours, and the discussion that led to that last "burn" to get them to earth more quickly. What that movie DID capture was the way that it felt, as I sat there as a young kid watching the TV, as Houston said over and over, "Odyssey, this is Houston, do you copy ..." I can remember how my heart went into throat while I waited for them to respond just before splashdown. But you know what? If they had died, I'd have grieved and mourned, but I was have considered it worth it. They would have died for something.

Safe Landing

[4pins]

"I'm going to be really sad to see STS-133 land."
Challenger breaking up on re-entry hit me very hard. I will be happy to see it land, safely.