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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.
On the bright side, commercial space flight is nearing the point of practicality.
"His name was James Damore."
... is the best by far. Most of those entries won't embroider well at all.
What bugs is it supposed to fix?
Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Some patches only show 5 shuttles, and dont count Enterprise, but the others do ?
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.
...because it names Enterprise among the ships. #10 runs a close second due to this fact as well. Either way, Enterprise needs to be on the final patch as it played a crucial role in the program. (and it must be honored for nerdiness sake)
You're right, the US & USSR did the lion's share of the heavy lifting into space.
*ducks*
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"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.
we do have proper replacements, spy satellites can drop down to 70 miles orbit. they make the SR-71 look like your great grandma on a walker
Hardware patch. Specifically, I believe they are referring to an inanimate carbon rod. ("aww, they were about to show some close-ups of the rod!")
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.
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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.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
"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.
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.
Sure, but is it wise to have a "space truck" be your country's only way to get people into orbit?
Figure that Virgin Galactic and SpaceShipTwo are part of the baby steps needed to get to orbital manned commercial space flight. They are kind of like the barnstormers that flew from place to place around the country back in the infancy of manned flight, taking people into the air as a thrill.
I seem to recall reading that WhiteKnightTwo, the launch ship series for SpaceShipTwo, will also be used for launching other Earth to space vessels. I wouldn't be surprised if a version of SpaceShipTwo, with a reduced cargo load and a larger fuel supply, managed to reach LEO. (The first one would likely be a single pilot version.)
The hard part would be coming down, because the extra velocity would need to be shed without affecting the 'shuttlecock' wing configuration that made SpaceShipOne work.
Still, given Rutan's expertise, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an orbital flight not long before the commercial jumps start. (Yeah Cal Poly!)
Eh, just replying here to a bunch of other sibling responses. Newer spy-sats can indeed do a lot of things the Blackbird could do, as well as some stuff that the Blackbird couldn't do. But to claim that they could completely replace the Blackbird is a bit much. Spy sats all follow known orbits. It is possible to compute those orbits and avoid/hide from spy sats. Both sides of the cold war did that a lot, which is part of the reason why the U2 and Blackbird were so useful. Does that mean that we NEED the Blackbird (taking its costs and other stuff into account)? Not necessarily. But I'm sure there have been cases since its retirement where government or military leaders sat back and went "if only we still had a Blackbird". Assuming they haven't been duping us the whole time, and they actually did replace it with something better.
And on that note, the U-2 is still in active use (they call it the TR-1 now). So one of the ironies there is that the U-2 outlasted its replacement.. by a lot. If anything, it shows that there's still use for long range human recon planes (compared to spy sats). Though I guess UAVs are gonna completely take over that role soon enough.
It never could! In order to get Nixon to sign off on the Shuttle Program, NASA promised a launch of every three weeks -- something they knew full well would never happen. While it was reusable (well, the orbiter and the boosters anyway), it really was meant to work with a space station -- that is, Skylab. But it wasn't ready in time, so we sat out of space for years.
Now we have a new station that took way longer to build than we expected, which they want to deorbit soon. Frustrating!
IMO, the US should have run a long-term successor to Apollo from the end of the Apollo Applications Program (read: Skylab + Apollo/Soyuz) with the goal of setting up a permanent base on the moon with an eye on a sucessor for Mars.
But, as when you live in a house for too long (or have a job for too long), you stop being objective and stop planning for the far future. This is how we got where we are today -- a NASA that does somethings brilliantly and others not so much.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.
You know how it is.
You get a space truck, and suddenly everyone wants your help moving their space sofas to their new space apartment.
The enemies of Democracy are
Sure, but is it wise to have a "space truck" be your country's only way to get people into orbit?
No; at least, not in its current form. The Challenger accident was one of the primary motivations to the new NASA doctrine of separating crew and cargo. (Which lead to the 1.5 launch architecture embodied by ARES.) Cargo is expendable; crew isn't. In order to abort during the launch, it is much easier to pull a relatively lightweight crew module away from the rocket, than to move a 100 metric ton behemoth like the shuttle.
I think the better way to go would be to revive the HL-20 crew vehicle. It's small enough, and light enough, for an abort system to pull it away from the launcher in the event of catastrophe. Also, because it glides to a landing on a conventional airstrip, it is more elegant than the current Apollo-style plan of ditching in the ocean and hoping you'll be rescued by the Navy before you sink.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
see a shuttle launch in person?
I was at Kennedy over the summer, and I was fortunate enough to be able to see likely the last time we will ever have two shuttles on platform simultaneously. However my timing down there was incompatible with seeing a launch, and I learned something from our NASA tour guide about the launches that I did not know before.
Very, very, few people are allowed to get even somewhat close to the launch. Granted, you can get close enough to feel some of the shockwave, you won't be able to get nearly as close as the media. And unless you have a special pass (which are extremely hard to get) you'll be a long ways away and you'll have to deal with insane traffic at insane times.
As much as I would love to have seen a launch, I think in the end it works out better to watch it on TV.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
it sure would be nice if mankind was a little bolder.
Don't tell slashdot - slashdot can't do anything about that problem. Tell your US representative. Tell your US Senator. Send a letter to the VP and POTUS. Contact every federal-level elected politician that represents you. The budget - and hence the missions - for NASA are dictated by congress. The NASA budget keeps getting cut because the politicians believe the American people are OK with that happening. If you are not OK with it then you owe it to yourself, your representation, and the rest of the country to say so.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
your comment made me lol.
Actually, no payload is expendable, whether it be school teachers or satellites. When your truck can randomly explode with the brightness of the sun, any loss is a bad loss.You think that people wont be up in arms if an ARES V fails and loses 75 tons of supplies, satellites, science equipment or ANYTHING else. especially compared to the shuttles payload of about 25 tons. it would be like losing the dollar value of three shuttle payloads.
and about your "easier to retrieve" comment, i dont think that there has been any reason to separate the shuttle from the SRB's/fuel tank...ever. And even the ARES system doesnt allow for NASA to "pull" the crew module form the unlaunched SRB.
And about those SRB's...i think those were actually the problem with the Challenger, not the cargo or the crew. I dont know if you have really looked into ARES I, but it is nothing but an SRB with a crew module on top. Even Werner Braun Vaughn thought i was a bad idea to send people in to space on SRB's.
And again, the HL-20 isnt practical because its not cost effective to build a few multi-use vehicles, as opposed to using the cheap, reliable Soyuz or another variant.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!