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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.
... 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.
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.
To quote wikipedia "The Space Shuttle Enterprise (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101) was the first Space Shuttle orbiter. It was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform test flights in the atmosphere.[2] It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight. Originally, Enterprise had been intended to be refitted for orbital flight, which would have made it the second space shuttle to fly after Columbia.[2] However, during the construction of Columbia, details of the final design changed, particularly with regard to the weight of the fuselage and wings. Refitting Enterprise for flight would have involved dismantling the orbiter and returning the sections to subcontractors across the country. As this was an expensive proposition, it was determined to be less costly to build Challenger around a body frame (STA-099) that had been created as a test article.[2] Similarly, Enterprise was considered for refit to replace Challenger after the latter was destroyed, but Endeavour was built from structural spares instead.[2][3]"
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)
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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