Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off For Space Station

Gwmaw writes "The space shuttle Endeavour bolted off its seaside launch pad on Monday on a voyage to install the last two main pieces of the International Space Station. The 4:14 a.m. EST (0914 GMT) blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center shattered the predawn tranquility with a deafening roar and a brilliant tower of flames that momentarily turned the dark Florida sky as bright as day." HD video of launch attached.

Comments

Extended?

[Chris Lawrence]

Now that the return to the moon has been cancelled, I wonder if NASA will extend Shuttle missions beyond this year? They have already hinted they may extend the life of the ISS, but are they going to rely on the Russians for the next ten years?

Re:Extended?

[vlm]

If they do extend shuttle flights it will only take a few years to blow up the ones they have left....

It may be modded funny right now, but its also correct. If an orbiter is destroyed every 50 flights, and they launch ten times per year, and they've only got two available (because of the need for a ready to go rescue orbiter).

The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches. So now that the shuttles are going away, the "almost finished" station will be deorbited in 3... 2... 1...

It's kind of the spacecraft equivalent of "dig a hole and fill it back in, repeat". No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing. But you can make lots of money by building a station.

Re:Extended?

[DerekLyons]

Now that the station on longer has to be in a shuttle-accessible orbit, could we not fit it with a nifty little ion engine and slowly boost it to a higher altitude?

Not really. Much higher and the other vehicles (Soyuz, ATV, etc...) won't be able to reach it either. On top of that, while under thrust the micro gee environment aboard the station will ruined, ruining practically every experiment onboard.

Re:Extended?

[dpilot]

So the number of "Space Camps" is increasing...

The biggest camp is the "Every decision NASA makes is wrong"
- The Shuttle is the biggest boondoggle ever, we never should have dropped the Apollo-era Big Dumb Booster.
- Dropping the Shuttle is the dumbest idea ever, we've set our technology back 40 years.
- Etc, with every decision NASA makes

Then we have the closely related camp, "Everything the government does is wrong, and the private sector can do it better and cheaper."

Now that we're about to test that theorem, at least with LEO access, a new camp has emerged, saying that by dropping LEO access, NASA has abandoned human space travel for the US. Interestingly enough, it has taken Aries from "can't possibly work" to "can't do without it" status.

This of course is closely related to the "Obama (and Democrats, in general) is ALWAYS wrong" and "Bush (and Republicans, in general) is ALWAYS wrong" camps.

I prefer to belong to none of the above camps. Through my career I've noticed in general that killed projects tend to develop a sunny afterglow, problems forgotten. Projects that are killed before ever being tested in the real world get a particularly sunny afterglow.

Re:Extended?

[Wyatt Earp]

In theory, but actually, if Hubble had been launched the same way KH satellites are, once the optical flaw was found Congress would have never budgeted the money to NASA to build one that worked. So we'd be stuck with the joke that Hubble couldn't see and no one would have floated another space telescope.

Hubble isn't an excuse for the Shuttle, the Shuttle was an excuse to upgrade the only astronomy space telescope.

Re:Extended?

[Graymalkin]

This is a bit of an absurd statement. Even if absolutely every aspect of the Area I program went according to plan it wouldn't see a manned mission until 2016. Even then it will only do a handful of launches per year (IIRC only two Orion missions are scheduled per year once they begin) with each costing about a billion dollars. Since the Ares I can barely launch the Orion with a crew on board the only thing it can do is send crews to the ISS. Until the Ares V is finished and actually working the Ares I is a billion dollar taxi ride to the ISS. It simply cannot do anything else. That same taxi ride on a Soyuz would only cost about $75m as the Russians only charge $25m a seat on the Soyuz. SpaceX is feeling pretty confident about the Falcon 9 and NASA is planning to use them as a taxi service as well.

The Orion is not necessarily a bad spacecraft but the Ares program was basically a jobs program for major STS contractors. I think it should be obvious now that Ares was chosen over other HLVs because it could funnel money into Congressional districts with contractors or NASA facilities. Ares is a aerospace contractor jobs program. It wasn't a good idea on paper and it has turned out to be even worse in practice. The Obama administration proposing to axe the program and refocus on developing a real HLV (like DIRECT or the SDLV) is exactly what needs to happen. The job of the Ares I can be done entirely by the Soyuz or the Falcon 9 for a much better cost.

A good portion of NASA is bureaucracy and if that gets trimmed by axing the Ares program then all the better. A lot of them can easily get jobs in the private sector weighing down the middles of corporations so they shouldn't be out of work long.

Is this really news?

[elrous0]

And, considering the bleak future of the shuttle program, the ISS, and manned spaceflight in general, wouldn't a more appropriate headline be "NASA puts another $700 million on the national credit card for our grandkids to pay off"?

Re:Is this really news?

[ColdWetDog]

Which right there tells me we shouldn't be sending people out into space anymore. It is a colossal waste of money to send us weak ass little humans, who need protection for our weak bodies, plus food, water, a place to go to the toilet, etc, instead of robots.

And we should not continue farm subsidies, wars in obscure places for no strategic interest or gain, enormous financial support for incompetent bankers, stock traders, real estate mavens and a host of other dumb things the government does.

NASA is a really cheap date when you look at the totality of the US budget.

Think of it as a wake instead

[OldEarthResident]

Try thinking of it as a wake for the US manned spaceflight program.

It saddens me to see the US lose it's manned spaceflight capability.

Wrong

[dreamchaser]

The ISS uses thrust to adjust it's orbit already. It won't 'ruin' anything. The Zvezda module already has two main engines used for orbital adjustments.

The station loses speed continuously due to atmospheric drag (yes there is still a tenuous atmosphere up there). Using thrusters is part of it's existence.