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.

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.