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?

[Chris Lawrence]

So, without the new Constellation Program, we're looking at what, fifteen years before the US has manned spaceflight capability again? Even if NASA spends time doing research for Mars, a lot of practical and institutional knowledge is going to be lost during this period. There was already going to be five years of depending on the Russians to get to the ISS, now if this is extended, we could be looking at ten years or more. I hate to say it, but this really looks like the death of US space exploration, not a refocusing as the Obama administration is trying to spin it.

http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/future-of-space-exploration.html

Re:Extended?

[stoolpigeon]

That's weird. I could swear the shuttle performed a rather significant mission recently that did not involve going to the space station.
 
I have to confess, while watching the launch this morning I didn't really care about what's practical or needed. A night launch of the shuttle is the most impressive feat of human engineering I have ever witnessed. When I was a kid working on an aircraft carrier I thought that was pretty cool, and it is to some extent, but the shuttle is in a completely different league of awesome. Lighting up the night sky is not hyperbole. I live an hour drive from Kennedy and it looks like the sun is coming up when they fire the engines. Then, when the shuttle lifts from the pad, it gets even brighter. Which my head has a difficult time taking in. I'll be sad to see it go, even if it does make sense.

Re:Extended?

[jollyreaper]

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.

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?

Last Night Launch

[realsilly]

It was a glorious morning when my alarm beeped at 4:10am. I awoke, turned on the TV to the pre-set NASA channel, checked to make sure the launch was still 'a Go'. I then donned a bathrobe over my birthday suit, watched the last 10 seconds on TV until I heard "We have Liftoff" and stepped out on my back porch. I looked to the east and the tree line was shadowed in a orange glow that was beautiful during the pre-dawn hours. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and the sight of the flames was facinating even at 50 miles away. I watched at the shuttle began to head in a northward direction. It was around 6.5 minutes later that the sound waves rumbled through the still night air. It was more of a low rumble, but it was distinctly felt and heard. At aroun 7.5 mintues, between my screen porch, the trajectory and my poor vision I could no longer see the bright spec of light that was the shuttle that was now a couple hundred miles away. I stepped back inside watched NASA TV until about the 9.5 minute mark during the last separation, and knew our astronauts doing ok. I hung up the robe, climbed back into bed, turned off the TV and went back to sleep.

What a beautiful way to wake up in the pre-dawn hours. And to think, /sniffle that was the last manned night launch we'll see for quite some time. Oh how I wish everyon could have seen this first hand.

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.