Shuttle Makes Rare Night Landing

goG writes "After over 200 orbits around the Earth, space shuttle Endeavour landed safely in Florida on Sunday, ending a 14-day mission to the International Space Station. NASA pressed ahead with the Sunday night landing even though poor weather on both coasts threatened any touchdown attempt. Unusually, rain clouds were expected at both Edwards Air Force base in California and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The return marked just the 23rd time the space shuttle has landed at night, out of 130 flights."

Comments

Enjoy 'em while you can, folks

[Spencerian]

As many of you know, the 2011 U.S. Budget has killed all funding for the Constellation program, the replacement vehicles for the STS program.

The president wants to fund private enterprise to perform launches to low-Earth orbit.

Nice job, Mr. President. The only close-to-working manned flight capability is Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two. While this is an awesome setup, it's designed for recreational suborbital flights only.

Thanks, President Obama. It's forward to the past for us with a 1961 launch ability, where either we stick out our thumbs (towels not included) for a Soyuz lift, or we don't get to go to the multi-billion space station that we mostly own--or anywhere for that matter.

And let's not worry about the big frickin' rocks that occasionally could pummel us, and the space tech needed to even consider an option to stop that.

STS may have its warts, but it works. Fund one damned vehicle for 2 trips a year until private industry catches up. Is that so hard?

Re:Enjoy 'em while you can, folks

[Spencerian]

I'm not anti-Obama. I'm anti-idiot. I'm black, and even *I* know he's an idiot for cutting the program in this way.

NASA is on my pedestal because people with short-sighted visions have given us *only* NASA to put there. Plenty of other presidents (both GOP and Democrat) could've started a stronger private industry initiative decades ago with a long-term vision of private space launches. They haven't.

If someone had the vision to push private industry harder *and* phase out NASA's sole ability to lift humans into space safely by now, I'd be all for that. So while Obama's had the cohones to push for privatized space travel, his approach is a baby-with-the-bathwater approach that leaves us in a much weaker position than having STS in place, even in its Apollo-era interim from 1975 to 1981.