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After Discovery's Launch, What's Left For the Shuttle?
coondoggie writes "NASA space shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit this morning and, despite some communications problems, is slated to dock with the International Space Station in the wee hours of Wednesday, April 7. After this mission NASA has only three shuttles scheduled to launch, though speculation persists that the program may be extended. NetworkWorld has a roundup of what the last Shuttle missions consist of and what happens next."
It will.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, there weren't. There were exactly three more Apollo flights planned. Those are the three Saturn V lawn ornaments scattered around NASA centers. Those weren't models or mock-ups; they were fully operational, man-rated moon-rockets that could have been used with little additional expenditure. Nearly all of the funds that could have potentially been "saved" were already spent; the hardware was already bought and built.
The program was killed not to "free up money" for Vietnam, but to kill a program that nobody in power really wanted but couldn't eliminate until it succeeded without appearing to spit on JFK's grave.
We go down, they go down...
But remember, the bigger you are, the harder the fall. How would the average Chinese peasant's life change in some form of global economic collapse? He would be on the verge of starvation. But then again, he's on the verge of starvation today anyway. Now how is your average US suburbanite going to take starvation...?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm amazed that they've missed the fact that the July flight of Endeavour is due to carry the $2B particle physics experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to the ISS.
Spearheaded by Nobel-prize winner, Sam Ting, and built and funded largely outside the normal peer review process, AMS is one of the most significant physics experiments of recent years, but as much for political and sociological reasons as scientific. If nothing else, without AMS and its friends in high places, there would only two shuttle flights left: this one was added by Bush and ratified by Obama completely over the head of NASA's normal process.
That all said, AMS recently moved from testing at CERN in Switzerland to ESA's ESTEC in the Netherlands for electromagnetic and thermal-vacuum testing, and is on a really (really) tight timeline to get to KSC in time for the July launch. There are good reasons to suspect that that flight will be delayed into August and perhaps even moved later in the year behind Discovery's last flight.
I was on a VIP trip to KSC very recently and was thrilled to be shown around the Orbiter Processing Facility where both Endeavour and Atlantis are be prepared for their last flights at present, while Discovery was out on the pad. Very special for a space geek to be literally inches from all of those tiles on the underside of Endeavour and (sorry NASA :-) to have actually sneaked a touch of the undercarriage.
Also deeply, deeply sad to think that this will all be over very soon: the shuttle programme has been an inspiration all the way back to the drop tests of the Enterprise back in 1977, even in the darkest hours. While I understand all the technical and financial arguments for stopping it now, psychologically it seems crazy to do so, particularly in the absence of any successor. End of an era. There were moments when I was pretty choked up on that OPF visit, I have to admit.