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Atlantis Blasts Off On Final Mission
shuz writes "Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off today on its STS-132 mission to the International Space Station — the final flight for the venerable vehicle. The mission involves three spacewalks over 12 days (PDF), during which the team will replace six batteries on the port truss which store energy from solar panels on that truss, bolt on a spare space-to-ground Ku-band antenna, and attach a new tool platform to Canada's Dextre robotic arm."
NASA has video of the historic launch and reader janek78 adds this quote from the mission summary: "Atlantis lifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J. Later missions included the launch of the Magellan probe to Venus on STS-30 in May 1989, Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October 1989, the first shuttle docking to the Mir Space Station on STS-71 in June1995, and the final Hubble servicing mission on STS-125 in May 2009."
Uh, actually two more
I'll say what I said in an earlier reply: 1980's tech. I had a class with some of the guys who work in the firing room, and they are honestly amazed the shuttle still flies. My dad used to install the thermal tiles, he says that the safety violations and corner-cutting out at the cape are horrendous. Pair that with the old tech, and it's seriously time to replace/upgrade.
Raters gon' rate.
when we cannot afford anything on Earth
We can afford most everything on earth. We just simply can't pay billions of dollars that we don't have to failing businesses, ruin health care and do a million other things.
I just hope we can keep the space program close down long enough (along with many other ineffective members of the government) so as to get our country back in the black.
The problem is, how are we going to get ahead in technology then?
If the US government released all taxpayer-funded studies to the public to jump-start private businesses, that is one thing. But in reality everything is so classified that private businesses are starting from 1950s-era technology with very little funding.
The US needs to take a clear stand and do one thing or another.
A) Let a private company buy-out NASA and release all information for free to any US business or individual with an interest in producing spacecraft.
or
B) Continue to spend money developing new spacecraft and using taxpayer money to do great things.
We can't continue to have an under-funded NASA. If Obama wants to waste taxpayer money on bailouts and such thats one thing, however then let the taxpayers have their money spent in research fulfilled, let a private company take over all of NASA and release information to the public. We can't move on with a crippled NASA and a crippled private sector. It just doesn't work.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I worked on mission 51J (first Atlantis flight) and now it's done. Man, I am old...
Speaking of that, the Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch this Sunday (May 16th, 2010). This is one of the potential replacements of which you speak.
It's so sad that some people think this way. The space program is not stopping the country from getting into the black. The money required to pay off all the debt and solve the counties problems is orders of magnitude greater than the money required to properly fund the space program to do great things. Complaining that we shouldn't be spending money on a space program is like complaining that some kid playing on the beach shouldn't remove a bucket full of water from the great lakes because global warming has lowered water levels. It is ridiculous.
Poverty will exist so long as mankind is mankind. There will always be good, hard working poor people so long as there is greed. There will be lazy poor people so long as there are people who are neither motivated to better their lives or crafty enough to cheat. There will be disease so long as there is life. There will be natural disasters so long as we live on a planet. To wait for humanity to solve all it's problems before expanding into the universe is to wait for extinction.
To what specific 1980's tech are you referring? The SSME's were upgraded in the 90's and early 2000's, as were the AP-101 flight control computers. The original 'steam gauge' cockpit was also upgraded to a fully modern 'glass' cockpit in the same time frame. The airframes have been well maintained and many smaller parts/systems have been replaced or upgraded as needed as well.
Seriously, saying "80's tech" is nothing but FUD. There's plenty of places where 80's (or even older) tech does just fine.
Heck, just a couple of miles from me the shipyard still uses a lathe installed in the 1940's. The forging furnace a few buildings over (modulo a few overhauls) basically dates from the 1930's. A few miles in the other direction is the submarine base, where the hydraulic valves in the submarines are basically unchanged since the 1950's. The missiles they carry are built with 80's technology in their electronics - and the still can achieve a CEP of [a classified but very small number] of feet. The submarines navigation system uses computers designed in the 1970's.
Don't be misled by consumer culture into believing that 'old == useless'.