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Shuttle Discovery Docks With Space Station

Posted by timothy on from the hey-buds-let's-party dept.

Velcroman1 writes "The space shuttle Discovery has docked with the International Space Station for the final time at 2:15 p.m. EST, where it will make a last delivery to the orbiting space lab — before parking ultimately at a museum. With Discovery's presence, the ISS becomes a truly 'international' space station. This is the first time spacecraft from the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan have all docked simultaneously, NASA said. The station also hosts the Leonardo Multipurpose Module built by the Italian Space Agency and recently gained Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic handyman."

15 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Wasn't tetter source than Fox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

  2. Yeah! things are going to change! by fantomas · · Score: 4, Funny

    yeah! we'll make you drive sub-compact sized space shuttles and swap your V8 rockets for 1.1litre ones! we'll make you leave your guns at home! You'll have to eat proper cheese for breakfast and noodles for lunch every day, and drink vodka instead of water! All the movies will be art-house in strange languages and you'll have to read the subtitles (but the upside is there will be naked good looking people in them, if less explosions and machine guns)! The controls will all be in Russian and Japanese and French, and the measurements will all be in metric! It'll be crazy, you'll love it!

    1. Re:Yeah! things are going to change! by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Ya see, that is what we get for being nice to foreigners. We should have /gets on soapbox with 100 foot American flag behind/ listened to the great General Patton, loaded them krauts up with American tanks and guns and pointed their ass right at Moscow! Hell we could have had the whole ball of wax by late 46, early 47 tops.

      Then we could have tossed that girly metric system in the trash and made everyone use imperial units like God intended, put burger joints and AMERICAN theaters on every corner, and as far as the eye could see would be lovely billboards in the gorgeous red, white, and blue that said in 50 foot letters "SPEAK ENGLISH DAMMIT!"

      Oh what a wonderful world it would have been, instead you got a space station with gassy cabbage eating Ruskies, stinky Frenchies with their stinkier cheeses, and the Japs will probably use the thing as a testing ground for their latest contestant in their "WTF keep that walking corpse away from me" drive to create the creepiest android evar! No thanks, let 'em have the thing I say.

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  3. Re:Last time "insert activity here". by MachDelta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your threshold for amazement is violating the known laws of the universe, I fear you are destined to live a very, VERY boring life.
    People seem to forget that in the last ~100 years we've gone from thinking nothing heavier than air could ever fly, to landing robots on other freaking planets.
    The fact that a manned craft going to outer space elicits nothing more than a yawn from most people is both frightening and humbling.

    C'est la vie.

  4. Why not leave shuttle up there? by Big_Breaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The crew could take a Soyuz down.

    It seems like the shuttle would make meaningful addition to the usable to the ISS with its arm, cargo bay and pressurized quarters. What a shame to deorbit all that useful stuff and mothball it in a museum.

    1. Re:Why not leave shuttle up there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      A) The Space Station already has an Arm, one far more flexible than the Space Shuttles
      B) What is the point of a cargo bay if you have nothing to put in there (or take out after the current manifest is removed) and nowhere for it to go once that nonexistant cargo is removed
      C) The Space Station has about as much pressurized quarters as a 747 right now, so what exactly is the small compartment on the shuttle going to do to improve that?

      In addition, the equipment on the shuttle is not designed to remain in orbit for long periods of time, as well wings don't do much in orbit.

    2. Re:Why not leave shuttle up there? by gblackwo · · Score: 2

      It wasn't built for that. Among other things- it leaks atmosphere.

    3. Re:Why not leave shuttle up there? by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's been mentioned before it's not perfectly pressurized and can't remain in space indefinitely. Even if it was perfectly pressurized it'd still need to get supplies from somewhere. So it would become useless pretty fast.

      Also, the ISS is in an unstable orbit and must be re-boosted periodically. The shuttle would need to do the same as well, or eventually decay and burn up in the atmosphere.

      I think ending up in a museum is a much better fate than that of Columbia.

    4. Re:Why not leave shuttle up there? by Nerull · · Score: 2

      It's also hard to fit 6 people in a three person soyuz.

  5. Fox News for a story about science? by HangingChad · · Score: 2, Funny

    Really? That's like going to Hooters for the food.

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  6. Re:Last time "insert activity here". by Kilrah_il · · Score: 3, Interesting

    btw, could someone tell us a bit about the other spacecrafts docking at the ISS. With all the talk about the shuttles, I know nothing about what the Russians, Japanese and Europeans use.
    Anyone?

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  7. Re:What if all on earth died right now? by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 2

    Had to check if there was a female on the ISS now. Lucky, there are two now STS113 has docked.

  8. ISS and Discovery Flybys by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 2

    Be sure to check out Space Weather's Flybys page or Heavens Above to see if the ISS and Discovery are viewable overhead in your neighborhood. I tried a few zip codes and it looks like the NYC area will get to see a very bright ISS and Discovery pair on March 5th. This will be the day that Discovery undocks so you may get to see two bright dots moving across the sky from that area. I had the opportunity to see the ISS with Atlantis recently undocked on STS-129 and it was an impressive sight.

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  9. Re:Last time "insert activity here". by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Informative

    btw, could someone tell us a bit about the other spacecrafts docking at the ISS

    Here you go:

    http://markosun.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/space-traffic-jam-up-at-international-space-station-iss/

    From TFA:

    With all this action the following spacecraft will all be docked at the ISS at the same time: the Space Shuttle Discovery, The European Space Agency Kepler ATV, Russian Progress supply vehicle, Russian Soyuz-TMA capsule and Japan H-II Transfer Vehicle.

  10. "Parking ultimately at a museum"? by unassimilatible · · Score: 2

    I knew these astronauts were badass pilots, but this is just ridiculous.

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