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A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle
Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."
Only 2:30, but here is NASA's landing video from their Youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/a/724782A8B8BE3EE5/0/Drv0SS1rCpk
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
As someone who was there watching the launch in person, it was definitely a nail biter. Forty seconds left in the launch window, though I suppose they could have waited a day and gone up then.
It almost got delayed a day anyway. There's a minimum separation time between when one ship leaves ISS and another one docks, and if they had held fast to that schedule, it would have been delayed until Friday because of the late departure of... I think it was a Soyuz mission. They decided to override that and go on Thursday anyway. Either way, there presumably was an alternate launch window already planned for Friday.
The best part was how many people reacted to the original mission schedule in the same way. NASA's banners said that it would be up for 10 days and spend 363 days in orbit. Immediately, my reaction was, "Wait... you're within two days of being up there for a year, and you're not going to do it?" Well, they extended the mission by two days.
And just to anthropomorphize the shuttle a bit, I don't think general purpose computer 5 was ready to go to a museum. It failed to shut off. I particularly liked the controller's comment when he said that they'd be sure not to use that switch on the next flight. Hilarious.
Wow. Just... wow.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.
Where's the love for the JHU APL? (Note that MESSENGER is just a few days from its Mercury orbital insertion)
As to Discovery, it's particularly bittersweet to watch her retirement. I saw her launch firsthand as a kid in '85 (STS-51D), which had a big impact on me. A good part of the reason I'm (still*) at NASA today. Discovery was the orbiter for both return to flight missions. She launched HST.
I also had the privilege to watch her last launch. I admit, it almost brings a tear to my eye.
* Working at NASA was more of a right-place-right-time opportunity for me. Not leaving NASA in disgust years ago is largely due to the love of the program I have, largely instilled by that early shuttle launch.
What is with all this nationalism? I thought we were all supposed to be global now? Welcome to reality, where you can't outsource all your factories and then get enough tax money to blow on things like shuttles, which BTW was supposed to be a "space truck" which never actually fulfilled its mission.
We went from 80% factory jobs at the birth of NASA to now 80% service industry (with a severe cut in pay to boot!) and the simple fact is we're broke. We're the guy writing hot checks at the Walmart to pay for Chinese goods because the national bank account is nothing but red ink. Hell if we spent within our means we probably wouldn't even have a military as big as Brazil, and we sure as hell wouldn't be fighting two endless wars.
I personally wish China and India luck, as they will eventually find what we are gonna have to wake up and accept...capitalism doesn't work with technology. There was a good reason why nobody in Star Trek was waving money around, that is because as you reach a certain technical level you don't really need human labor anymore. You think we are in bad shape now? Wait until automation hits the service industry.
Despite our brilliant leader's idea that piling ever more debt to get ever more degrees (what are we up to now, a Bachelors is the new HS diploma?) to chase ever fewer jobs the simple fact is the way we've done things for the past 4000+ years is coming to an end. The machines are faster, smarter,more accurate, and they never tire or make mistakes.
We can't all be CxOs, doctors, or IP lawyers, so you either make up BS "make work" programs to give you an excuse to cut all these people a check, you have massive unemployment and underemployment like we have now, or you find a new way. The only question is whether that new way will come peacefully or with massive riots and destruction.
So don't look at the shuttle as the end, look at it as a scary and exciting new world beginning. The old ways of doing things have failed, as evidenced by 22%+ unemployment and the fed drowning in red ink while the presses smoke from all the money being cranked out, the odds of giving the huge masses of poor jobs they can actually do is virtually nil since the machines can do them better, and outsourcing has taken most of the rest. Now the question becomes, what to do next? Do we stay on the failing road of capitalism, where the top 1% get fatter until we have another revolution, or do we try something else?
Because like it or not folks we're broke, and whether the talking heads want to admit it or not for huge masses of your fellow Americans this IS another depression. Only as we have seen we can't use war production to get us out of this one, since nothing is built here anymore.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.