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Space Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off On Final Flight
Velcroman1 writes "Space shuttle Endeavour rocketed into space Monday morning from Kennedy Space Center, led by mission commander Mark Kelly on the final mission for the youngest vehicle in the space fleet. Over 6 million pounds of thrust from the shuttle's rocket booster carried Endeavour into orbit, at speeds of up to 19,000 miles per hour, for an expected meeting with the International Space Station on Wednesday. 'It's incredible how you can see this machine hurled into space like the fastest fastball ever thrown, going to Mach 25 — 25 times the speed of sound — and it's an incredible race to orbit,' former NASA astronaut Tom Jones said. 'It's one of the greatest physical sensations an human can experience,' he added."
Let's design an open-source reusable spacecraft which can reach orbit.
Second...
Let's implement the space elevator, allowing materials and people to get to orbit cheaply.
Third...
Build a spacecraft on an unprecedented scale, in-orbit, using the space elevator. Use that to expand physics research and propulsion systems.
Fourth...
Star Trek...
And you all thought that was gonna say "Post". Haha.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Does
mean that this shuttle launch was actually faster than all previous launches? Or is this merely a way of saying "it's really fast".
Is this actually a story, or an anecdote? There is no F'ing A.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...maybe they thought it may well be their last meal on Earth?.
What? These people that believe that 21st May will be The Rapture get everywhere.
No article. Quotes that finish but don't start. Sentences that start without even a capital letter. Typos all over the place. Somehow in three lines of drivel we are informed of what Mach 25 means (this is Slashdot - we know) but not much else.
I know, I must be new here...
3 of the astronauts had lobster for breakfast, maybe they thought it may well be their last meal on Earth?
They're off for a week or two of such gastronomic delights as freeze-dried spaghetti, freeze-dried chicken, and peanut butter in a squeeze tube. I'll forgive them for not wanting to depart on a stomach full of freeze-dried Eggo waffles.
John
Hey, the Rapture followed by global earthquakes and whatever other kinds of horseshit they are predicting should make for pretty cool viewing from the ISS, right?
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"There it is!"
"Where?"
"Oh, it's gone."
A few seconds later we got a glimpse through gaps in the clouds as it passed overhead, about the same time we could hear it. Hit the cloud cover right after the roll maneuver.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
'It's one of the greatest physical sensations an human can experience,'he added."
I don't remember which astronaut mentioned it, but he told that it felt" a bit as a food poisoning."
Time for the beaming up to be invented.
"These people" predicting that are a couple of dozen nuts following one nut leading one church. Who made the same predictions before and was wrong...
Having said that - with the fun of going to the toilet in space, maybe they should have laid off the rich seafood and just stuck with a nice high fibre diet.
Still, they are every-frickin-where. Here in Utrecht (big city in the netherlands), there are billboards all over the train station about how the 21st is going to be judgement day and how we should call to god (including a big "the bible guarantuees it" sticker)
People, what a bunch of bastards
"it's an incredible race to orbit,"
Who are they racing? They were sitting around on the pad for so long its a wonder one of the commercial space tourist companies didn't beat them up there..
do you speak it?
I might even be able to understand what subby was talking about if there was a FA.
Who cares? Considering what space flight missions entail, lobster isn't that big of an indulgence. Getting lobster in Florida isn't hard. It's not like they were eating Russian caviar. For crying out loud, one of them just had a sandwich. This is a non-story and engaging in such speculation is as ridiculous as was the reporting.
At just past midnight local time, I'd also hardly call it breakfast. With a 9am local launch time and assuming they wouldn't eat for at least 10 hours when the reach orbit, you'd want a decent meal- not just a light breakfast of toast and jam. If the flight doc has no problem with the choice, they can eat whatever they please.
Personally, the thought of shellfish prior to that kind of acceleration into orbit makes me nauseous, but these guys are in far better shape.
That's all she wrote till 2016 barring more budget cuts. It's the passing of a era it makes me rather sad.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
Well, it could be. And, even assuming they come back safely (which I hope they do) ... if you were about to embark on a period of time where you eat nothing but NASA engineered food out of plastic pouches ... I think you'd probably pick the tastiest things you could think of, too.
I think it's more of a matter of enjoying the last comforts of home before you have to poop in a tube and wear diapers in your space suit. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Only it was a tennis ball, not a baseball... ball.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
first they laugh at you...... not 'funny' any mre?
Dude. Gravity ALWAYS wins. That's the law.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's a drop in the ocean compared to the trillions being spent on wars and CEO bonuses^W^Windustry bailouts.
No sig today...
At least back in the Mercury through Apollo days, it was traditional for one's last meal before liftoff to be steak and eggs.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Is that something like "an hero"?
Oh... it's FOX News. Well... that would be an explanation of sorts.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"an human"????
We put a Brit into orbit on its last flight?
Same in Dublin (Ireland), I was shocked to see a poster proclaiming Judgement day is coming. At first I was excited because I'd never seen Terminator 2 in the cinema as I was too young at the time it was out. Then I realised it was religious horseshite and promptly ignored it
There is no -1 disagree
They had caviar on Mir.. They also had a fire on board at the same time.. So... no more caviar in space
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Fiber is largely indigestible, and comes out the other end in large amounts. That's why it is needed to maintain regularity, afterall. If you are trying to minimize the need for bowel movements, what you want is a "low residue" meal, high on protein, with little to no fiber. The protein gets digested and absorbed, leaving very little to be eliminated.
The traditional launch day breakfast from Mercury through Apollo was always steak and eggs, specifically chosen for the reasons above.
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http://www.nickrobinson.info/origami/diagrams/shuttle1.htm
http://www.nickrobinson.info/origami/diagrams/shuttle2.htm
Since they're only going to a soundstage, why would they be afraid?
*ducks*
...and God's Speed Endeavour!!
As you yourself pointed out one sentence earlier- it's not called "space", but "outer space". The name means all the space outside Earth, not "emptiness". When you graduate to second grade you'll learn that Earth is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We're already using the sun and moon to generate energy, and there's lots more stuff we can take advantage of once we develop the technology. Considering oil prices aren't dropping, it's probably a good idea not to rely on it long-term.
One of the missions of this flight is to get the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer installed so it can be used for detecting dark matter, which is likely a key area of research necessary for any possible uses of using what's actually out there. As stupid as your rant was, this actually is a method of government trying something which may help us develop energy. You could say it's similar to oil exploration, but with more balls and brains.
As for that idiotic political statement, NASA's funding for this mission wasn't determined by recent events. Space exploration is not responsible for the debt, nor will its de-funding solve the problem. Suggesting that taxes be used to pay for drilling reveals how little you understand government, industry and taxation. That's not the US government's job. The US government is already handing out $4B a year to these corporations and they've done nothing but stockpile. If you want more money spent on drilling, you might want to ask your friendly oil company to invest instead of hoarding money (XOM alone has over $13B cash on hand) and taking advantage of high prices (see current record profits with no equivalent uptick in R&D). Or feel free to lobby congress to nationalize the oil industry so you can complain to someone who actually listens to nutjobs.
And "treason"? Really? You might want to look up that word in a dictionary.
Taken by a friend of mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIYVjqAd3Y
find a never ending source of energy to sustain life on the vessel described at point four for at least the number of millenium it will take to head it somewhere across the interstellar space. I should remind everyone the Voyager 1 and 2 probes are now at the very limit of the solar system after a 30 years journey and still emitting a radio signal sending scientific data relying on a Pu238 nuclear energy source which will be at end in about 10 years. At this time, the Voyager 1 and 2 will navigate silently forever the interstellar space at the fastest speed possible using the slingshot effect, but still 40 thousands years away from any other star in this galaxy. So, the question is: How would you sustain life into a vessel travelling interstellar space? Hence, number third and half, which has for corollary if we are to discover any mean of doing this, our energy problem here, on earth, is resolved forever.
So, maybe it should be number 1 in the list.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Funny, Judgement Day coming and all you think is a new movie in the Terminator series. Love it, I would have thought the same.
This aint Daytona and you aint Dale Earnhardt. So stop trying to draft on Interstate 40.
Got Troll?
This aint Daytona and you aint Dale Earnhardt. So stop trying to draft on Interstate 40.
Taken by a friend of mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIYVjqAd3Y
Awesome video, I'm glad he decided to go with a tripod or at least keep it stationary. Here's an amateur picture from the other side.
My work here is dung.
Future generations will walk to the rusted ruins of Pad 39A as they walk to the Pyramids today, and wonder at the massive effort required to accomplish such a pointless but impressive task.
You have delusional faith in our technology. For all practical purposes, space IS empty. There's nothing we can do there. It's empty. Face it, get over it, and move on.
No, even your run of the mill rock troll has more brains than this. This is a retarded troll that was petrified by forgetting to take shelter before sunlight and not even remembering that stone isn't supposed to talk.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Easy. Use sun to grow plant. Feed plant to silk worm. Eat silk worm. Crap on plant. Repeat.
Loud != numerous
Having been a long time Shuttle fan since I was a kid, I wanted to record the STS-134 Launch, unfortunatley being in Australia this limits my options to only internet access for a station to watch the NASA TV feed on. So I go over to Ustream, but the Ustream feed doesn't work because there are too many viewers, bummer, so I go over to the NASA website to view it there, that works, hooray, I'm in luck, even though its terrible quality. Seeing as I had to go to sleep early in the afternoon, I decided I would record it, I fire up my copy of some paticular software and set it on the scope of the flash player window and go to bed. I wake up 10 hours later, to find that some application has popped up infront of the video stream capturing area warning me of something which isn't anywhere near as important as a shuttle launch. I sit here 10 hours later, having had a crap sleep because I got drunk the night before, sifting through video which has a popup window infront of it and is essentially totally useless. Why do I have to endure this? WHY? Can't NASA setup a relay station somewhere in Australia where they can send the live video feed over the internet and then convert it into DBS then send it up to an Optus D1 or D3 satellite as a free service? Whats so hard about that? Sure, It costs a great deal to get a 24/7 channel on an Australian coverage Satellite, But why have I had to wait and sit in the dark for the last 20 years and be forced to watch 5 minutes of footage cut up and voiced over by the local news outlets of JUST the launch? Shouldn't this be a global event? If another program pops up infront of the capture region on the very last Shuttle MIssion, I'm going to kill my computer.
Oh, yeah. Easy. All you have to do is drag the sun along with you into interstellar space. Piece of cake.
Jackass.
You asked who threw at mach 25.
Although, I do believe that Tezuka's ball went a bit faster than mere mach 25.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Fifth, drop ceramic coated rebar at orbital velocity on people who piss you off.
Just saying: there's a reason that access to space is not cheap, McDonnell Douglas isn't independently pursuing the DC-X for commercial purposes, access is not available to the average person, and the government is so anal about licensing of launch sites.
It isn't a technological one.
-- Terry
Complete Coverage available at http://www.slideshare.net/nasa
You don't sustain life. You put the inhabitants in stasis.
You also send smaller, faster probes ahead that do terraforming with bacteria.
Fastballs are impressive because they're launched at their travel speeds, and the effort is on the part of the pitcher. They don't have built-in rockets to accelerate them after they're thrown. An actual baseball pitcher could have thrown a ball faster than the shuttle lifted off the pads.