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CmdrTaco at Kennedy Space Center
Matthew Travis from the
Ares Institute Inc helped me get a press pass for the STS-135 Launch. so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for no scrub. I'm tweeting as @cmdrtaco from the launch if you are into that sort of thing. I'll have more later, but for now you'll have to make do with a photo I took, as well as a brief video clip I took of Atlantis on the pad at night.
I envy you, I've unfortunately never been within 1,000 miles of the cape for a launch. This Christmas break there's a chance I'll be in Florida for a planned Delta I V Heavy launch, if so I'll definitely be taking the family.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I was there, for the STS-132 Tweetup, and it is absolutely incredible.
Nearly 2700 press were badged for this launch; the record was 2707 for STS-1, and they might find they've beaten it when all is said and done.
Shame the press paid no attention to the 100 or so in the middle; perhaps the public would have raised more fuss with its legislators about NASA's miserable budget.
Just for you, Lt. Burrito:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyfLER3Z0-Q
(mod me down if you must. that's funny.)
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
DO listen to Rush's Signals the hour before the launch.
DON'T run up and down the causeway yelling "LITE 'ER UP!"
Where does this "cmdrtaco" guy get off posting this type of story? You'd think this site was his personal blog or something.
Maybe in Twitter, but just casually glancing around a bit I see /. user numbers in the >1.7 mil range. When you get that many people signed up to read your tweets, then come back and talk smack.
BTW, nice score on the press creds, Taco. Have a great time. Hope the weather clears and they get that thing off the ground.
The shuttle launch is something that is likely never going to happen again, and those who have not had the opportunity should be jealous. I have seen it from four miles out. It is a vision to behold. I have also been working in mission control during a two flights and been in the integration areas at KSC. I know how lucky I am, and am always saddened by those who choose jealousy over action. To many people think they have seen or done something because they have been to Disneyland, or a major concert, or maybe a major sporting event. But the something like the Shuttle matters beyond the technology of a entertainment event or who wins or loses an event. The shuttle represents our human capability to coordinate thousands of people and mechanical parts into a functioning whole that breaks us from the limits of the earth.
So rather than being jealous, go out and do something useful. Quite wasting your time trying to be the Big Man on slashdot, compensating for the lack of Real Innovation. Do Something.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Lost in Space: Doctor Zachary Smith, an agent for an enemy government, is sent to sabotage the mission. He is successful in reprogramming the ship's robot, but in the process becomes trapped on the ship, and because of his excess weight, the ship and all on board become hopelessly lost and it now becomes a fight for survival as the crew tries to find their way back home.
Merely ideas before their time. Both nice in theory but ugly reality made them too ineffective for their roles.
Fortunately, we (as in civilization) have taken our lessons learned quite well. The Concorde was too inefficient relative to high subsonic aircraft (i.e. high fuel costs), and had very limited routes due to restrictions on supersonic land overflights. There is a lot of research going on now to reduce sonic booms to the point of elimination, as well as improving efficiency. The next supersonic commercial aircraft, whenever it is made, will be cost competitive and capable of flying more routes.
The shuttle's failings are well documented, but the next generation of manned vehicles demonstrate the lessons learned quite well. All have the passenger cabin on top, separate crew and cargo functionality, seek simplicity and are truly reusable rather than merely refurbish-able. Additionally, by seeking multiple independent vendors we are avoiding the single string failures we encountered after Columbia, Challenger, and the current retirement plan.
We didn't get things right the first time out on either of these, but thats not necessarily a bad thing -- mistakes are often the best way to learn.
If you're going to be in the press observation bunker bring a coat. Before the launch they chill that room to something like 55F. Almost immediately after launch the temp jumps into the 90's from the energy released by the rocket.
Yes, very much like your post is irrelevant in a discussion of the Space Shuttle.
The shuttle launch is something that is likely never going to happen again, and those who have not had the opportunity should be jealous.
All of the shit that happens around us is unique and is never going to happen again. IOW: not much of an argument. It's all a matter of what one values in life. It's important to you: fine. Important to my Dad, who saw a Shuttle launch in the 80s. Not all that important to me -- certainly less important than, say, working on my house.
As far as I'm concerned, recent CPUs and GPUs are no less of a technological achievment than, say, a Shuttle launch. They are all immensely complex technical systems, even if the Shuttle is "just" a spaceplane strapped to a rocket, and, say Penryn is "just" a CPU on a piece of silicon wafer. Whether the parts are mechanical or not doesn't matter much, IMHO. Things fail spectacularly in the silicon world, too.
Doing "Something", to me, definitely wouldn't be watching a Shuttle launch.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I worked on the shuttle program at JSC for 7 years and visited KSC last month after a cruise vacation. Unfortunately, I've never seen a launch live and never will.
I left JSC in the mid-90s, but tried to keep my excitement for the space program. I vividly recall getting up to watch the landing of Columbia live. See, I wrote some flight software code that makes the landings much smoother and deals with the nosewheel steering, along with lots of code that we never saw executed during any mission (thankfully!). 2 and 3 engine out stuff. Later, I worked writing software used in all the mission control centers around the world, but mainly at JSC. That job made me feel connected to the crews in a way that developing software in a building across the street from JSC never did. Working "on-site" daily, walking into Building-30 and 30S, was exciting. Running into John Young, Mike Coates or other famous people was an almost daily occurrence. Actually, Mike was my boss for a few years (3 levels above) and heard a few of us arguing about which cycle some bit needed to be flipped to "meet requirements" one day. Doing it right was more costly ... I had to change 3 more "modules" to flip that single bit on the "first pass of OPS2" and any software change was expensive. Think "multi-threaded" programs, but in real-time software. Whether that bit was flipped then or half a second later after the computers were non-responsive for 45 seconds when going into On-Orbit OPS seriously did not matter. Still, the requirements won over being efficient (where it didn't matter at all) - I think this was 1 issue with the entire shuttle program. Changes were pretty costly.
Anyway, the morning that Columbia broke up in 2003, was very traumatic for me. I'd sat in the FCR and worked with the flight controllers years ago and was disconnected by 4 states and 3 private sector jobs. Those first 10 minutes when the shuttle didn't show up on TV after re-entry and there simply wasn't any data ... well, I knew it had broken up and everyone on-board was dead. The first indication of issues were temperatures in the landing gear - I'd written code around the landing gear sensors. There were probably 1,000s of people who did something related to the landing gear.
Anyway, last month as I stood on KSC doing a normal tour that anyone can, I took photos of Atlantis on the pad and saw much of the tourist parts with some family before they had to head off to the airport for flights to different parts of the country. I stayed another 4 hours at the visitor center alone and did everything I could there. I was a little disappointed that it was sorta like a theme park now, it had lost the grimy NASA feeling that I recall walking around behind the scenes at JSC in the different laboratories. Engineers don't usually spend much time on aesthetics. Knowing the shuttle program was ending AND didn't have a follow on project saddened me almost as much as when my father died. As I drove off Merritt Island into the sunset, I actually cried, just a little.
The manned space flight program elevates all humans, just a little. You don't get that from robots. Sure, it costs lots of money, but not nearly as much as not doing it does. The engineer in me says robotics is much cheaper for space exploration. The human in me says without men/women involved, it is just a cartoon, not real.
Mankind **needs** a manned space flight program. I'd hope the USA did it, but other countries have the smarts to accomplish it too. They also have a different culture of risk and a willingness to fail in order to succeed that is lacking in the USA today.
Goodbye shuttle program. I'll be watching Atlantis closely, until she is safely stopped at the end of the runway for the last time.