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Space Shuttle Atlantis Launches On Final Flight

Posted by Soulskill on from the beginning-of-the-end dept.

Space Shuttle Atlantis has just launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. STS-135 marks the final flight for the shuttle program, 30 years after Columbia touched the sky during STS-1. The mission summary (PDF) outlines STS-135's crew and event timeline. NASA's launch blog has been following the countdown all morning, and our own CmdrTaco has been tweeting live from on-site. NASA TV is also being streamed live. Meteorological reports for the launch looked doubtful at first, but a gap in the bad weather at just the right time allowed everything to proceed as planned. Atlantis successfully reached its preliminary orbit in what a NASA official called a "flawless" launch.

13 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Godspeed Atlantis by spidercoz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So goes America's dominance in space.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
    1. Re:Godspeed Atlantis by c0mpliant · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So ends America's wasteful spending on a program that didn't live up to what was promised. Maybe now space exploration can start heading back on the right direction

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      There is no -1 disagree
    2. Re:Godspeed Atlantis by Tsingi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Shutting down? Hardly. Aren't there exciting new research programs into how to turn shit and piss into delicacies? What could be more exciting?

      I believe the program (If I remember correctly) researched how to turn piss into Coors Light or Bud. Hardly a delicacy, or even that much of a conversion.

  2. Commercial spaceflight ... by perpenso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So goes America's dominance in space.

    Well the American government's dominance(*), there is still the American commercial spaceflight industry. Let's hope the government does not over-regulate or otherwise screw up this emerging industry.

    (*) Dominance may be overstating things. The Russians have done a lot of important work, much of it complementary to America's work and experience.

    1. Re:Commercial spaceflight ... by eln · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Commercial space flight has no vision beyond sending tourists to LEO and throwing more satellites into higher orbits. It's never going to move beyond that on its own because the economics don't work for entities incapable of thinking that long term. Every possible monetary benefit from leaving earth orbit is so far away that no commercial entity will take it on. This is why the government needs to remain heavily involved in space exploration: if it doesn't, no one else (other than foreign governments) will.

      Retiring the shuttle program is good in some ways because it frees up resources to go for more ambitious goals like Mars and beyond. It's bad, though, in that it takes away NASA's primary method of staying in the public eye. People get excited about humans going into space. Most people don't get excited about sending robots into space. This sort of thing is important to an organization whose funding is subject to the changing political winds.

      The projects NASA has in the works sound really exciting, but with cutting cost being the name of the game in Washington these days, NASA needs all the public support it can get to keep all of its plans from dying on the vine as its budget gets eviscerated. Removing the one thing that got it on TV on a regular basis isn't a good thing in these circumstances.

    2. Re:Commercial spaceflight ... by DrgnDancer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise" -- Wernher von Braun

      NASA could really do with a man like him again. Not that he was a saint, far from it as anyone who was on the receiving end of a V-2 would surely tell you, but he had the essential characteristics that made him hugely successful in selling space. He was an scientist who understood what must be done, a visionary who saw the need to do it, and a media savvy and inspiring person who could sell the package to government and the public.

      Of course his efforts were also helped immensely by the Soviet decision to give us someone to race with. Everything always seems just a bit more important when your rival is trying to beat you at it.

      --
      I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
    3. Re:Commercial spaceflight ... by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 4, Interesting
      You said:

      Commercial space flight has no vision beyond sending tourists to LEO and throwing more satellites into higher orbits.

      Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of a commercial spaceflight company says:

      'I'm planning to retire to Mars'

      -- Elon Musk: Founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Spacex) Citation: here.

      If that's not vision, I don't know what the hell definition of vision you are using. I've personally toured the facilities of SpaceX, ULA, Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Gruman, and JPL. I can tell you right now, the energy, enthusiasm, and drive at SpaceX is in a class of its own. That company, and its founder, has more vision for the space industry than the sum total of the other agencies I have listed combined.

      Mark my words as an aerospace engineer: SpaceX is the future of successful United States space business, and they have the gumption and drive to pull off the stuff folks have been declaring to be impossible for about twenty years now. Just like Google lit a fire under the ass of stale computer companies like Microsoft and Apple, SpaceX is going to be the spark that fans a whole new flame and era of space exploration for the United States.

      --
      Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
  3. Good Launch by milbournosphere · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just watched the launch via the live feed. 30 years of good work. Now...what's next? Here's hoping NASA will have the budget to get its next vehicle up and running.

  4. Re:What happened at T-0:31? by kalpol · · Score: 3, Informative

    Noticed there was a long delay, but I have no speakers at work, so couldn't hear an explanation.

    TIA.

    Sounded like they said the sensor noting retraction of the cone dome thing wasn't working so they had to verify visually (that was the camera 62 shot).

    --
    12:50 - press return.
  5. Only the second I've watched live by Alioth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've watched two shuttle launches live:

    The very first, Columbia, when I was a child at a friend's house.
    The very last, today's launch.

    All the others I've only seen after the fact. I did watch a re-entry live in person once from a Cessna 172 at about 11,000 feet over the north of Houston at night. It left a plasma trail across the sky from horizon to horizon. It was funny to think when we got back to Houston Gulf airport (formerly called Spaceland, hence its identifier KSPX, sadly now demolished and covered in identikit McMansions) only 40 or so miles away, the shuttle crew had already landed in Florida, disembarked, and were probably halfway though their first cup of coffee.

    --
    Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  6. I was 3 years old by deathcloset · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When Columbia launched, according to my mother, I watched 8 hours of the broadcast. All the way from the astronauts' breakfast to the press conference past the launch. I didn't move.

    I guess even at that age we humans are capable of grasping the awesome and extraordinary quality of certain events.

    I don't know why I'm posting, except perhaps that through my whole life I have felt a deep attachment to space exploration, science and technological achievement (all of which I've always considered to coincide with humanitarianism, if not cause). The space shuttle has been the icon, the embodiment of that attachment and love.

    Lief Ericson made it to america first, but managed to stay only for a short while. It would be 500 more years before explorers returned from Europe (and not in the best form, it should be said).

    I know we from Earth will return, and I hope and believe it will not be 500 more years.

  7. End of an era by deadhammer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well America, it's up to India, China and Russia now. Leave the whole "space" and "discovery" and "dreams for the future" business to the up-and-comers. They'll take over the space exploration for you so you don't need to send people up or build space telescopes anymore. You've got more pressing, practical things to worry about! Terrorism, wars, economic stuff, that sort of thing. Good run guys!

    I have to wonder... If North Korea suddenly announced that they had A) manned launch capability and B) plans to do a moon run in ten years, would America still decide that manned space travel was done and over with?

    --
    I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
  8. Re:Dragon Spacecraft by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rockets aren't hard, launching a rocket into space isn't really hard. It's expensive, but not hard.

    Ha! Spoken like someone who has never tried to successfuly stabilize a chaotic system with over ten-thousand input variables to the dynamics model equations. Sorry geekoid, but anyone who honestly believes launching a rocket into space, a vehicle that is, quite literally, the size of a skyscraper which expends the energy of a large military warhead in a semi-controlled manner in under 5 minutes "isn't really hard," has officially lost all credibility on the topic of launch vehicles.

    --
    Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!