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Space Shuttle Atlantis Last Night In Space Orbit
techtribune writes "Tomorrow will be a bittersweet day for the crew aboard the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis as they begin their return home to Earth. This will be the last space shuttle re-entry, the last landing, and the very last crew to pilot the shuttle in U.S. history. The Atlantis Space Shuttle undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday after delivering a lot of supplies, batteries, and other hardware to the station. They are bringing a lot of trash and everything else that needs to be brought back to Earth, as it's the very last opportunity for NASA to do so on its own." In a related topic, MarkWhittington wrote in with a story about why we stopped going to the moon and why there are no plans to go back.
Just a thought... they carefully cut out all excess weight for a shuttle launch because every extra pound is some $massive.amount. On the way down, however, is it really more of a "pack it all in" mentality?
It's always confirmation bias!
I say we all put on ape costumes and greet them at the shuttle door just to screw with their heads.
Mr. Whittington's article is written with very little depth. He doesn't even answer his own question. Nixon siad it was too expensive... really? that's it?
Sure the space shuttle program ended up being truly massively expensive, but the entire world surrounding the space program also changed in the mean time and far more valuable things occured in science than "going to the moon"
Going back to the moon from then until say now... wouldn't have had half the scientific value of say Hubble or zero G experiments of the 80's.
It's exciting... yes. And we should go back. There's a pratical side to a moon base that would be extremely valuable in the future. Far less fatigue for atronauts, a fantastic opportunity at power and heat generation at the boundary between the near and far sides of the moon. the ability to use local building materials for some things. A grand opportunity indeed. I'm just scratching the surface.
Is any of this in his article? No. It's just whining.
No plans for the US is what he laments. Next ones to go will be the Chinese and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens by the end of the decade.
If everyone wanted everything to be as "safe" as you, we would still be in caves.
People stopped going to the moon and skylab because they ran out of useful things to do there.
The reason for people in space is because it makes for better marketing.
All the science is done by unmanned probes. The Mars rovers have been a huge success. Sure they are less capable than a human, but they are much cheaper, they can stay there a long time, you don't have to bring them back and if something goes wrong on Mars at least nobody gets hurt hence you can tolerate a modest risk of failure.
Yoghurt
hopefully this will be the last story about the last shuttle and the last landing and the last parking and the last unloading and...
But I doubt it.
Home Depot called - said they needed their tool back. Crawl back in trollboy.
I just hope they get it on video for the Smithsonian. I cried last night at the last defecation.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I assume the Commander is usually the last one out? I guess then... Christopher Ferguson will be the last astronaut to disembark from a space shuttle.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
It's not in Low Earth Orbit?
with unreliable history of that death trap, might be the last shuttle to burn up, the last crew to die
2 Failures out of 135 launches makes it an unreliable death trap?
The reason that our space program is dead in the water is that we are pathologically afraid of the risk of anyone dying. If there's an accident, the entire program shuts down. Not for a couple of weeks, but for nearly a decade while congress has meeting after meeting, and even more bureacracy is put into place to hamper all programs. The solution is a lean, mean, risk taking NASA that can get a new vehicle out there flying every year to test out the technologies and toughen up the astronauts for the conquering of space, which will be the most difficult thing that the human race has done to date.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
2 Failures out of 135 launches makes it an unreliable death trap?
If your car exploded once a month while driving to or from work, what would you call it?
NASA would laugh at SpaceX if they were offering a 'man-rated' transport to ISS which would kill the crew one time in sixty flights.
Come home safely. Enough said.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Orbiting on land would probably make a huge mess.
We just put two satellites in orbit around the moon this month. They're called Artemis.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110713161826.htm
If your car exploded once a month while driving to or from work, what would you call it?
A Ford Taliban?
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
2 Failures out of 135 launches makes it an unreliable death trap?
If your car exploded once a month while driving to or from work, what would you call it?
NASA would laugh at SpaceX if they were offering a 'man-rated' transport to ISS which would kill the crew one time in sixty flights.
Talk to me when the car is being launched in to orbit or doing re-entry, THEN we will compare notes.
Talk to me when the car is being launched in to orbit or doing re-entry, THEN we will compare notes.
That's irrelevant. In what other mode of transportation would a 1 in 60 chance of losing the vehicle and crew on every use be considered acceptable?
And do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?
Actually the concept of the last night is rather flawed for an orbit too. Given the average orbital period is 90 minutes the title refers to the last 45 minutes in orbit.
Talk to me when the deathtrap of a shuttle can be driven on a highway at 60mph. THEN we will compare notes.
I have a copy of Art Bell (of coast-to-coast AM fame) interviewing Ingo Swann, author of Penetration: The Question of Human and Extraterrestrial Telepathy.
Ingo was the creative genius behind the CIA's remote viewing program (which was shut down after 20 years because it "didn't work". Conveniently this was just after the soviet union fell apart). In the interview he talked about how he was asked to remote view the moon by an agency that didn't officially exist. "50% of what I know I put in my book, Penetration..."
The most memorable line of the whole interview:
Art: What's on the moon, Ingo? ... Stuff.
Ingo: [hesitation]
Art: Stuff?
Ingo: and THEM.
I found a copies of both the book and the mp3 on the torrents once.
Swann's books on "Secrets of Power" are very high level too... Policemen have "false power" because they lose whatever they've got when they lose the job. Presidents are in the same boat... Bankers are more powerful than Presidents because they control the money.
HTH. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
If my car did 17k miles an hour on average and my drive to work each day was several million miles, then I'd still be pretty fucking impressed with the car that blew up once a month. I'd certainly take the risk to drive it.
In one day the space shuttle has done more than every single car you'll ever own combined, by several orders of magnitude. Hell, in one orbit its already outlasted all of your cars by a massive amount.
Space travel with chemical fuels just barely works. Massive efforts on weight reduction have made it sort of work. But with all that weight reduction, everything is too fragile to be reliable. This hasn't gotten much better in the last 45 years.
There is no chemical fuel with a higher energy density than liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen, and the US has used that for almost half a century. Nuclear propulsion would work better. Nuclear rocket engines were built in the 1950s and 1960s. But they're so messy...
Just out of curiosity what is the loss of crew rate of the Soyuz?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
on the shuttle Atlantis".
I sense this being a future article that will appear on Slashdot in the next few days!
There was no reason to go back.
With the technologies available in the 1960s all the research done on the lunar samples and from orbit showed the Moon to be a dead, worthless rock in space.
The Mercury program was about increasing heavy lift to Low-Earth Orbit, the Gemini program was about working and maneuvering in Low-Earth Orbit while Apollo was about getting very large loads into Low-Earth Orbit and to the Moon.
Of all those programs, Gemini is the one we should have continued, an affordable and maneuverable system that could stay up for two weeks, more of a sports car in space while the Soyuz is a remote controlled car.
The current collapsed of NASA's manned space flight program isn't the fault of Bush, or Obama, it's the fault of NASA, since Challenger failed NASA has screwed up every attempt to make a successor to Shuttle. The day Scaled Composites flew to space, NASA should have sunk a billion dollars (one shuttle flight) into Scaled Composites to build an orbital space craft. But NASA didn't just like NASA never got a super-heavy lift rocket off the ground despite Congress telling them to in 1987 or NASA balling up two shuttle replacement programs in the 1990s.
Talk to me when the car is being launched in to orbit or doing re-entry, THEN we will compare notes.
That's irrelevant. In what other mode of transportation would a 1 in 60 chance of losing the vehicle and crew on every use be considered acceptable?
And do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?
If 1 in 60 causality is really an unacceptable number for dangerous travel then we wouldn't have populated the western half of the US. And that was on the ground.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
If 1 in 60 causality is really an unacceptable number for dangerous travel then we wouldn't have populated the western half of the US. And that was on the ground.
Again utterly irrelevant because we're talking about now and not centuries ago. Nor are we talking about colonising space, we're talking about delivering pizza to the space station.
And again, do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?
NASA expected a 1-2% failure rate to begin with, based on the original design even before the flaw in the booster sealed was discovered (well, proven really, since "alarmist" engineers suspected a problem beforehand) thanks to a Challenger launch.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You again? I don't normally pay much attention to usernames here, but you're a real dork, aren't you?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Just out of curiosity what is the loss of crew rate of the Soyuz?
Zero over the time the space shuttle has been flying.
One orbit? That's about 25,500 miles. Just how hard are you on your cars?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There are not 135 shuttles. two out of five that went into space have killed their crew.
I'm an engineer who can reason and point out truths that make wimpier people uncomfortable. 2/5 of all shuttles launched have killed people.
My safety threshold isn't high at all, we're talking about 40% failure rate the way I count, five shuttles used for launches, two kill their crew. Would any model of airplane with those statistics be used to fly, regardless of number of flights?
I might add it seems to me that running a glitzy space program (on the back of a trillion dollars in debt) seems like entirely the wrong kind of venture for a world superpower mesmerized by the looming death-throes of the carbon economy.
Then again, nothing clears the mind like making a beeline for calamity when your your fate is welded to a fragile vessel surrounded by an infinity of not air.
so let's be like the USRR where they edited out a astronauts who died.
I know, lets compare people deaths by miles traveled! I bet you this thing is safer than anything but a passenger jet.
(this is the stupidest conversation ever)
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Zero over the time the space shuttle has been flying.
Well done on answering a different question. Just like the shuttle, two Soyuz capsules have been lost.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My safety threshold isn't high at all, we're talking about 40% failure rate the way I count, five shuttles used for launches, two kill their crew. Would any model of airplane with those statistics be used to fly, regardless of number of flights?
Most airplanes don't fly into space. None of them fly into orbit. Space travel is more demanding, and has higher risks than air travel.
Bow-ties are cool.
This. There have not been 135 separate vehicles, but five, which have each made an average of 27 flights. The average aside, losing 20% of your operating fleet due to mishaps like those don't bear well on the outlook of the fleet.
There are not 135 shuttles. two out of five that went into space have killed their crew.
That's a silly way to rate the safety of the vehicle.
First, if there's some non-zero chance of a disaster on a given flight, then over a large enough number of flights, the chance of disaster approaches 1.0.
Second, in the case of Challenger, it wasn't the orbiter that failed, but the SRB's. How many SRB's did they build?
Third, suppose they had built a sixth shuttle to replace Columbia. Would the shuttle be any safer, by virtue of a sixth one having been built? Would the shuttle have been less safe if they hadn't built Endeavour?
It really makes no sense to rate the safety of STS that way. The only sensible metric is, how many launcher were attempted, and how many failed? I'll grant that even by those standards the average looks bad - but compare that to other space programs:
Apollo Program: two major failures in 20 flights (23 if you count the unmanned ones), one of which killed the crew
Soyuz: 66 flights (so far), two failures costing the lives of the cosmonauts on board.
So both Soyuz and Apollo have worse averages than STS. 1 in 20 for Apollo (1 in 10 if you count Apollo 13), 1 in 33 for Soyuz, vs. 1 in 62.5 for STS.
Bow-ties are cool.
on the shuttle Atlantis".
Please don't put half your message in the subject line. Subject line for subject. Message body for message.
Bow-ties are cool.
Not really an answer to this article but I met a couple (anchor and cameraman) with China Central TV in Titusville covering the STS-135 launch. I asked what they think that many Americans say it will be the Chinese that will walk the surface of the moon next. She said they hope to be as good as the Americans.
mfwright@batnet.com
The reason we stopped going to the moon was that the contract on that soundstage was up, and it was needed for filming The Six-Million-Dollar Man.
Zero over the time the space shuttle has been flying.
Well done on answering a different question. Just like the shuttle, two Soyuz capsules have been lost.
That doesn't exactly answer the question either. Two crew losses over how many launches? 5, 50, 500? Over how many years?
You suck at math.
If you're going to make such ridiculous statements then you could say given enough time, the failure rate would have been 100% ... eventually all of them would have some sort of accident happen, thats just the way it works.
You could also say that Columbia and Challenger had 100% failure rates, but Atlantis, Enterprise, Endevour and Discovery had 100% success rates.
You're also ignoring that no other airplane flies at 17-25 thousand miles an hour on average, very few pull the number of Gs the shuttle does, certainly no non-military craft, oh, and it flies for millions and millions of miles for weeks on end without so much as stopping for gas, no other aircraft has ever done anything like it in pretty much every statistic you can name.
Would any model of airplane with those statistics be used to fly, regardless of number of flights?
Yes, perhaps you need to take a look at aviation history? Experimental aircraft have been known to go boom on occasion.
To put it bluntly, the way you count is retarded.
Research the reasons for the catastrophic failures, if certain design and managerial blunders had not been made, all the crews and all the shuttles all would have returned safely. My math is fine, all those failed shuttles were designed for more successful missions than they had.
A bit lower but the fatalities they had were very early in the program (both Soyuz and space flight in general). Since the craft has been redesigned over time one can argue, as someone else said, that the current iteration has a 0 crew loss rate.
There were many other non-fatal incidents but the Soyuz is basically absurdly sturdy.The rocket beneath it can explode on the pad and with a few second warning the crew can survive. It can begin reentry pointed utterly the wrong way and still survive. Hell, it can reenter still strapped to the service module, aimed the wrong way, let the heat of reentry burn off what's holding them together and still survive. The crew may never be fit to fly again but they'll survive. If the Space Shuttle program was run the same way as the Soyuz program there'd be no shuttles left.
May you have fair (solar) winds and following seas. You will be missed, you and your sister ships served very well and performed better than expected, even with the casualties. May you come home safely and get the rest you deserve.
As some one who grew up in central Florida right along side the shuttle program I must admit that this brings tears to my eyes. Not so much because its going away, but because its going away with no replacement. We've basically given up. It'd bother me far less if there was already another operational program to fill its place. Too bad we've lost our edge.
And yes, sometimes its okay to anthropomorphize objects for they are often backed by people who gave the objects those human qualities. So what I really mean is, thanks to all the NASA crew that made this program work, and thanks for all the benefits you've given us from it. My job and in fact the company I work for only exists because of NASAs work.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It can begin reentry pointed utterly the wrong way and still survive.
That's a very good feature.
Hell, it can reenter still strapped to the service module, aimed the wrong way, let the heat of reentry burn off what's holding them together and still survive. The crew may never be fit to fly again but they'll survive.
I don't think I want to know how that came to be tested, but I'm sure that with proper psychotherapy the crew may be fit to return to society... as long as they avoid enclosed metal spaces.
If the Space Shuttle program was run the same way as the Soyuz program there'd be no shuttles left.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that they lost more than five craft over the years?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
good thing i said 2 out of 135 launches and not shuttles right?
launching into space and coming back safely is nothing short of a miracle to begin with. NASA did a spectacular job having the success rate they did. Unfortunately, in that industry, minor flaws immediately become major issues. if you get a flat tire while driving your car, you call AAA. if your engine won't start while parked in LEO, you are stuck. If a crack forms in a booster during launch, thats it, good night. The fact that that particular incident only occurred once should be seen as a feat, not a death trap. Over a 30 year span, there were exactly 2 major incidents, I'd say thats pretty good. Some people are invloved in car accidents more than twice a year.
And again, do you really tihnk that NASA would allow its astronauts to fly on a private spacecraft which had such an appalling casualty rate?
It doesn't matter to me where the astronauts are coming from as long as we resume the flights. Hell, NASA lost people in the Apollo program too - that failure rate was 1 in 17.
There's no shortage of people who want to be on these missions.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson