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Atlantis Lands, Ending the Shuttle Era
Early this morning Atlantis landed at KSC in Florida. I've been following the trip intently ever since my trip to Florida to see the launch of the very last Shuttle. This really is the end of an era. Thanks go out to the thousands of NASA employees who made this happen, many of whom have been laid off. A number of them emailed me directly showing me pictures and sharing stories. I wish you all the best. As for America, here's hoping that we return to space soon.
And now you face... the final cuurrrtaaaiiinnn...
I must admit to having mixed feelings about the end of the Shuttle era. While the Shuttle did not quite live up to the promise of making spaceflight "routine", this means an end to American spaceflight capability, at least for the short term.
I will echo what CmdrTaco said: I hope we return to space soon. I would also like to thank the 14 astronauts who gave their lives in the pursuit of space on the Shuttles.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Near SF bridge, no?
Hivemind harvest in progress..
The shuttle was nothing more than a high altitude glider. Unfortunately all the money wasted on the shuttle could've gone to legitimate exploration using unmanned probes and rovers.
...and thanks for all the fish.
Just outside San Francisco Bay, after destroying the hive ship?
While the Shuttle program has ended (and its been a spectacular run), I guess the only things to look forward to are the MPCV, CTS-100, Dragon, DreamChaser, and the New Sheppard.
I think the future is looking pretty bright.
The US manned spaceflight program comes to an ignominious end at the same time the Texas school board votes on whether to teach evolution in science class. And people wonder why we've lost our leadership in science and manufacturing.
The fact that the Shuttle was still flying in 2011 isn't just a testament to its longevity. It's a sad reminder that, at least for now, human spaceflight is at the mercy of the schizophrenia that is the American political process.
NASA has consistently brought together some of the finest minds in the world to do what the preceding finest minds thought was impossible. Then, because this is America, we take a bunch of mouth-breathers who probably got Cs and Ds in basic high school science courses and make them the bosses and the gatekeepers, the people who decide that it's more important to systematize the abuse of human rights at airports and buy the jokers at the Pentagon their newest murder toy than it is to push the frontiers of knowledge and ingenuity.
I'm putting my hope for the future of space exploration in private hands. Not because I fetishize the free market, or because I think government is evil, but because human spaceflight is way too important to be put in the hands of the American electorate, which is probably the stupidest and most poorly-informed decision-making body since the Athenian ekklesia.
... At roughly $60 per capita annually, I think the cost of the space program is justified by its entertainment value alone.
they moved it to the moon and that why we can't go back to the moon.
Geez kids, get a grip! We haven't 'left space'. We have active missions out there right now (Vesta? ring a bell?), and we'll continue to send people to the ISS on Russian ships. Within 10 years we'll likely have manned capability again, but humans in space return far less than the robotic missions.
We need better robotics to take the next step, which is picking a resource (like a large mostly-metal asteroid), bringing it into orbit and exploiting the shit out of it.
Equating the U.S. space program solely to dicks and tits in space is stupid, childish, and shortsighted. But then no one thinks of Americans as especially visionary these days.
here's hoping that we return to space soon.
Where exactly do you suppose that Ron Garan and Mike Fossum are right now? The space shuttle is not the entire manned space program. There have been Americans in space continuously for more than a decade, and there will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
I was a student at FIT when the first shuttle launched and had the honor of watching the live launch from a small boat about a mile and a half from the launch pad. It was a memorable experience of raw power.
This morning I was woken by the sonic boom as the last shuttle was still supersonic on approach. Somehow fitting personal bookends to a wonderful program.
...walking (booted) out the door. In 5 years NASA couldn't launch a shuttle even if they took Atlantis, mothballed it and all the facilities because no one will know how to do it anymore.
When they started working on Ares they had to send engineers out to look at the Saturn 5 rocket in Houston to try to rediscover its technology because all of the institutional knowledge was gone. And even after that, they killed it.
Imagine what it must be like to be an engineer at NASA...”work on this, no, work on that. Wait, forget that and do this. Never mind, do this instead”. You've all been there in IT probably.
If there ever was a time to establish clear, long term goals and technology focus, now is it. But they will drift aimlessly, buffeted by the whims of the Administration and Congress.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
CmdrTaco, thank you for the coverage of the launch. I was there and following your, NASA and weather tweets all morning up until the launch. 'Tis quite a memorable experience indeed, I'm just glad they made it back safe and sound and off into history they go. Just wish America could get its act together so something this awesome doesn't have to end due to financial concerns.
... is the leader in space again!
They may have not got there first, but they can still go there while America can't. So they lost the sprint, but they won the endurance race.
Atlantis flew a magnificent mission, capping a great career. She, and her sisters, have been great ships and deserve to retire with honour.
Yeah, they were expensive. Yeah, people think robots are cooler. Yeah, they couldn't go to the moon or Mars. And yeah, in hindsight hanging a somewhat fragile spaceship on the side of a booster probably wasn't the best idea.
But Atlantis and her sisters' record of achievement is magnificent, and will probably never be matched. They launched space probes, they conducted research into materials, life sciences, earth sciences, astronomy, and countless other fields. They serviced satellites and space stations, and brought tonnes of equipment back to earth for study and reflight. They provided a convenient platform for experiments and payloads that would otherwise have had to construct their own complete satellites. They did all this 133 times successfully, with only two losses, and in the space business you'd take that success rate any day of the week.
Although written years earlier, Billy Bragg's "The Space Race is Over" seems appropriate.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So stop exploiting science for nationalistic ends.
Does America need a launch capability, if there exists one elsewhere on the world?
Though I guess working united toward a goal is communism. And that just wouldn't be right.
Those engineers can now work at Google to make office software. Sigh.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Look, it WAS a great achievement. But like most things in the USA, for the last 30-40 years we never move on to something better. I believe with the space shuttle still flying we would never get a new program moving. The shuttle a great technical achievement, but an inherently flawed design for efficiency and frankly BORING at low earth orbit capability. Furthermore, at 0.5 BILLION per launch, it was just a waste of money repeating the same thing (essentially) again and again and again. We could launch two vehicles -- one for humans and one for the cargo for far less than this single shuttle bus.
Now lets see if we can get more practical MODERN vehicles moving forward now that this 1960/1970 vehicle is finally put out to pasture where it belonged 15 years ago.
I just heard the sad news on the radio, the United States manned space program was found dead on it's runway in Cape Canaveral this morning. Foul play is suspected.
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it -- even if they didn't enjoy it's work, there's no denying it's contributions to the advancement the distribution of federal pork. Truly an American icon.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
> Thanks go out to the thousands of NASA employees who made this happen
Very few NASA employees were involved with "making" Shuttle flights happen. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Thiokol engineers were.
And since nobody died, we can celebrate!
...
Some things have longer horizons than our 2/4/6-year election cycles. Like our financial institutions, our leaders and focused way too much on the short term.
The Pres & the Congress should set goals, NASA should submit an honest budget per project, and Congress should approve them or not as a whole. No more of this micromanagement crap -- "We'll give you 7 billion this year, but you've got to use solid rocket boosters made in the congressional district from Utah. Next term, we're going to cut your budget to make cheap points with the teabaggers."
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But Mr. President, we must not allow a space gap!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Emperor, our golden age as ended. (Click to end turn)
This is a sad day because I see no realistic plans to replace the shuttle's capability of putting a human in space, even if it's only LEO. It looks like pretty much everything to replace it has been canceled.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Considering the US is up to (and above) their neck in debt, shutting down their space program is the only sensible thing to do. Time to face the music. You are broke and living on borrowed money. Sincerly, A concerned european
and he was right. Just one shuttle launch needed how many thousands of people and billions of dollars? And for the price of 1 shuttle mission, how many Falcon launchers can you buy?
But then that was irrelevant, since the primary purpose of the program was to generate jobs and keep the esteemed senator from Utah happy.
21 July 2011 - NASA ends manned space flight program. And that's your talking point... There are so many sarcastic things to say about this and so little time.
So stop exploiting science for nationalistic ends.
No
Does America need a launch capability, if there exists one elsewhere on the world?
Yes.
Though I guess working united toward a goal is communism. And that just wouldn't be right.
You must be a left-winger. That simplistic view of communism is so wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start, but if that's really what communism was then it would have worked out way better than it has so far.
wrong!
We need to fix our budget starting by reducing spending on the biggest parts of the budget first:
1. medicaid & medicare, 23%- get rid of the inefficiencies of a for-profit insurance and medical system. (I admit, this requires further study on my part),
2. social security, 20% - adjust the eligibility age to properly reflect changing demographics. Make it so it automatically adjusts in the future. It's supposed to be a safety net to avoid poverty in old age, quit selling it as part of your retirement planning.
3. military spending, 20% - try being a good neighbor instead of a raging drunken dickhead. Maybe promote Democracy, transparency and accountability instead of propping up the tin-horn dictator de jure just because he hates the guys we hate and can keep the oil flowing. Like NASA, spend the money on what we actually need, don't use this budget as a means to dispense pork.
4. discretionary spending, 19% - once we get those first three bigger portions straightened out, then we can start looking at the piddling little stuff. With NASA getting like 0.6% of the budget, there's a lot of other things that should be looked at first.
Anybody that doesn't tackle those items first is just pandering and re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
Fix it before it corrects itself.
no, I am not available to run for office. I will however consider calls for me to be made dictator.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Televised Robot Rover Battles on Mars. Their scientific missions complete, their batteries running low....Fight Fight Fight!
No! Wait! NASA Mars Rover NASCAR! I'd only watch it to see the crashes! On MARS!
Now that is what the US tax payers want! Top notch science entertainment.
America's next top model-In-low-earth-orbit. Americas got talent-in-the-vomit-comet. This stuff writes itself.
Someone else said it originally, but if you play NASA's history backwards, they start out with no manned space flight capability, develop shuttles, and eventually land on the moon.
>2. social security, 20% WRONG. Social Security is Debt neutral. Or should be. The "Fiscal Conservatives" keep robbing it to hide their irresponsible spending habits. It certainly does need a tweak or two, but it is not part of the federal debt. (its just owed a lot of money by Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, Bush(43), and Obama.
Oh where is Al Gore and his lockbox when we need him?
We had to stop the program so NASA could increase our climate change research. I'm so glad we have our priorities in order!
What you just describe is exactly the situation that we have had.
With NASA pushing private space to take this on, we will move the knowledge into MULTIPLE companies that will keep moving forward. In fact, what is now going to happen is that SpaceX has massively one-uped ALL OF THE COMPANIES AND NATIONS in the world. What is going to happen is that UAL will be forced to create a new rocket, or lose possible launches. Even now, they have started work on a rocket idea for taking on the Ares V, now SLS as well as Falcon X. The SLS will be dead on the vine within 2 years when SpaceX announces that they are building Falcon X.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Mod parent and grandparent up. Disagreeing with this guy is not a reason to mod him down. And this is coming from a "heathen brethren."
--TSP
Given the realities of our insane political systems. (Lets all change our reality instead of living in this crappy one please)
But.. given: The only mission that seems viable is sending probes, rovers, satellites to every heavenly body we can see. All the planets, all the moons, all the stars that we can reach.
Space telescopes
I need new computer wallpaper from my big new monitor.
How about NASA use their climate change funding (which Obama prioritized in 2010) towards, you know, space exploration?
Small side note about the Canadian robotic arm: it was developed just so we could give the finger, from space, to any other country.
Good points, thanks.
Part of being debt neutral is not paying out more than you have coming in. Hence, adjusting the eligibility age to properly reflect demographic changes.
And yes, SS, originally, in theory, was supposed to be a separate item from the budget as a whole. But as you've pointed out, in reality, everybody's had their hand in that cookie jar to temporarily cover up their budget problems in other areas.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just in case anyone is wondering where the money went.
http://inhabitat.com/obama-gives-nasa-2-4-billion-to-study-climate-change/
http://inhabitat.com/obama-gives-nasa-2-4-billion-to-study-climate-change/ Why are liberals so anti-science? They don't like GMO food, despite no scientific evidence it's harmful, they don't like nuclear power, don't like research on racial genetics and intelligence etc etc. And now they cancelled the space shuttle to give more handouts to fraudulent climate scientists.
Only now, we will have not only the CHEAPEST launchers, but 3-4 human rated. In addition,we will not have to worry about CONgress messing things up once Bigelow has its first space station in orbit.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We should take up the fine art of space garbage collection
Clean up in orbit three...
Climate change is far more important that space travel, I'm glad we have our priorities in order. http://sweetness-light.com/archive/nasa-boosts-climate-change-budget-62
ASA Boosts Climate Change Budget 62% This is probably for the best, climate change is a far larger problem than space exploration.
OH GOD NO.....I can see it now:
Deuce Bigelow, Space Gigolo
The shuttle program was an expensive romantic holdover from the days when we thought that everything interesting had to be done by Real Men. Almost all the big space successes of the period the shuttle has been flying have been unmanned missions; they have taken us further and done more than any manned mission could for the foreseeable future. Manned spaceflight is a huge resource-sink. We are better off without it.
Hellova ride NASA. I watched Young and Crippen climb into the first one on TV, not know if they'd live to tell about it. There was no unmanned test flight, they were it. Huge conjones those two. The landing looking like a DC-9 coming in from Cleveland. A proud moment for everyone. I was a young machinist in LA, just about to transition into the Quality job, and the last thing I did was these weird chunks of stainless steel. I didn't know what they were for, but I found out they were supposed to fly. On the first satellite rescue mission, the first time something from orbit was salvaged and brought back to earth, there were my chunks, the attach points for the cradle for the satellite. I was never prouder. I watched Challenger's fireball driving down Semoran Blvd. in Orlando. I went home to 4 little girls who asked why the teacher died. Daddy didn't have any answers that day. I spent 6 months afterwords working on Strut Parts as an inspector. I was assigned a part that had it flown, they would have lost another shuttle. They guy from the Cape had to be helped back to his car after we showed him. They got a lot more serious about safety after that. I was gaming on line with a bunch of guys in Teamspeak when the guy from Dallas shouted 'WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!!'. He described a sonic boom. We put 2+2 together and figured out another shuttle was in trouble, it should have been 40 miles up over Dallas that day, it was less than 10. 10 minutes later, NBC announced. Still a magnificent achievement NASA.
BS. It's not popular to talk about it, but due to age demographics social security is fucked.
Oh yeah, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Don't see anything about climate in that.
I have an idea, let's assign responsibility for the next space mission to the EPA. Then maybe DOT can take over nuclear research for the DOE.
we'd be traveling amongst the stars by now.
Damn, I'm pissed off.
According to the CBO, the ACA (Obamacare) goes most of the way toward solving the medicare problem. If you revise Part-D to allow negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, that would put Medicare in the black for... well basically forever. It you remove the "Social Security Cap" that would do the same for SS. (Currently, you only pay FICA deductions -- "payroll" taxes -- on your first $100k or so of income. So the hedge-fund manager who makes $20m pays the same FICA as a guy who makes $100k.) Eliminate or raise that cap, and SS is rock solid as far as the eye can see.
Heck, just rolling back the "Bush Tax Cuts" on people making more than $500k/yr would wipe out nearly 2/3rds of the deficit. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would come close to matching that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Whew. For just a second I read it as 'lands at KFC'.
some of the first astronomers were priests, in ancient India. the purpose of their work, like Aryabhata's sine table, was partly to ensure the religious ceremonies happened at the correct times.
Anyone who says "we have to address X bad spending FIRST before we address Y bad spending" is wrong. The only time to address (cut, eliminate, end) X, Y or Z bad spending is now. Waiting serves no purpose.
And if the shuttle program had worked out as planned, it might actually have turned out that way (absent Kennedy's race-to-the-moon challenge of course). But the shuttle ended up being many times as expensive at promised, and due to "Congressional lock-in" we were stuck with it for 30 years.
Yeah, it's a bummer that we don't have any man-rated launchers for a couple of years, but it's high time we took space flight out of the hands of politicians.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
...once China and India start competing in earnest with the United States for dominance of space. The only question is whether the United States will be a competitor .. or the pace car.
Finding God in a Dog
....the Portugal of the 21st Century. Thank you so very much, BO.
I look forward to the day when the Red Chinese visit the Apollo XI landing site, roll up the American flag, and mail it to the White House. Postage Due, of course.
Regards;
studying the earth is studying space science, isnt it?
isn't the best example of a climate-out-of-control the planet venus?
But all of those baby boomers paid into the system their whole lives up until now. That is why Social Security used to have money worth taking for other projects, and why Al Gore wanted a "lock box." Everyone saw this coming, but only a handful of politicians actually cared about it enough to try to prevent it.
because they believed there was no way they could compete using conventional military forces, and the rocket program was much cheaper than continuing down the mass-army road
Don't be talking treason, you commie pinko hate America firster. You're probably a Muslim.
NASA is not victim of the Iraq war, but of the bankers : what good is a (more or less civilian) flight program for the worldwide banking cartels that own USA ?
Politically speaking, it was useful, for it allowed people to dream that there is a higher purpose to their lives (other than the simplistic christian/jewish/mormon religion). Now that there are no more politicians, and only economical agents remain, what use is a dream ?
Wake up, USA, for you've got thousands of billions of paper (money?) to shell out; you've shown bankers how to use that weapon, and now it's your turn to take that blow.
Btw, please forget that you already have plenty of military programs doing more or less the same thing that NASA did (and don't ask why anyone would want to put weapons up in the sky ... weather baloons, or fast-turning comets, the speakable names for Ufos ...).
"It's a sad reminder that, at least for now, human spaceflight is at the mercy of the schizophrenia that is the American political process"
I think human spaceflight will continue whatever happens in America, I don't think human spaceflight is directly at the mercy of the American political process. The Russians and Chinese have human rated space vehicles, other countries are likely to strive towards them. they will carry on regardless of what happens in America. They might be affected to a degree, but not completely influenced.
I think you just confused 'humanity' with 'America'?
The sad part about the whole Space Shuttle program was that the first three shuttles were only supposed to be used for about 10 years before they were to be replaced by a design known as "Shuttle 2".
There were several different designs proposed but all of the boiled down to being essentially a single stage to orbit, fly back craft with at least double or more the payload of the now retired birds. The saddest part is that pretty much every Aerospace company in the US during the 70's and 80's were pretty sure that it could be done. But when it came time to start bending metal, our Congress never provided the funds.
JasonAW3
"What's the opposite of Progress?... Congress..."
...man went to the moon because it was there and we had the Shuttle because we didn't like burning up a whole rocket each time we went into space.
If we ever get to Mars it will be because a few suits with expensive haircuts have decided it's a second planet with the potential to rape the mineral shit out of in order to make a few fat rich people even fatter and richer.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Uh... it's called ADD? Brought on by copious amounts of MTV, Justin Beiber, Twilight, and Angry Birds.
Go on, tell me I'm wrong.
According to the CBO, the ACA (Obamacare) goes most of the way toward solving the medicare problem. If you revise Part-D to allow negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, that would put Medicare in the black for... well basically forever.
And instead, Congress is trying to get inserted into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that (other) countries are outright forbidden from doing this.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
So now that we finally got rid of the shuttle, how about giving that other big orbiting bottomless sink of of money a good dunking in the Pacific, and then get on with actual science?