Slashdot Mirror
Space Shuttles Discovery and Atlantis Meet One Last Time
longacre writes "One dull morning last week, two teams of NASA technicians simultaneously gathered at two iconic buildings — the 525-foot Vehicle Assembly Building and the shorter, but equally important Orbital Processing Facility 1 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, tasked with moving a space shuttle orbiter from one building to the other. The 'shuttle shuffle' would have Space Shuttle Discovery (the oldest and most flown orbiter surviving in the three-ship fleet) in OPF-1 swapping places with her sister ship, Atlantis, the second oldest and second most flown orbiter. Fleet leader Discovery would emerge from OPF-1 as a preserved spacecraft, gutted and mummified for museum display."
I hate it when museums do this kind of thing to aircraft (or in this case spacecraft). Nothing is more uninteresting than a hollow shell body. Once the problematic liquids are drained there is no reason they can't leave the engines in place. The parts that make things like this interesting are all the mechanical components and displays that make up the actual vehicle. Every time I see this done to an aircraft, I can't help but think of how much of an utterly boring display it makes. They might as well erect a cardboard cutout equivalent, it's nauseating.
a sister shuttle was always kept on ready as a backup to be sent up if the other shuttle needed to be rescued.
Only after the Columbia disaster. Prior to that, no.
Only since Columbia, and only because we've grown so weak that we as a nation have become afraid of our own shadows that we only accept a 0% risk in any endeavor now. That's why China, Russia, and India will beat us back to the moon and beat us to Mars by decades.
We just threw away our only viable spacecraft, and now pay Russia to haul personnel to the ISS.What is the point in participating in ISS any more, if we're cutting NASA's budget to the bone? We just eliminated the only (publicly-acknowledged) viable solution for servicing satellites or for safely returning large loads from ISS. No one else has/had that tech before, and now nobody does. What a waste.
Plus one more thing I'll mention: gutting the shuttles is tremendously stupid. Think of future generations who would love to look at the engine, avionics, and other systems decades or centuries in the future; it would be like purposely burning books, leaving only the covers intact for future generations to see. Why bother putting the fuselage on display at all? It's a damned shame. There are only three shuttles in exsistence - they should keep them intact. Tear them down and decontaminate them to remove all traces of Hydrazine if you must mothball them, but for goodness sake keep them intact for future historians and archeologists!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
...the shuttles *really* hate that.
And only when they weren't docking at the ISS. Basically if they were headed to the station, and something went wrong and they couldn't hook up, sending another shuttle up wasn't going to help. One time in recent memory that they had two shuttles sitting on the launchpad, was when one was going to service the Hubble. So in this instance, they had a backup, as they would not be docking with the ISS. Looked it up to find a picture, and found this article with a little more info. Two shuttles were only every visible on launch pads at the same time 4 times. And there was only ever 2 shuttles on launch pads (but not both visible at the same time) 18 times in history. http://www.space.com/6597-rare-sight-twin-shuttles-launch-pad-time.html
Look -- they are pieces of equipment they are not people or even animals for that matter. This is taking anthropomorphism way too far.
Yes, the shuttles hate that.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Ships and aircraft are commonly reffered to as 'she'. It's a long standing tradition. Don't get your panties in a wad.