Shuttle Endeavour Embarking to Los Angeles Museum

Endeavour will be the second of NASA's space shuttles to leave the Kennedy Space Center. The ship will piggyback on top of a specially modified 747 and head to a Los Angeles museum this week. From the article: "Endeavour's lifespan was relatively short by shuttle standards - 25 missions over 20 years, totaling 299 days in space. But those flights ran the gamut of orbital odysseys, including the sheer moxie of its May 1992 debut when three astronauts made an impromptu and unprecedented spacewalk to rescue a stranded Intelsat communications satellite."

Comments

Don't Go

[Sulphur]

At least come visit Houston.

Re:Don't Go

[houstonbofh]

LAUNCELOT: Look, my liege!
ARTHUR: The Space Shuttle in Houston!
GALAHAD: The Space Shuttle in Houston!
LAUNCELOT: The Space Shuttle in Houston!
PATSY: It's only a model.
ARTHUR: Shhh!

Still kinda ticks me off, really...

Re:Don't Go

[Anonymous Coward]

It should, it still ticks me off that Seattle didn't get one of them despite the areas contributions to flight in general. What's more they sent most of them to New England leaving the closest actual shuttle to there in CA.

OTOH, we did end up with a trainer, so it isn't all bad, you can actually go inside that. But the politics of who did and didn't get a shuttle was pretty disgusting.

Re:Don't Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Sour grapes much? The shuttle and the main engines were all built in Southern California. Edwards AFB was the backup landing site and the test site for Enterprise. Not to mention the enormous contributions to other parts of the space program and aerospace in general made by our area. Obviously the Houston area played a big role in the shuttle program as well, and I'm not here to put one area over the other, but I'm just saying that the LA area has every bit as good of a claim to a shuttle as Houston did.

Re:Don't Go

[houstonbofh]

I agree with you. Now why did New York get one again?

Re:Don't Go

[Teancum]

Powerful fairy god-senators and other people in high places. It seems like that was one of the last things Hillary Clinton did before she resigned from the U.S. Senate to become Secretary of State, and some other high profile people also had a significant role in getting the vehicle assigned to NYC.

Another consideration for NYC was also that it was in the center of a very large portion of the American population, where nearly a hundred million people were within a few hours drive of the museum that is housing the Shuttle.

That may not be the best reason for why it is there, but it is a reason.

Re:Don't Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, guess where they got that trainer from? That's right, Houston....

In it's place we got a plywood mockup and a reach-around.

Re:Don't Go

[PNutts]

"Los Angeles, we've have a problem." doesn't have he same ring to it.

Here's the selection procress described.

Re:Don't Go

[VoiceOfSanity]

Unless the weather between Kennedy Space Center and Houston improves (which the forecast is not looking good), the shuttle may end up bypassing all of the planned overflights and visits and end up going directly to Los Angeles. This includes overflights at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi (originally planned for this morning, cancelled), Michoud Space Facility in New Orleans east (cancelled due to weather) and the overflight of the Johnson Space Center and overnight visits at Ellington Field in Houston (also cancelled due to weather.)

NASA is hoping that tomorrow they can fly the shuttle to Houston at least, but the weather doesn't look to cooperate at all.

Re:Don't Go

[jacknifetoaswan]

I really wish I had some mod points to up your score! Best thing I've read in at least a week!

Re:Don't Go

[jacknifetoaswan]

Also, the most visitors of any other US city, by far. If you want people to see these things, they need to go where the people are. I understand that Houston had massive contributions to the space program, much more than NYC, or even the northeast, in general, but how many people visit Houston per year?

Re:Don't Go

[JudgeFurious]

That's an interesting point. How many people do visit Houston every year? I don't know the answer to that. It would be easy enough to Google but why bother since this is a done deal. I do know that if anything people might want to see that could or should be in Houston gets moved to say.... New York City then the number of people who visit Houston will never increase while the number of things to see in New York City will continue to grow leading to more and more people visiting New York City. Funny how that works. People who live along the Gulf coast (save for the Florida portion) or in the center of the country get to drive to either the east or west coast if they want to see an orbiter. That seems fair right? We've only got four of the things so why waste one of them on "flyover country".

Re:Don't Go

[jacknifetoaswan]

I do think that there should be something worth seeing in Houston, and wish that they'd have gotten one, but the point of my comment was that NASA, and the museums that have the orbiters, now, should use these as tools to increase interest in math, sciences, and space travel. I was trying to convey the point that they're better tools in a high visibility area than in an area that would offer fewer visitors. From what I've seen, Houston pulls 7 million visitors per year. The Intrepid museum itself draws over 900k per year, in and of itself.

Direct Route?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do they have to slingshot around the moon...?

Endeavour going Hollywood?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving to L.A. has a tendency to change people. But I don't think Endeavour will have a problem staying grounded... Too Soon?

Not so Fast...

[SrLnclt]

Weather delays Endeavour's last trip.

And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[michaelmalak]

And hundreds of street trees are being cut down. Street trees are not only aesthetic, but they provide shade to pedestrians (reducing VMT), protect pedestrians from cars jumping the curb, and provide shade to adjacent buildings, reducing energy consumption.

But just on aesthetics alone, the resultant concrete jungle visual blight will drag down that local economy far more than a space shuttle tourist attraction. The shuttle will be long forgotten before replacement trees can be grown.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the Endeavour give a fuck about your precious street trees?

No, it does not; it's a goddamn space shuttle,

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN video.. really.. a link to Flash content. Let Flash die already.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Oceanplexian]

The shuttle will be long forgotten before replacement trees can be grown.

NASA is taking the most environmentally conscious route possible, so much so that they re-routed the transport of the shuttle to preserve the most trees. That said, somehow local flora (which they are replanting) is more historically significant than a vehicle that inspires us to transcend our own planetary existence?

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

They can be regrown in a couple years. You shouldn't have trees that take longer than that to grow next to the street anyways as they represent a danger in case of a collision.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

Move along, nothing to see here except the rampant NIMBYism that unfortunately pervades Los Angeles politics.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

<quote> The shuttle will be long forgotten before replacement trees can be grown.</quote>

NASA is taking the most environmentally conscious route possible, so much so that they re-routed the transport of the shuttle to preserve the most trees. That said, somehow local flora (which they are replanting) is more historically significant than a vehicle that inspires us to transcend our own planetary existence?

<insert "space nutter" troll>

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[evilviper]

It's unfortunate that the trees need to be removed, but twice as many will be planted to replace them.

And we're not talking about old-growth forrests here... every other year I hear about LA losing more trees than this to disease, pollution, or invasive species (Chinese elm beetles, anyone?). The only difference is that this year it's intentional, but I wouldn't have assumed any of these trees would have survived for decades to come, anyhow.

And more to the point, if your neighborhood goes from nice to "blighted" by the loss of a few trees, you've got some serious problems which should be addressed, immediately.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[flimflammer]

Not going to happen anytime soon, guys.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[flimflammer]

I just remember the last time my city was doing something and asked to remove a tree from our property. We agreed after minor reluctance, and the city left a giant stump in our yard after implying that the whole thing was being removed. Hopefully they'll honor their word by replacing the trees they cut down proper, not leaving the space empty and planting trees elsewhere sometime down the line.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[demachina]

The space shuttle didn't "inspire us to transcend our own planetary existence". It mostly bogged us down in low earth orbit for 30 years, squandering money that could have better gone elsewhere, and doing very little that was inspiring or transcendent. In fact it mostly helped shackle us to our earth bound planetary existence.

The one possible exception would the Hubble launch and repair missions. The Hubble was pretty inspiring and the Shuttle's capabilities made it possible both in salvaging it from being a compelte write off and in keeping it going for so long.

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy is the most likely craft to "transcend our own planetary existence". Elon Musk is saying its one of his goal in life to die on Mars and he is actually means it.

NASA has been mostly empty talk since Apollo and a stellar animated film production house, making animations of stuff they will never build and of places they will never go. JPL being the one exception.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Teancum]

The problem with the Space Shuttle wasn't the vehicle itself or even having it built. The problem is that it became a dead end technology because nothing was built upon the engineering learned from building it. The engineers who designed the Space Shuttle are now retired, and the follow on projects have also been canceled. If there has been a "Shuttle Mark 2" or some other follow up vehicle that largely did the same thing but using more modern materials, learned from engineering mistakes, and avoided some of the compromises that crippled the original Shuttle design.... it could have been amazing.

Instead, NASA threw it all away and essentially went back to the Saturn V, saying it was a mistake to abandon that line of technology 40 years ago. Well, sort of, as they still are using some of the rougher parts of the Shuttle technology such as the solid rocket boosters.

As for transcending spacecraft, if SpaceX ever gets their Falcon XX rocket built (capable of sending a fully loaded 747 into orbit complete with passengers, crew, baggage, fuel, and even oxygen tanks) it will transform the space launch industry in a huge way and make kids dream about the future in a huge way. The only problem is trying to find a customer that would need that kind of lift. The Falcon Heavy is a good spacecraft though, and will be capable of sending a spacecraft to the Moon. Not many people have done that and certainly no private spaceflight efforts have done anything like that yet.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

Signed - The Lorax

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Hadlock]

The reason why they never built a "Shuttle 2" was because Shuttle 1 was absurdly enormous, NASA wanted a shuttle but the only way they were going to get funding for it was if they (and did) talk the Air Force in to paying for half of it by using it to launch all of their spy sattelites. Now that it had become a weapon of the cold war in space, it needed millitary capabilities like a 1,000 mile glide range (hence the giant wings, note that all the "stubby shuttles" barely have any wings at all) and a payload bay bigger than a greyhound bus. Instead of doing 100 missions each, they all managed closer to 20. As it turns out, you don't need enormous cargo bays to do science.
 
TL;DR What engineering science we learned from the shuttle was that shuttles are a bad idea. Which is why we stopped going in that direction.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

They are "focusing" on trees that are already marked for removal (or considered for removal) by various projects. I could only find one source that mentioned the CSC is spending $500,000 to improve the streets (which I assume includes replanting the trees). Given the orbiter itself cost over $5.5 million dollars per day in orbit, $500,000 doesn't seem like much hush money.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside your disillusion world, has Palin ever contested for President (or in any post, against Obama)?

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[evilviper]

I don't feed trolls... or argue with morons for that matter.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Anonymous Coward]

What you and many other "science" proponents of space exploration fail to get, is that most people in the world are more inspired by a potential for them, themselves, to visit outer space, as opposed to, say, a neutrino satellite. I think the reason many people, myself included, mourn the passing of the space shuttle, is because it doesn't look like a weird space vehicle --it looks very similar to the airplanes we use often --and as such --despite its inefficient nature --it is very inspirational --because, by golly, I ride in planes, and if they can put a plane up in space, then maybe I can go up too!

The space shuttle was not a science instrument anymore than a fishing ship is. It was a specialized, live aboard transport vessel. However, despite the design compromises, it was the biggest and most flexible damn spacecraft we have ever launched. With its big engines, it could have been used to lift off of other planetary bodies as well, like Mars or the Moon, Europa ormaybe even Titan. While the big wings and big engines might have been mostly useless around asteroids or in space, it was still a better design for reentry on earth due to lower g forces, and it was much more livable than any capsule.

A motorcycle might be more fuel efficient than an RV, but when I'm going out into the sticks, I'd much rather have an RV. Going into outer space is not like going for a quick, easy ride down to the corner grocery store on your motorcycle--it's like going for a long, rough ride into the wilderness.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[chispito]

Are you trying to say President Palin was a better choice?

John McCain was the Republican Presidential candidate. I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[techybod]

I assume its the thought of being a "heartbeat away" from her becoming President if McCain had won. Otherwise known as the Dan Quayle effect.....

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[demachina]

If you think you are going to get in to space on the shuttle then you must be a billionaire because it is prohibitively expensive to fly anyone in to space that way without huge taxpayer subsidies.

If you actually want to get in to space, common sense dictates you should be advocating SpaceX Falcon and not space shuttle. Then you only need $10-20 million instead of the several $100 million a shuttle ride would cost you without taxpayer subsidies.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[demachina]

The whole problem with the Space Shuttle is it proved to be at least an order of magnitude more expensive than every other launch option. In part because of the huge amount of dead weight being lifted to orbit, and mostly because of the huge work force and logisticial train required to refurbish and refit it between each launch.

Unless you have unlimited amounts of money at your disposal, successful access to space is almost entirely about how many dollars it costs to lift a kilogram/pound in to low earth orbit. The more it costs the less you launch which translates in to less you do there. The less it costs the more you launch and the more you accomplish.

The Shuttle failed miserably by this metric which is why its a museum peice now. Everyone shedding tears over this fact need to get over it and realize its entirely for the best. The only way this country could afford the Shuttle would be to gut defense spending or Medicare/Medicaid and transfer all the money to NASA. Gutting defense spending, especially the trillion+ we are blowing on the F-35, would be smart but this country isn't smart and it would never fly in Congress, since Lockheed owns too many congressmen.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Teancum]

I should note that there certainly have been several different kinds of follow up projects which have been proposed, including a couple of projects put forward by the U.S. Air Force that started with NASA participation and the USAF simply took over the projects altogether.

If it was such a bad idea, why have repeated efforts been done to extend the technology? It is being abandoned by the Manned Spaceflight Office, but it certainly hasn't been proven to be a bad idea... or rather there are several people who think it is still a good idea that needs to only be reworked and tweaked. The USAF is certainly going in one direction, while NASA is going in a completely different direction by instead looking back to the Saturn V and trying to act as though the last 40 years never happened.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Hadlock]

That Dyna-Soar you linked to was designed in the 50's and prototypes were built in the 60's. It represented the baseline for the shuttle we got. The rationale is that we don't need to go in to space to abduct russian spy sattelites from orbit (AFAIK we never tested this capability), and we don't need a human pilotable craft to do it even if we did. Even the Russians were scratching their heads as to why the hell we built the shuttle. They only built the Buran because they figured there must be some inherent advantage over existing rocket tech. Even the Japanese cancelled their shuttle design, determining it unnecessary.
 
You curiously missed linking to the X-37B, which is probably the closest to a millitary successor of the Shuttle, and is unmanned. Also the X-33, which was a complete disaster. The reason we stopped going after enormous shuttles is because technology is equally as good as humans and doesn't require life support as a limiting factor to mission length. Sending probes and ISS modules on top of rockets seems to work very well, as does sending humans on separate human rated rockets.
 
A better question might be, why does the US continue developing shuttle variants when the rest of the world has not only decided they're a bad idea, but actively cancelled all research in that field?

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[spitzak]

More to the point, the trees being cut are mostly Ficus trees which destroy sidewalks and cost the city a huge amount of money, and they are not in any way original or ancient (they were popular because they grow really fast). They are to be replaced with twice as many trees, of different species that do not have invasive surface roots.

Re:And hundreds of street trees sacrificed

[Teancum]

yeah, missing the X-37 was a mistake of mine. I caught it after I hit the "submit" buttom.... but I figured that the gist of the conversation was apparent.

Regardless, it is in America where the most diversity of ideas are coming from in terms of crewed spaceflight vehicles is coming from. Two different reusable shuttle designs are coming from private industry, including the Lynx, being built by XCor and Dream chaser being built by Sierra Nevada.

I don't know what India might be doing along the same lines, but it doesn't appear to be just America either.

Perhaps NASA knows better than these other guys and that this really is a dead end technology. Then again NASA administrators are all in on the SLS program that seems to be adopting the worst aspects of the Shuttle Program and none of its advantages.

This is a better alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

...to bursting into pieces on re-entry. Thank God they took these deathtraps out of service.

Bit Of A Delay Chaps

[Anonymous Coward]

News reports are indicating a delay, currently to mid-week at best.

Don't throw down bets just yet.

Title English No

[governorx]

Me disembarking slashdot.org.

Seriously? Can we not get proper English? I like to understand what I read. Misleading and nonsensical headlines.. slashdot is the bleeding edge of geekdom.

+5 Troll, Truth

Re:Title English No

[arielCo]

Standard Headlinese (don't look at me that way - click the link). Awkward, but in no way a /. schtick. I assumed that every regular reader of news in English is used to decoding it without even thinking about it.

In this case, they saved exactly four characters compared to "Shuttle Endeavour will embark to a Los Angeles Museum", eight if you wanted an article too.

Re:Title English No

[Anonymous Coward]

"embark to" is still wrong.

Going to L.A

[sycodon]

So it will quickly be covered with Gang Graffiti and littered with condoms and needles.

Re:and the forest wept

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't like it, they could refuse. I'm sure that one of the passed over institutions would be more than happy to accept the shuttle in LA's stead. This short sighted thinking is why CA is in such trouble. A shuttle is a potentially significant draw for the museum and something that many other institutions would love to have.

Still Mad My State Didn't Get One

[macromorgan]

I'm kind of miffed that a state with the second largest population, located centrally within the south, with 3 of the 10 largest cities in the US and deep ties to NASA (Texas) didn't get one of the 4 shuttles. Then again, we kind of did get Columbia...

Re:Still Mad My State Didn't Get One

[Nitage]

Texas got Explorer .