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Time Lapse of Endeavour's Final Ride
New submitter tippen writes "A year after space shuttle Endeavour reached its final resting place at the California Science Center, photographers have released a fascinating time lapse video of the shuttle's final ride from Kennedy Space Center to LAX, then through 12 miles of city streets to the museum. Sad to see the end of an era."
Except for that clean looking tail, she's a dirty girl. ;)
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Its final ride wasn't a fireball cooking the people inside alive in a supersonic hell.
On the whole the shuttle was a boondoggle. It is best that the program is over.
/. many times over the course of the existence of /. (the shuttle predates /. by a year or two ;-) )
Yeah it had some advantages, but overall it did not deliver what it was promised to deliver. The reasons are many, the reasons have made it to
We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way. -- Buzz Aldrin
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Now that America has stopped pissing away it's money on the space program, it can spend it on things that really matter: supporting Al Qaeda against various Arab governments, health care and housing for illegal aliens and African Americans, aid to Israel, and handouts for Wall Street (they need money too!).
After having seen men land on the moon, it seemed a bit of a letdown that we only set our sites on flying 300 miles above earth. I had expected a mission to Mars much earlier on. Yes, it is expensive, but compared to the cost of wars that we had not questioned, it would have been cheap. Even the Cold War could have been averted had the US wanted to, as it was driving the USSR broke even before Chernobol. However, having the Soviets as a boogie man was a great play to get the public to spend a fortune. However, most of the population is really not able to affect the political process. All parties are owned by those who have the money to pay for the fanfare of elections. Fundamentally, there are trivial differences between the Democrats and Republicans. Carter, Clinton, and Obama really haven't changed the course of the status quo. With all the fanfare surrounding the Affordable Care Act, the truth of the matter is that previously, the uninsured left huge bills unpaid which were picked up buy driving up costs for everyone else. Similarly, the Vietnam War did not end because of mass public protest, but because of the realization that more bombs and money was spent on it then in all of WWII. Thirdly, the fact that we live in a republic rather than a democracy was evident during the TARP bank bail out in 2007, where most elected officials acknowledged that the majority of the population was against it, but the powers that be made sure that the investors would get their money back or the economy would be sunk.
Now let's get on with a space program that crashes & burns less, and goes somewhere more.
Space-X is now able to provide much of the capability of the space shuttle at much lower prices. (Each Space Shuttle launch ended up costing about $600 million.) Once the Falcon Heavy launches, they'll have the capability for even more lift to LEO.
Space-X even offers transportation of humans to low earth orbit. So far, NASA is the only buyer, but Space-X advertises it as a commercial service.
Atmospheric reentry in style.
US space capabilities were king for so long it is strange so them relegated to second tier.
But it's the beginning of a new....eh...never mind.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That was posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day long ago.
This is another side-effect of the shutdown: online media theft.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
On the whole the shuttle was a boondoggle. It is best that the program is over. Yeah it had some advantages, but overall it did not deliver what it was promised to deliver.
The Shuttle Program, like all of the manned space programs before it, delivered an immense amount of technology development that has advanced our knowledge of materials sciences and engineering in general beyond any level before it.
You can't base the value of the Shuttle Project simply on some science fiction ideal of a "space plane" and what such a thing could do.
By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's not like the money was put into the shuttles and shipped into space. It was spent on earth to make and fly the shuttles.
Home Is the Sailor ---A.E. Housman
Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.
The Shuttle program should at most be considered bridge technology. NASA should have started "serious" planning for its replacement right after the first shuttle disaster. I mean, if it was going to replace it with the Orion it could have done it at least a decade earlier. Or it could have increased funding for a true SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) spacecraft. I'm not a rocket scientist so I don't know what's the best form factor to get people into space, but any successor to the Shuttle should have already been in the live test stage by the time the Endeavor touched down for the final time.
So while I consider the Shuttle to be a marvel of engineering, I consider the Space Shuttle program as a whole to be a failure, and I'll consider the whole manned space program a failure if after all the billions poured into it, our great grandchildren would look back at the Apollo moonwalks as the Golden Era of space. As it is, Elon Musk looks like he has more vision than all of NASA's board of directors.
You are THE MAN!! You're so great to have been able to get the FIRST POST! Ooh, how I wish I can be like you and get my own FIRST POST someday. You're my idol, oh great first poster!
I propose we build a statue in his honor!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Except for that clean looking tail, she's a dirty girl. ;)
Well, generally speaking the tail *is* the one bit you'd at least want a dirty girl to keep clean. :-/