Time Lapse of Endeavour's Final Ride 59
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."
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I propose we build a statue in his honor!
Dirty (Score:1)
End of An Era (Score:2)
But it's the beginning of a new....eh...never mind.
I'm not sad, not at all. (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Don't Be Short-Sighted (Score:5, Informative)
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.
The Shuttle Program Was Short-Sighted (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Sure it did. Can you name an example?
By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.
And they would have been able to afford to launch several replacements for the Hubble in that time. Same goes for the International Space Station, involving the Shuttle drove up the cost a lot.
When I look at what didn't happen because they had an expensive Space Shuttle instead of a space program, I have to say "good riddance" to it.
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I stand by my comments. It takes a special sort of failure to make things cost several times what they should, even by the usual deficient funding and contracting processes present in Washington, DC. The Shuttle was a remarkable white elephant for its time.
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<quote><p>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.</p></quote>
<p>Sure it did. Can you name an example?</p>
<quote><p>By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.</p></quote>
<p>And they would have bee
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Wars also bring technological development. This does not mean that the technical advancements justify starting a war of genocide.
Similarly, the space shuttle did have its uses with its large cargo bay and human crew. But the funds wasted in deciding, after the design was complete, that the fuel solid fuel boosters should not be recovered and re-used, and the decisions to manufacture the shuttle in one state by one contractor, different booster parts in other states for other contractors, and the nightmares
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<quote><p>By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.</p></quote>
<p>Without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope could have been delivered by a big c
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The Hubble telescope sat on the ground for years due to the Shuttle (ahem) explosion. It cost 6 million a month while it while it sat at NASA. Hardly a boost to the concept the shuttle helped the Hubble. It was wholly possible the Hubble telescope was on the first failed shuttle mission. AKA, the Shuttle could have destroyed the beloved Hubble telescope that destroyed a Shuttle in 1986.
1986 was t
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I can remember being told as a kid that the Shuttle was going to be like a spacecraft in the movies. It would take off under its own power, come back down and land, be refueled, and take off again. "It's going to be like an airplane for space," one of my teachers said.
Sadly, what we got was just a very expensive splash-down pod that could land on a modified airstrip instead of the ocean, with a larger crew cabin and a small cargo bay. It had to be strapped to giant nonresuable rockets to get into space, cou
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Right on the money except for:
couldn't even land under its own power (it just glides in)
...even gliders can LAND perfectly fine. What exactly were you expecting? It to take a couple of passes at the runway before deciding to touch down? Did you want it to carry fuel up into space and then back down, just so it can fly in the atmosphere for a little bit? They're in orbit, they can come down wherever the hell they want.
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It's just a further illustration of how much it is NOT "an airplane for space." It neither takes off nor lands under its own power. It's more analogous to a slash-down pod in that it basically just falls back down to earth.
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It had to be strapped to giant nonresuable rockets to get into space
Actually, they retrieved the booster rockets after takeoff and rebuilt and reloaded them for re-use.
End of an era (Score:1)
Re:End of an era (Score:4, Insightful)
We've thrown vast amounts of money at the Third World, and it's still the Third World.
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I'm a marathon runner*. I spent hours and hours of my valuable time helping my buddy train for his first marathon and I still beat him by over an hour.
Obviously all that time was totally wasted.
* Not really.
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you get what you pay for. You buy a Third World, you get a Third World, plus more that come knocking for the handouts.
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Aldrin grew up in a lower-Middle class family; his father was career military. In those days unless one had very high rank or married into society, working in the military was generally looked down upon. There was some temporary cachet accorded to members during WWII. So, no, not privileged.
He was not a test pilot, but he was of the Caucasian persuasion. (Usage from Hill Street Blues; you don't like, go look it up.) He had fairly extensive flight experience and taught flying. Scratch autistic.
He flew
Happy it's over (Score:1)
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!).
seems somewhat of a letdown (Score:1)
Whee. (Score:3)
Re:Whee. (Score:5, Insightful)
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There wasn't gold to steal or natives to kill/rape/enslave on the moon. Basically the only reason we kept coming across the Atlantic was for extraction of resources.
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The originally colonized in order to make the extraction more efficient. The people that tried moving over there for other reasons didn't fare so well (see Jamestown).
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hugging the European coast
First tree huggers, and now coast huggers. What's this world coming to?
Back to expendable rockets (Score:3)
Space-X is now able to provide much of the capability of the space shuttle at much lower prices. [spacex.com] (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. [spacex.com] So far, NASA is the only buyer, but Space-X advertises it as a commercial service.
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I certainly hope that the Falcon Heavy and the (astronaut-rated) Dragon crew capsule come to fruition; I believe
What a magnificent machine (Score:1)
Atmospheric reentry in style [youtube.com].
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Thieves (Score:1)
This is another side-effect of the shutdown: online media theft.
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That was posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day [nasa.gov] long ago.
You mean this completely different video of the same event? [ucl.ac.uk]