NASA Prepares The SIRTF For Launch

Anonymous Coward writes "NASA is ready to button up the SIRTF (Space Infrared Telescope Facility) probe for launch. The panorama is of the clean room at Hangar AE on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station as the SIRTF team makes final adjustments."

Re:Nice panorama app ... one question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Channel 12 of Kennedy Space Center has this same webcam on continuously

http://www.astrobio.net/news/media.php

NASA is the only government agency with their own TV station

Why they're ugly

[OmniGeek]

I guess there's no point making it aesthetic (i.e. with smooth panels and such) given the conditions of launch (cost per pound) and the fact that once it's up, nobody is going to see it ever again...

Aside from a total lack of aesthetic sensibility on all space instruments except ours, the outsides get all fiddly primarily for reasons of thermal control. Space environment is cold, mainly 'cause all your heat radiates away and there's nothing but the Sun to radiate back at you. Every external surface except instrument aperatures and antennas gets covered with thermal blankets (several layers of metallized plastic with plastic mesh spacers between) to reduce heat loss, or sometimes with mirrors (!) to radiate heat where one needs to lose it. It's a strange business...