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Space United States

Discovery Heading Home 116

Posted by Zonk from the good-luck-folks dept.
Kailash Nadh wrote to mention an ABC News article discussing Discovery's departure from the space station, heading for Terra Firma. From the article: "Once undocked, Discovery looped around the space station for the first full photographic survey of the orbiting outpost since the last shuttle visit in late 2002, and then sped away into the blackness. Discovery's astronauts awoke Saturday evening for a day of storing away equipment for their upcoming return. They also planned to take down an antenna, which they have used to transmit video images of the mission. "
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Discovery Heading Home More

Discovery Heading Home

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  • Location of Discovery in the night sky (Score:4, Interesting)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <carywiedemann@@@gmail...com> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @06:03AM (#13262982) Homepage
    http://www.heavens-above.com/countries.asp [heavens-above.com]

    Better be quick though. It's getting prety light here on the east coast.
    --
    Fairfax Underground: Fairfax County message board and chat [fairfaxunderground.com]
    • So cool.... two little star like dots drifting across the sky in the twilight...
      (i'm in Houston)

      Best NASA site for tracking:
      http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

      The last time I watched the shuttle past to the north of my house it was entering the atmosphere( a few years ago). The most cool group of air and space craft I have ever seen. One shuttle two helocopters, one jumbo jet and a small plain; all in my view at the same time. So Cool...
      The local news is saying that NASA will not renter over land anymore?
      So sad th
      • It's not as simple as saying "ok, lets not come down over land anymore" - Orbital inclination is one consideration, and I would guess that maybe weather and lighting conditions are another. ISS Flights typically come in from south to north, as this one is doing. Columbia's last flight was at a much lower inclination.
  • Good Luck and God Speed Discovery.

  • Considering... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tyroneking ( 258793 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @06:36AM (#13263044)
    ... that this will likely be the last Shuttle into space and more than likely the last non-commercial manned mission into space (because I'm convinced that Virigin Galactic will get there before NASA does again) I think we should all pause and think what has been achieved by NASA in the past years. The global impact of men on the moon, satellites providing worldwide telecoms, fun with gyroscopes, all those cool sci-fi movies, their rather long software development guides, Richard Feynman's star turn at the shuttle inqury ... it's been fun.
    Without manned missions NASA will probably shrink rapidly in the public mind and return to its military roots. Thanks for the memories!
    • This may be the constant AFN propoganda I've been submitted to lately, but is returning NASA to it's military roots all that bad? Some of the moct beneficial scientific discoveries have been made in military labs. Honestly, without the military working tirelessly in its secret underground labs, we wouldn't have the same quality of living. J. Robert Oppenheimer lives on.
      • I have no problem with the military angle (with the usual caveats). IMHO manned spaceflight is unnecessary when robots and computers would do just as well, if not better.
        • Bah. Damn Muggles.

          It's about exploration and doing things as humans that no other humans have done.

          And we also have a commitment to a space station to think about.

          All you whiners that want to use unmanned toys to go do things ought to think about the job at hand -- that Station's not finished yet, and robots are not going to build it.

          It's not about whether or not a manned or unmanned mission can get the job done, it's about doing it with real people who know the risks and go willingly.

          Let 'em do their jobs

    • Re:Considering... (Score:5, Informative)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @07:23AM (#13263115)
      Seeing as the Russians have been keeping people on the space station for two years, and China are planning a manned mission in October, I highly doubt the next one is going to be commercial.

      Americans should remember that America is not a synonym for World.

    • that this will likely be the last Shuttle into space

      I hope you are wrong about this. Yes, the horizontally stacked design is inherently unsafe, and if they fly to 2010 they will probably lose another spacecraft. But this is acknowledged to be a hazardous activity. They have a method for fixing the heat shield now, and a safe haven (the ISS) if things look bad once they reach orbit.

      I think this flight has certainly killed the possible flight to repair the HST. Non ISS flights are too risky now.

      In a sense

      • I think this flight has certainly killed the possible flight to repair the HST. Non ISS flights are too risky now.

        Well, considering that NASA didn't change anything PAL-ramp-related, I think this mission is a huge success as no dangerous-sized chunk of foam ripped off the tank where they applied modifications. Now, they know that the PAL-ramp might cause trouble so they'll be looking onto it and all other areas that didn't undergo modifications.

        That's great news for astronauts and the shuttle. Who car
        • I agree with the fact that a Mars base would be nice, however, I think many people fail to realize just how far away mars is. It would take months to reach. Therefor, it would not be a good backup to the ISS.

          Furthermore, Maned space craft are a key tool in R&D in outer space. Without them our lab experaments would be extremely limited in capacity. While this is true, I doubt a shuttle would make it to Mars, much less do anything productive once it was there. One think I really don't understand,
          • Because GW's full of shit, perhaps?

            (Like he is during most of his speeches. The only promise he's kept from any speech is the tax cut and that got the majority of the American middle class about $400. Whooop dee doo.)

            Oops. Did I say that out loud?
        • Fast designs are good and all, but carefull and planned designs is very important to acheive something really superior.

          Yes, I think you are right there. A well designed SSTO launch vehicle, optimised for crew transfer to LEO, is a good goal, IMHO.

          SS1 showed that there are benefits in using a high performance turbine powered aircraft as a first stage; it gets the SSTO high enough to have a good expansion ratio on a single engine.

          But such a vehicle only helps with transport to low Earth orbit. The same des

    • more than likely the last non-commercial manned mission into space

      this is a little bit american centric
      i am sure there will be several non-commercial missions from russia or china and maybe even from japan before virigin Galactic gets there again
      btw to compare those jumps into the space with a shuttle misson is some kind of stupid
      or where will you store those 15 tons of load a shuttle can take up there
      and there is quite a diffrence between a jump out into the space like virigin does it and a geostati

    • ...(because I'm convinced that Virigin Galactic will get there before NASA does again)
      **VOMIT!**

      SpaceShipOne/Two is not comparable to the shuttle. Explanation [daughtersoftiresias.org].

      It's a stretch to consider a high-altitude joyride the equivalent, or even near-equivalent, of an orbital mission.
    • How is this garbage modded insightful? Virgin Galactic? They haven't even stated LEO as a long term goal, let alone come up with some concept as to how to achieve LEO.

      No one seems to remember this flight was specifically called out as a TEST FLIGHT. They made major modifications to the external tank and oberserved the improvement. And its looking like this flight shed 80% less debris.

      That is a remarkable improvement. Zero foam loss was never stated as a goal, and nor does it need to be. There was

      • Your post was excellent, and showed insight into what's really going on at NASA.

        No one on here even understands the major differences you pointed out between Virgin Galactic's miniscule effort and the STS (designed originally in the 1970's!), because even the so-called technical crowd here at Slashdot doesn't really pay any real attention to the engineering accomplishments of NASA or the excellent people there working on really interesting, difficult real-world problems anymore.

        They're more interested in th
  • Okay, so they say taht the shuttle will be fine for this re-entry, and I don't know about everyone else, but I want the astonauts to come back safely. Seems to me that having to fill even more positions may make the little tykes with visions of their futures really take a look at being a doctor or a teacher, so they don't go up (or down) in flame. Well, that, and being glorified refuse handlers.
    • No one wants to see them hurt, you make it sound like there are people out there who do.

      The little tykes who will grow up and take real risks and work hard on spaceflight will do that whether or not another Shuttle comes down in flames. Real explorers, explore.

      The huge crowds of people holding their breath for the Shuttle is just a side-effect of media hype. NASA and especially the crews know the risks, have known the risks, and press on, because they are people who wish to do these things.

      Proving they're
      • Of course not, I was only wishing them the best, and at the time of my posting, I hadn't seen anybody doing the same. Although, in hindsight, it wasn't a good idea to attempt a joke after a moment of serious thought, such as I did. That's all the rest of that post was meant to be.

  • Very disappointed with the Shuttle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @07:02AM (#13263088) Homepage Journal
    Let's face it, the Shuttle design is inherently too complex to be safe. Only one heatshield tile breakage may cause the complete destruction of the Shuttle, and we are now starting to be aware ("we" as in, outsiders) of how fragile these tiles really are. I know space travel will always be more dangerous than any other kind, but I think the Shuttle is unnecessarily unsafe.

    In addition to this, it has proven to be MORE expensive to launch, per payload, compared to previous designs, not cheaper!

    The "upgrade" to the Shuttle reminds me a lot of the great push towards Windows NT (and away from UNIX) that went on a few years ago, even in companies where it was clear that such a move would be overall bad in the short and long term.
    • While I feel that this is just feeding the trolls... The shuttle itself is not inherently flawed as everyone seems to suspect. Losing one tile is not enough to take down the entire orbiter, either. Tiles are lost during re-entry quite regularly, with dozens to hundreds of the small tiles being replaced after every landing. The issue with Columbia was due to a piece of foam clipping a critical wing edge at relatively high speeds, a freak accident the of which falls mostly on the nature of unpredictable a
    • Could you please cite some engineering data showing that ANY system to go to Earth orbit is "inherently safe"?

      If that's what you're expecting, you'll always be wishing for it.

      When did this country fill up with a bunch of pansies that want everything safe?

      Life isn't safe. Get over it. Going to space is less-so.

      Your view of the Shuttle being this big dangerous system is both generically true, and in practice, false. Why? Because in practice, it's virtually impossible to build anything safer that can do wh
      • All I am saying that the Shuttle is expensive (per payload) and inherently less safe than the good-old Saturn V.
        • The good-old Saturn V only flew 11 manned missions, 10 if you count the original three stage design including CSM for Apollo. The eleventh was a two-stage mission for Skylab.

          One of the original 10 missions included the complete and utter failure of the Command Service Module, putting the crew's lives in great danger (Apollo 13, of course), which since we're talking about the Shuttle system as a whole -- we'll talk about the entire Saturn V stack as a whole and say -- it has no better/worse record than Shu
        • Additionally the 11th mission, the launch of Skylab, caused severe damage to the Lab during the launch, permanently crippling the station.

  • These questions must be asked: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @07:18AM (#13263108)
    I wish the astronauts a safe return however, once they are on the ground, these questions must be asked and answers obtained from the NASA bureaucracy:

    1: How can the USA spend close to 2 billion dollars and have so little to show for it? The shuttle underwent so many upgrades but all in the industry were surprised that stuff was falling of the shuttle.

    2: Would it be a better idea to let those who can do much with so little (read Russians), do our space work since they can do precisely that? After all, a good number of our industrial base is being out-sourced.
    • how did Buran the Russian shuttle`s Heat shield fair?
      • Only one test run on that stupid ass Russian shuttle, so it really wouldn't be conclusive anyhow.

        Doesn't matter how it faired, the shuttle has been a waste of money and space. Keep It Simple Stupid policy should be for rockets too, and the shuttle is hardly the simplest solution.
        • "Doesn't matter how it faired, the shuttle has been a waste of money and space. Keep It Simple Stupid policy should be for rockets too, and the shuttle is hardly the simplest solution."

          Well, frankly, the Shuttle is the solution to a number of problems. It is one vehicle that can act as a laboratory in space (especially with the SpaceLab module), it can service satellites in orbit (try to maintain the Hubble Space Telescope without a shuttle), it can retrieve thousands of pounds from space and return it to
      • Russia scrapped the Buran due to increasing cost. They departed from the use of a heat shield in the shuttle sense. They now use an ablative heat shield which has never failed.
      • how did Buran the Russian shuttle`s Heat shield fair?
        Poorly. Multiple damaged tiles, two areas of burn through.
  • And then stop this incredible waste! For what they spend on one totally pointless 'mission', real space science could do many probes. The 'bang for the buck' in the Shuttle program (literal bangs not included) has been total crap. The bloodthirsty NASCAR crowd, a pillar of support for the current stupidity administration, must be the core audience.
    • Dear Sir.

      I must congratulate you on managing, in just three sentences none the less, to go from critizing the shuttle program to making an uninformed stab at the current administration. This is slashdot-poetry at it's best. It is because of insights as yours that I still visit this website.

      My regards, from a crazy old european liberal(*)

      (*) as in Bastiat

  • Mr. Scott, turn the engines to Godspeed.
  • Enormously expensive, horribly unreliable, ill conceived. OBSOLETE. Far to big and stupid to fly. NASA's spruce goose The way forward is incremental improvement. The Chinese are using updated, but tried and true Russian technology. Imagine if the investment made in these enormoud lemons, was put into improving and updating Apollo technology. But now at the begining of the 3rd Millieum, the US is still throwing good billions after bad. Look at what NASA can achieve for the cost of just one of these usel
    • Also: Why did I not use the preveiw button ?

    • Re:When will we be rid of these pieces of junk. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Quadraginta ( 902985 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @09:53AM (#13263484)
      Imagine if the investment made in these enormoud lemons, was put into improving and updating Apollo technology.

      IIRC, Apollo was at the time seen by engineers as mostly a foolish PR-driven detour on the road to a sober and sensible aerospace vehicle, which would look a lot like -- the Space Shuttle! That is, the best general model of orbital access has always been considered to be some kind of rocketplane that would fly to space in controlled, gradually accelerating flight, and be piloted to a landing, and, of course, be re-usable. Hence Dyna-Soar, the X-15 project, and ultimately the Shuttle.

      This whole Mercury-Gemini-Apollo interregnum in which monkeys and men were stuck in cans on top of modified ICBMs, the candle was lit, and everyone prayed while hanging on for dear life was widely considered the unfortunate result of an irrational sudden national urgency to get a man in space any way at all following the embarassment of Sputnik and Gagarin.

      So, after we "won" the race to the Moon, the idea was that we should return to the unglamorous but sober business of building rocketplanes to orbit. Hence the Shuttle.

      By the way, when you speak of "improving" Apollo technology, just what the heck do you have in mind? Updating the OS on the computers? Using composites in the crew capsule skin? Reshaping the windows to improve the view? See, any easily imaginable "improvements" are the merest cosmetic fluff that won't take us one step closer to the real Grail of spaceflight, which is cheap spaceflight.

      After all, it's not hard for a major government to get a handful of national heroes to space every year. That isn't the issue at all. The problem is that, if space is ever to be anything more than a curiosity, it has to become easy and economical for your average firm to shoot up your average mid-level exec, a couple of average cubicle dwellers, and a few tons of hardware to support their mission, whatever it is. It's very hard to envision how going back to the Apollo model of 40 years ago is going to bring us significantly closer to that goal.
      • Be aware that there already has been a revolution in vehicle design in which basics like the rocket equation are respected and they result in cost/pound to LEO levels that are on the order of ten times better than either Saturn or most especially Shuttle. Stop thinking so narrowly about LEO- think about how you get to the moon or Mars. This thought process will show you that winged vehicles and the like are horrible solutions. They are optimized for the final 30 minutes of flight- not the months that you
    • "It's like watching someone spend three times the value of a new car, repairing some horrible rustbucket, and even after the money is spent, it will have a fraction of the safety features of a new vehicle."

      You obviouslly aren't aware that many of those "Repaired Rustbuckets" are now often worth 2-3 times the cost of the most expensive "new" car. These days 1969' automobiles are selling for 3 million and look to only gain in value. You obviouslly know nothing of automobiles nor the culture. I bet you drive a
    • Amen bro

      The best thing for NASA would be to have a nice transport accident like they drop the shuttle on to the floor of the VAB. Nobody dies and the decision to get rid of Shuttle is made by fate. This would finally force them to stop this nonsense. There are so many options available to them to replace the Shuttle they can scarcely do worse than the present situation. As it is they will piss away more millions to make the best foam covered tank that can be possibly be made- this is like making gold

  • Hate to nitpick the article, but there's a few inaccuracies:

    .... "and then sped away "

    I suspect they instead did a short blast from the attitude control thrusters. There's no way the Shuttle can "speed away" using those rather gentle thrusters. More like a gentle and slow and stately separation. .... "into the blackness."

    More likely this was done with full undiluted sunlight on one side, and rather bright reflection from the earth on the other side. Not exactly "blackness". "They also planned to

  • NASA should just say that as long as the crew wants to fly, the shuttle should fly and everybody else should shut up.

    I'm sure that the flight crew is perfectly able to judge the risks for themselves. This time they found lots of minor problems because they LOOKED harder than normal. Every single flight may have had similar problems that only someone who read the post flight technical reports knew about -- if then.

    Does the US really want to be paying China rent on a spacestation when they decide to go back

  • Hey, just to be ultra-nerdy, here's the Realvideo server info from NASA-TV's Realvideo streams:

    Server: Helix Server Version 9.0.3.916 (linux-2.2-libc6-i686-server)

    Thought you might like that, you Linux-loving OS bigots. ;)

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