Start Saving To Buy Your Space Shuttle Now 197
stoolpigeon writes "With the retirement of the shuttle drawing near, NASA has begun to plan for museums that may want a used orbiter of their own. The Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA issued an RFI to US educational institutions, science museums and other organizations to see if they would be interested in the orbiter while also able to cover the estimated $42 million cost of 'safeing' the shuttle and transporting it."
Re:you would only be dissapointed (Score:5, Insightful)
Most military and government equipment only looks cool from afar. Up close, it looks like hammered dog meat.
Maybe it'll get some proper respect to the risks those people took climbing into it with several thousand tons of rocket fuel burning at their ass. I rather doubt many people would have the guts to fly the first airplane either once they realized they could put their foot through the wing without any effort.
I would buy it... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had the money, I'd buy the thing, set up a launch pad and a refueling station, and rent flights out to NASA. After all, they're retiring the shuttle five years too soon, so I figure I can make a few billion in rentals until the Orion starts up.
Except it sounds like Obama wants to kill [wsj.com] the Orion project.
I can't understand how they could be so keen on throwing $500 billion at failed banks and mortgage deadbeats, yet they have no problem cutting NASA's $30 billion budget. And then there's Obama's national health insurance which is bound to cost a few hundred billion, if not a trillion or two when it's up and running.
Here's an idea: don't bail out the banks that made bad loans and investments, and let the mortgage deadbeats be foreclosed. That's the way our system is supposed to work. And take about $100 billion of that bailout money and put it into R&D, including space exploration. In the medium to long term, we will reap much richer economic rewards for such an investment.
Re:you would only be dissapointed (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the expense to put it in orbit. It wouldn't cost as much to just to fly the thing.
"flight" is a relative term when dealing with the shuttle. It doesn't fly so much as fall in a controlled fashion.
Re:you would only be dissapointed (Score:3, Insightful)
And they consist of very dated (if effective) technology that tends to be utilitarian in design to begin with.
Well, not always dated, necessarily. Take the B-52, for example. Yeah, the airframe is old, but the avionics and control systems have been significantly upgraded since the planes were originally built. As I understand it, the space shuttle has also gone through multiple upgrade cycles.
Frankly, I don't know who to admire more - the engineers who build these things, or the engineers who have to go back over them and upgrade the designs.
Re:I would buy it... (Score:1, Insightful)
And then there's Obama's national health insurance which is bound to cost a few hundred billion, if not a trillion or two when it's up and running.
Here's the secret candidates hide while they're campaigning: The President doesn't really have the power to implement most of the things they are promising you.
Congress will never pass Obama's health insurance plan.
Re:I would buy it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have any idea how much it costs to turn around a shuttle for relaunch? Or to build the infrastructure capable of refurbishing and relaunching it?
Of course not. Anyone with even a passing familiarity of the overhaul each shuttle gets when it reaches the OPF knows that only Governments, Microsoft, and Google have the resources to launch a shuttle.
Boeing and Lockheed (A.k.a. USA) might have a passing chance at operating the shuttle privately, but with the vehicle's inherent limitations, dangers, and cost, no one would be crazy enough to lend them the operating capitol, including their parent companies.
Anytime I want to read pie-in-the-sky conjecture about the space program from people who have little to no idea what they're talking about, I come to Slashdot.
Re:leave it in space (Score:4, Insightful)
"If its on its last mission, and its never going to be relaunched, why bother bringing the thing all the way back, just to be decomissioned?"
Heat, power, air, maintainability. Not to mention that the ISS crew rotating out would need a way to get home and the trip is free.
The ISS was built to store/supply all these things for months at a time. The shuttle was never meant to.
Another factor - drag - shouldn't be discounted either. While the drag at ISS altitude is very tiny, it does exist.
Re:I would buy it... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't understand how they could be so keen on throwing $500 billion at failed banks and mortgage deadbeats, yet they have no problem cutting NASA's $30 billion budget. And then there's Obama's national health insurance which is bound to cost a few hundred billion, if not a trillion or two when it's up and running.
NASA isn't crucial for running the country nor for saving lives (directly).