Endeavour's Launch Once More Delayed

schleprock63 writes "NASA has delayed the launch of Endeavour due to inclement weather, mostly lightning. According to NASA, 'Cumulus clouds and lightning violated rules for launching Endeavour because of weather near the Shuttle Landing Facility. The runway would be needed in the unlikely event that Endeavour would have to make an emergency landing back at Kennedy. Endeavour's next launch attempt is 6:51 p.m. EDT Monday. NASA TV coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m.'"

Re:Whatever happened to replacements for the shutt

[camperdave]

When last I heard, the proposals being considered represented a potential 30% cost reduction, and they were looking for better.

The DIRECT team has presented their Jupiter design before the Augustine panel and the Aerospace Corporation who are going to do an "apples to apples" comparison of the various launch vehicles. Hopefully these panels will choose the Jupiter launch vehicle as the most practical way forward.

Re:I bet that the delay flights witch...

[Anonymous Coward]

All true, but I bet the astronauts wish they had a "just launch this fucker" button they could push to override the worry warts in mission control.
Lightning at 20 miles, who cares! Lets get on with it!

Re:Whatever happened to replacements for the shutt

[dicobalt]

Blowing people up into space is not spaceflight. It's hard to do and it's dangerous yea - that's my point. It is not by any means spaceflight. The vehicles always have some problem, they are incredibly delicate for something that gets mashed around with such vibrations and g forces. What if your car needed to be 80% gastank and you could only drive for a few minutes? The vehicles are so laughable in their usefulness. Now it's not like we have any alternatives, what I am saying is there needs to be some. Rockets sure as hell are not going to be the answer to a space age. Does any space agency take this fact seriously? Do they try to come up with new stuff? It would be a primary mission I would think. NASA and co should be the ones operating colliders trying to come up with basic research and answers to the physical problems.

Re:Whatever happened to replacements for the shutt

[FLaSh SWT]

your average laptop has considerably more computing power than the first shuttles had, and while the electronics have been updated, the engineering behind the overall superstructure, propulsion, etc are equally dated.

We were interviewing Buzz Aldrin on Friday and he brought up the fact that everyone mentions how his cell phone has more processing power than the computer they had on Apollo 11. He said something to the effect that he'd still take that Apollo computer over a newer off-the-shelf computer because it was built specifically for the job and they knew every little thing about it. (I was taking photos not conducting the interview so that isn't exact but is pretty close.)