Last NASA Spacewalk Marks End of Era 80
An anonymous reader writes "Astronauts embarked on the final space walk of the U.S. shuttle era at the International Space Station, where Atlantis is docked on the final mission of the 30-year U.S. program. Atlantis carries a year's worth of supplies — more than 3,600 kilograms — for the International Space Station. It will also bring up a system that will be used by Canada's Dextre robot to test a system for refuelling and repairing spacecraft and satellites in space."
just to be clear (Score:3, Informative)
i think that headline might be misleading. just want to be clear: this is not the last ISS spacewalk. The ISS has an airlock and can perform spacewalks with not shuttle support. (In fact, this spacewalk was actually carried out by ISS crewmembers and not shuttle crewmembers). This is, however, the last spacewalk while the shuttle is docked. Others will not have the extra shuttle assets to lean on.
Re:More than the end of the shuttle program. (Score:3, Informative)
Robert Goddard independently invented liquid-fueled rockets before Werner von Braun. The problem for Dr. Goddard was that the U.S. in the 1930s was in the middle of a great depression and wasn't ruled over by a maniacal dictator bent on ruling half the world. Dr. Goddard had to finance his research from private donations. Werner von Braun on the other hand, had the backing of the Nazi government and the German Army. It's no wonder that von Braun built bigger, better rockets than Dr. Goddard.
To say that the Americans were just a bunch of idiots who needed German help to get anything off the ground is just plain wrong. In 1945, the Germans were further along than the Americans. The German scientists who came over to America helped speed up the space program, but they weren't the only ones who made contributions. The same can be said about the Russian space program. The Russians had some German engineers and some V-2 rockets, but the R-7 rocket which launched Sputnik was developed by Russian engineers.