NASA Shuttle Discovery Set To Buzz Washington, DC 65
coondoggie writes "Barring bad weather, NASA said the space shuttle Discovery mounted atop the space agency's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft will make a series of low passes — 1,500 ft. — around parts of Washington DC on April 17 between 10-11 am eastern daylight time." Discovery will be on its way to the Smithsonian from Florida; this is a rare chance in the post-shuttle era for people to still see a shuttle in flight; I'm planning a marathon drive to reach the parking lot at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center for what NASA's calling Shuttle Fly-In Day, in hopes of catching a glimpse.
Showing off what was possible in times long gone (Score:1, Insightful)
The technology of the Space Shuttle is ancient today, to say the least. It goes back all the way to the 1970ies, a time incomparable to the state of America today. Only those who can't imagine a better future, glorify the past.
Shuttles in Science Fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"...to still see a shuttle in flight". (Score:4, Insightful)
Once SpaceX actually put someone into orbit, then lets talk - but trumpeting them now is just getting ahead of yourself.
Re:Seems foolish... (Score:4, Insightful)
At 30,000 feet you have a bit more time to recover and glide than you do at 1500.
Re:Showing off what was possible in times long gon (Score:4, Insightful)
They tested the mirror - the problem was that they inserted some pin backwards, and the tests were done wrong. Something was in the wrong position for the tests.
Sure, you could have loaded 50 backup gyros - assuming you knew that the gyro was going to be the part that would fail. Could you launch with 50 backups of every part that could possibly fail?
Hindsight is generally more accurate than foresight, or at least better in assigning blame. Plus accurate foresight is seldom credited.
The alternatives are:
1 - Design for on-orbit repair.
2 - Design with the correct backups and on-orbit sparing.
3 - Design it cheap, to just be replaced.
Pick one, and generally everyone who picked one of the other two will criticize your choice.