Discovery Lands in Florida 83
duh P3rf3ss3r writes "As reported by the BBC, the space shuttle Discovery safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2232 GMT. Discovery's 13-day mission is being called a success after astronauts undertook four space walks to install new wiring and to do battle with a recalcitrant solar panel. The next scheduled flight is the Atlantis shuttle in March. A video chronicle of the mission, including the landing, is available at NASA's video gallery."
3 shuttles to LEO a year: What a fucking waste... (Score:2, Insightful)
White Sands is a last resort (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people will find the negative in anything. Nothing wrong with a safe, routine KSC landing. For the record the shuttle has an 1100 mile cross range. It was in a highly inclined orbit, so its landing opportunities were limited. Also there are only a handful of runways in the entire world that can handle it, none of which are equiped with crane needed to place the orbiter on top of the carrier aircraft. A White Sands landing would have added 2 months to Discovery's turnaround for the next launch. If you really want to see a shuttle landing at White Sands, dig up the video from STS 3.
Re:3 shuttles to LEO a year: What a fucking waste. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Because you obviously do not understand the complexity and (gasp) dangers still present in space flight."
Of course I do.
"When Columbia burned up,"
Proving NASA's inablility to do the job...
"remember the cries for a moratorium on manned space travel?"
From fucking idiots. What does that have to do with me.
" The tortoise won the race, while the hare died in a fire."
You mean Apollo 1, right? The pad fire?
Hey, how could we get from the Earth to the Moon in less than a decade, but NOT GO BACK THERE NOW IF WE HAD TO?
"How come YOU aren't leading the charge into spaceflight, if its so easy?"
Getting NASA out of the process is the first step. Why are you resistant to progressing past the "Apollo Engineer Perpetual Employment Program?", which is now the "Shuttle Engineer Perpetual Employment Program", or maybe the "ISS Engineer Perpetual Employment Program".
How about DEVELOPING some new decent hardware. For the BILLION DOLLARS they waste on a shuttle shot to just LEO, they could spread it around to some hungry emergent tech companies, and see some REAL RESULTS for our investment.
I'm thinking, why do you equate the rightful criticism of NASA to stopping going to space?
NASA is NOT the only way to outer space. In fact, we've seen that NASA is anything but.
Re:You can (Score:2, Insightful)
On another note - I may be a cynic, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast top billing, world shaking, future of space travel, front page news can turn into a slownewsday tag on slashdot.
not so long ago, the discussion would be on if we would ever see the shuttle land again - and if it would be decades before any privately owned spacecraft achieved the same feat.
slownewsday???? (Score:2, Insightful)