Crew For Final Scheduled Space Shuttle Mission Selected 108
Toren Altair writes "NASA has assigned the crew for the last scheduled space shuttle mission, targeted to launch in September 2010. The flight to the International Space Station will carry a pressurized logistics module to the station. Veteran shuttle commander and retired Air Force Col. Steven W. Lindsey will command the eight-day mission, designated STS-133. Air Force Col. Eric A. Boe will serve as the pilot; it will be his second flight as a shuttle pilot. Mission Specialists are shuttle mission veteran Air Force Col. Benjamin Alvin Drew, Jr., and long-duration spaceflight veterans Michael R. Barratt, Army Col. Timothy L. Kopra and Nicole P. Stott."
Reader Al points out other NASA news that the space agency's engineers have been testing a sleek new lunar rover that will be part of their eventual return to the moon. A video of the rover in action has been posted as well.
Darn. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Darn. (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing now, as the "space race" seems to be ending with usa, is who will take the lead with space exploration. chinese, russians or private companies?
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Another option would be no one.
Re:Darn. (Score:4, Informative)
However it seems like theres lots of interest and activity in private space flights currently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies [wikipedia.org]
Interesting article about them [spaceref.com]
Several other small private aerospace companies not competing for Ansari X Prize are also making news. According to Aviation Week, Bigelow Aerospace, who are developing inflatable space modules, plan to announce shortly the creation of yet another prize competition, this one for $50 million, called Americaâ(TM)s Space Prize that will go to whoever develops a spacecraft that will service their inflatable space modules.
And yet another company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), plan to launch their first partly reusable rocket Falcon 1 early next year. In developing their space program, SpaceX has created new technology, which they claim allows them to reduce the cost of launch four times lower than their nearest competitor and increase reliability.
This along with Tickets On Sale In Sweden For Space Tourism, Starting In 2012 [slashdot.org].
Re:Darn. (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes the space race is long dead, but space exploration is booming like never before. There are less big things like landing on the moon, but make no mistake space exploration is so much more important than getting a human onto another lump of rock and getting him quickly back.
Re:Darn. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually that is a Canadian robotic arm.
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Indeed it is. You can tell because it has a hockey stick attachment for knocking away meteoroids and space beavers.
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So yes the space race is long dead, but space exploration is booming like never before.
Space exploration isn't pissing around in low Earth orbit. Which is what humanity has done for the past 37 years.
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"Space exploration isn't pissing around in low Earth orbit. Which is what humanity has done for the past 37 years."
Got a warp drive?
Because without one, there's nowhere much we *can* go that's got a human-friendly biosphere.
In the meantime, we've been sending robots to lots of robot-friendly places and getting lots of nice data back.
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Indians are more efficient at technical jobs like software engineering
Really? I suppose it depends on the target industry sector you're talking about, and how much you care about the quality of the end product. While India enjoys a reputation for low cost development in terms of outsourced hourly rates, that reputation does not extend to the quality and usability of the systems produced in many cases. Thus, the actual delivery time and total project cost winds up being grossly miscalculated at the outset.
Note that this doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, but it
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Now that America is officially a dead nation...
The rich that destroyed the US Economy and middle class will use the money to make rockets in china.
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Re:Darn. (Score:5, Funny)
What are you talking about 7, I'm sure we can cram 536 (Congress 534 + President and Vice President) politicians on the last shuttle flight, and then have it explode.
536, cause I think it is safe to say most /.ers would want to keep Ron Paul around...
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Um... if the entire line of presidential succession, plus Congress except Ron Paul is going to be killed in a freak Shuttle accident... I want to be the one to go in his place. I love him for his counterbalancing influence on the government we have; I would not want to live in a country where he was the government.
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Presidential succession goes from Prez to VP, to Speaker of the House, to President Pro Tempore of the Senate, to Secretary of State. Now, if we loaded the Prez, VP, & all the Congresscritters up on the Shuttle & blow it up, the 'next one standing' is Hillary Clinton.
So, think very carefully about that idea...
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Just make sure not to send any telephone cleaners up there with the politicians. We may need them later.
from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:5, Informative)
For that matter, other than the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 fire/explosion (and maybe the computer faults on 11) - most people aren't even aware of the multitude and magnitude of the failures experienced during Apollo.
For example:
Severe vibration were also encountered on 11 and 12 but never reached dangerous levels. A fix was available in time for 13's flight, but management elected not to delay the flight to retrofit the fix into the booster.
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Don't forget - Apollo 12, struck by lightning on launch.
Gemini 8, near fatal spin. Armstrong and Scott came damn close to blacking out, which would essentially have been a death sentence.
Re:from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
Arguably, the STS program has contributed more to space science than Apollo did. Not to say that we didn't learn many useful and valuable things from Apollo, but Apollo was about a destination, STS was about doing useful stuff in space. We'll reap the benefits from both for a long time to come.
I personally believe that the loss of astronauts and cosmonauts in the last 50 years has not gone in vain. They gave their lives for their country, their countrymen, their planet and for science. Because of them we have global satellite communications, GPS, advanced materials, highly developed engineering, improved cosmology and a vision of the heavens we only dreamed of.
They knew the risks and they took them gladly - they are heros, every last one of them.
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Once we get past the Great Observatories, there really isn't much contribution to spac
Re:from the make-it-memorable dept. (Score:4, Informative)
Don't worry, I'm sure in time the shuttle will be remembered as a white elephant rather than a death trap
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Gemini 8 had the crew closer to death than did Apollo 13.
Thank you for playing (Score:4, Funny)
Those would-be astronauts who were not chosen are welcome to join the crews of Apollo 18, 19, and 20 in the lounge, where they will receive some lovely parting gifts.
For the first time in almost 50 years... (Score:2)
... the USA won't have the ability to put its own astronauts into orbit by choice (as opposed to by circumstance after shuttle accidents).
Way to go NASA.
*sigh*
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Way to go lack of public interest and dwindling funding.
*sigh*
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Re:For the first time in almost 50 years... (Score:4, Informative)
There was a long stretch between the end of Apollo and the first Shuttle where America didn't have the capability of getting an astronaut to orbit.
YARRRRR (Score:2)
Too bad "Cash for Clunkers" has ended... (Score:3, Funny)
...they could have traded the Shuttle in towards a nice Hybrid.
The crew should be VERY afraid! (Score:4, Funny)
That's is always how it starts. The last scheduled missions are always the ones that get lost in black holes, freak accidents where they get frozen or some such then they all appear in the future with every one being apes or something or thrust into another dimension.
I DON'T want to be them! Something's going to happen!
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As we all learned from the documentary Event Horizon [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/], the scientific data recovered has to be destroyed in order to save any remaining personnel, and the emotional and physical effects on crewmembers traveling through "unusual" regions of time or space involves hematemesis, self-disfiguration by manual removal of the eyeballs and subsequent severing of the optic nerve bundles and cauterization and suturing of the eyelids, and mumbling in classical Latin while having a
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I just hope that nobody on the crew is only 3 days away from retirement.
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Great! We got a slick lunar rover! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not if Congress has its way. It'll get the ax in favor of more entitlements for the rich & not famous.
Robert Heinlein once said that humans will colonise space, but not to count on them speaking American English.
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Ares V is supposed to be shuttle derived, however not a single major part is transferrable between the shuttle and Ares V. It uses a 10 metre diameter external fuel tank instead of the shuttle's 8.4m external tank (ET). The equipment in the factory that makes the ET cannot handle that diameter. So the entire factory needs to be re-tooled. The barge that is used to transfer the tank from the factory to the vehicle assembly building also cannot handle t
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Also many people say "no not Direct, go for Jupiter or any number of competing designs. Among the unfaithful there are so many bazaars all selling such different things that any individual competitor's impact is diminished.
When the people who built the Shuttle tell me they think the Ares V is the way to go that carries a lot of credibility.
If Carmack says he has a great rocket, no
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Now if we only had a rocket to get it to the moon...
Um, there's plenty of US rockets available to get it to the Moon, just none built by NASA. It's also worth noting that all of the non-NASA rockets cost less than a billion dollars to develop, compared to the >$35 billion projected development cost for NASA's competing Ares I, which will have nearly identical capabilities to its competitors:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/deltaiv.htm [astronautix.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV [wikipedia.org]
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/atlas [astronautix.com]
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You mean the Ares I that is being built by ATK and Boeing? Oh, wait, those are private companies too. In fact, Boeing is also responsible for two of the "private" rockets on your list.
You really need to read up on the contracting process behind the Ares I and how it's fundamentally different from things like the EELVs.
This crew (Score:2)
And yeah I'm bitter that they didn't pick me.
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Not really. Many astronauts get assigned that sort of managerial duty between flight assignments. You gotta keep them busy when they aren't training for a flight. Three of them are recent/current residents of the ISS.
As for science, it's not a science flight. In fact, the last science flight was STS-107. It's a final delivery flight to the station. So the crew composition makes sense for the tasks.
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Middle management, yeah. But not department heads. Col Lindsey is chief of the Astronaut's Office. Col Drew is currently Director of Operations at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Astrograd.
Back to the dark ages... (Score:2)
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Nope.
China and India will own the stars.
Progess (Score:3, Insightful)
Retiring the Shuttle programe is called technological progress!?! Look at us mere mortals still flying supersonically in Concorde. Oh wait, now we all have to use slow subsonic 747's and Airbus'. THAT'S progress for you.
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Look at us mere mortals still flying supersonically in Concorde. Oh wait, now we all have to use slow subsonic 747's and Airbus'. THAT'S progress for you.
Just because we are capable of supersonic flight doesn't necessarily mean it is viable economically. Let's use cars for example.
Many cars nowadays can reach speeds in the 100+ mph range. Few of us ever reach those speeds in a car, and even fewer of us manage to make long trips at that speed. Sure, it'd be nice, but the fuel/tire/maintenance costs at that speed might not make it worthwhile for most people.
I think the Concorde would have done much better if random people here in the States hadn't complai
Re:Progess (Score:4, Insightful)
Technological progress doesn't always equal "going faster".
We don't _need_ supersonic aircraft for passenger use, the public didn't want to pay for it, so Concorde is history. We need to haul people in bulk at low cost per seat, low fuel expense, and with as little pollution as practical.
We don't _need_ to hurry putting _people_ in space, because the rest of our supporting technology can be developed less expensively (and without the loss-multiplier effect when expensive manned systems crash). We do _need_ robots and to develop remotely-manned systems for use on and off-world. Never send a human to do a machines job. Just as we use ROVs under the ocean because the environment is hostile and they are cheaper than manned systems, so we should deal with space exploration. The purpose of space exploration is to learn about the universe. The purpose of human sustainment experiments is only to learn how to sustain humans. These things are not the same.
The commercial world will eventually develop ways to send rich tourists to space, which is perfectly appropriate.
NASA should be doing pure research, not romantic tourism. So what if other countries put up more people sooner? We do the very same thing they did with our previous research and exploit it later.
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We don't _need_ supersonic aircraft for passenger use, the public didn't want to pay for it, so Concorde is history.
That, and the fact that it was banned from flying supersonically over the US (ostensibly for environmental reasons), reducing the number of routes it could take dramatically, and the fact that it had that crash in Paris. Plus it was an Anglo-French project and the British and French flag-carriers were the only ones who could ever be persuaded to fly the damn things.
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I'm British too, before you start blaming me for the ills of our relationship with America!
Concorde had one crash, but flew so few flights with so few people that statistically it was more dangerous than the 747. In addition, the safety record was blemished by other major incidents that were hushed up by the airlines and airports. I know this sounds like a conspiracy, but my source on this was Private Eye at the time, who pointed out that Concorde had previously suffered the same problem as caused the Paris
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We don't _need_ supersonic aircraft for passenger use, the public didn't want to pay for it, so Concorde is history. We need to haul people in bulk at low cost per seat, low fuel expense, and with as little pollution as practical.
That's not the correct lesson. The public was willing to pay for faster service, it wasn't willing to pay enough to generate sufficient profit (I gather not enough to cover costs even) for Concorde. That's not the same as "didn't want to pay for it". Suppose hypothetically that a next generation supersonic transport has exactly the same costs per seat as a 747 and similar quality of service. Are people going to pay a little extra to cost significant time off of their long flights? Yes. The problem was simpl
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The shuttle costs ~500M per flight... Thats one expensive first class ticket.... Getting back to normal people is
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Flying was becoming "common" in the 60s, but it wasn't till the late 60s that the "common" man was flying anywhere over a decent stretch of water. It was still expensive. In the 80s my Father flew often to LA from NZ. It cost about 2000NZD. Today you can get the same flight for about the same price. Considering inflation, its *much* cheaper to fly these days. And thats th
Cue voice over (Score:2)
"Space, the Final frontier...
Its last mission, to Boldly go where no man will go again.
I have the feeling.... (Score:2)
This is not how the Face of Boe got his name.
Or maybe so.
The rover is cool and real (Score:2)
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Viewing the Congresscritters in office at the moment, I tend to believe that it won't go through. The 'Spacer' faction is just too small to defend the budgets.
What Shuttle could have given us was a delivery of a couple 'transfer stations', modular components for a small stat
'analog' environment? (Score:2)
Retirement? (Score:2)
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Hi Mr Armstrong this is OnStar (Score:2)
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Call me sexist but... (Score:3, Funny)
Nicole P. Stott - Uhm, oh yes indeed.
FULLY qualified, smart, intelligent and yet still Saaaamokin!
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Arr! And she be just my age, too!
Space exploration has been happening... (Score:1)
odds (Score:1)
The entire crew will face odds of about 1 in 200 of returning on a soyuz or being killed due to a catastrophic failure.
The shuttle is great and all but really has a few serious weaknesses so its time to move on.
Lunar-Electric Rover (Score:3, Funny)
TFA says the rover is Lunar-Electric. I assume this means it's a hybrid that runs partly on electricity and partly on lunacy.
- RG>
I dare them... (Score:3, Funny)
I dare the pilot to do a barrel roll on reentry.