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shuttle launch
- Thread starter bilgerat
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Rick Alexander
Senior Member
bet you could grill a burger...
under that puppy in a heart beat. I'd love to go see one of those things go up in person one day. I'd do it if they could get a little more reliable on launch dates.
under that puppy in a heart beat. I'd love to go see one of those things go up in person one day. I'd do it if they could get a little more reliable on launch dates.
dixie
Senior Member
I'm worried
about them, there's some kind of filler hangin out between some of the tiles and I heard that NASA told them to try to remove it or pull it out, GAWD, don't any of them know what happens when you pull a string like that, they're gonna have them tiles all over the place!!!!!!
about them, there's some kind of filler hangin out between some of the tiles and I heard that NASA told them to try to remove it or pull it out, GAWD, don't any of them know what happens when you pull a string like that, they're gonna have them tiles all over the place!!!!!!
Meriwether Mike
Senior Member
Some duct tape and bondo would fix it right up. 
H
HT2
Guest
Bil..........
Nice Picture Bud!!!!!!!!!!
It's just hard to believe somethin' like that can git up in the air that fast!!!!!
Nice Picture Bud!!!!!!!!!!
It's just hard to believe somethin' like that can git up in the air that fast!!!!!
spaceman
Senior Member
Shuttle Launch
I read this article thought i would share:
The case for space
Skepticism falls away in wake of shuttle's launch
Rocky Mountain News, Denver (Opinion Page)
By Greg Dobbs
CAPE CANAVERAL - Despite the problem that developed with detached foam insulation tiles, you'd have to be brain-dead not to have been impressed, let alone captivated, with Tuesday morning's blindingly beautiful blastoff of Space Shuttle Discovery. And you'd have to be inhumanly cynical not to appreciate the human ingenuity that figured out how to propel it, and guide it, to the orbiting International Space Station, its cosmic target. It makes you proud to be an American.
But plenty of Americans - smart, informed Americans who are passionate about exploration - are less than entirely inspired by Discovery. Not just because its 1970s technology seems outdated, which might help explain the trouble with the tiles, but because its mission seems outdated. Robert Zubrin, president of the Colorado-based Mars Society, recently told PBS, "Flying 'round and 'round in shuttles, watching ants function in zero gravity . . . is not worth sending humans into space."
Or so it seems. We don't get any sense of exploration anymore; there isn't even much to make us say, "Gee whiz!" Discovery launched exactly 36 years and six days after the first men landed on the moon, yet the awe Americans felt when Neil Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," has been replaced by . . . well, by ants functioning in zero gravity. You know Armstrong. But can you name a single shuttle astronaut today?
More important, can you name a single advance, a single innovation thanks to the shuttle? Probably not. Yet you surely have experienced advancements the space program has brought us. For starters: Tang! And if that doesn't send your heart spinning, how about the Dustbuster, originally designed by Black & Decker at the behest of NASA to help our space voyagers collect stone and soil samples from the surface of the moon? And polarized sunglasses, originally created as visors by Foster Grant to protect astronauts from ultraviolet rays.
The best acoustic guitars these days come from technology devised to absorb vibrations in space. Not to mention spinoffs like insulation and smoke detectors for our homes, flame retardant materials for firefighters, even the shock-absorbing soles in athletic shoes, which were developed for man to walk on the moon.
But none of that is as significant as the medical advances we can attribute to the space program: laser eye surgery, heart pumps, programmable pacemakers. Or the microtechnology in cell phones, iPods, and the laptop computer on which I'm writing this column. A long view shows, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, that small steps in space have indeed led to lofty leaps on Earth.
Still, I have been among those Americans uninspired by space travel today, looking for what's ahead of us, not what's behind us. So to each astronaut and other NASA boosters I interviewed here, I asked the same question: What's the value of watching ants functioning, or sand settling, or even tumors growing in the weightless environment of space?
The answers have deleted my doubts. What they amount to is, we get a third dimension. A new dimension. A chance to see things without the crushing impact of gravity. Understanding sand and soil in "zero-G" can help us understand the ground under our feet, and build structures more resistant to collapse. Growing and studying experimental tumors in zero-G can facilitate the treatment of devastating tumors in the human body.
And issues they're still trying to tackle for space travel can have implications for us all. Solving the predicament of losing bone density and muscle mass in space can help solve osteoporosis here on Earth. Overcoming the hazard of radiation in space will probably mean an infallible method for cataract correction on Earth. And the ants? Well, I never did get a good answer about the ants.
But I did get a good answer to the bigger question I was asking: What's left? Ironically, it didn't come from someone at NASA, but rather, from Laura Shepard Churchley, the Denver-area daughter of the late Alan Shepard, America's first pioneer in space. She said, "We don't know what's out there unless we go there."
And that's the point. The advances to date weren't even on the drawing boards in the original plans for space travel. They were a response, by science and industry, to the needs of NASA. (Parenthetically, the Soviet space program required equivalent innovation, but behind the Iron Curtain there were very few spinoffs for the consumer, because the consumer's needs weren't on the communists' radar.)
Another answer was equally obvious. One astronaut mentioned the clipper ships of centuries past, whose crews sailed for far horizons with technology as advanced in their time as spaceships are in ours, to bring back many exotic goods and ideas previously unknown on their side of the planet.
Who knows what we'll pick up when we venture even farther in space?
It has bothered me that we spend billions in space - $1.4 billion just since the catastrophe of Columbia to try to make the shuttle safe enough to fly again - while we're short by billions here at home. But I've also begun to appreciate the incalculable benefits, not only yesterday's but tomorrow's. After all, if President Kennedy had drawn up a list 45 years ago of the concrete benefits of a moon landing, he probably never would have set it in motion, and we might never have gone.
Getting this shuttle home, and scuttling future flights until the tile problem can be fixed, proves that NASA's post-Columbia safeguards are working. I just hope the postponement doesn't last long. There is something stirring about seeing man stretch his resources, and his intellect, and his courage, to the limit.
Everything from the calculations that guide Discovery to the power that ignited it are still almost inconceivable. As is our whole future in space, which I now believe is good reason to keep going, not good reason to stop.
Former News media columnist Greg Dobbs covered the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery for the high-definition satellite TV network HDNet.
I read this article thought i would share:
The case for space
Skepticism falls away in wake of shuttle's launch
Rocky Mountain News, Denver (Opinion Page)
By Greg Dobbs
CAPE CANAVERAL - Despite the problem that developed with detached foam insulation tiles, you'd have to be brain-dead not to have been impressed, let alone captivated, with Tuesday morning's blindingly beautiful blastoff of Space Shuttle Discovery. And you'd have to be inhumanly cynical not to appreciate the human ingenuity that figured out how to propel it, and guide it, to the orbiting International Space Station, its cosmic target. It makes you proud to be an American.
But plenty of Americans - smart, informed Americans who are passionate about exploration - are less than entirely inspired by Discovery. Not just because its 1970s technology seems outdated, which might help explain the trouble with the tiles, but because its mission seems outdated. Robert Zubrin, president of the Colorado-based Mars Society, recently told PBS, "Flying 'round and 'round in shuttles, watching ants function in zero gravity . . . is not worth sending humans into space."
Or so it seems. We don't get any sense of exploration anymore; there isn't even much to make us say, "Gee whiz!" Discovery launched exactly 36 years and six days after the first men landed on the moon, yet the awe Americans felt when Neil Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," has been replaced by . . . well, by ants functioning in zero gravity. You know Armstrong. But can you name a single shuttle astronaut today?
More important, can you name a single advance, a single innovation thanks to the shuttle? Probably not. Yet you surely have experienced advancements the space program has brought us. For starters: Tang! And if that doesn't send your heart spinning, how about the Dustbuster, originally designed by Black & Decker at the behest of NASA to help our space voyagers collect stone and soil samples from the surface of the moon? And polarized sunglasses, originally created as visors by Foster Grant to protect astronauts from ultraviolet rays.
The best acoustic guitars these days come from technology devised to absorb vibrations in space. Not to mention spinoffs like insulation and smoke detectors for our homes, flame retardant materials for firefighters, even the shock-absorbing soles in athletic shoes, which were developed for man to walk on the moon.
But none of that is as significant as the medical advances we can attribute to the space program: laser eye surgery, heart pumps, programmable pacemakers. Or the microtechnology in cell phones, iPods, and the laptop computer on which I'm writing this column. A long view shows, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, that small steps in space have indeed led to lofty leaps on Earth.
Still, I have been among those Americans uninspired by space travel today, looking for what's ahead of us, not what's behind us. So to each astronaut and other NASA boosters I interviewed here, I asked the same question: What's the value of watching ants functioning, or sand settling, or even tumors growing in the weightless environment of space?
The answers have deleted my doubts. What they amount to is, we get a third dimension. A new dimension. A chance to see things without the crushing impact of gravity. Understanding sand and soil in "zero-G" can help us understand the ground under our feet, and build structures more resistant to collapse. Growing and studying experimental tumors in zero-G can facilitate the treatment of devastating tumors in the human body.
And issues they're still trying to tackle for space travel can have implications for us all. Solving the predicament of losing bone density and muscle mass in space can help solve osteoporosis here on Earth. Overcoming the hazard of radiation in space will probably mean an infallible method for cataract correction on Earth. And the ants? Well, I never did get a good answer about the ants.
But I did get a good answer to the bigger question I was asking: What's left? Ironically, it didn't come from someone at NASA, but rather, from Laura Shepard Churchley, the Denver-area daughter of the late Alan Shepard, America's first pioneer in space. She said, "We don't know what's out there unless we go there."
And that's the point. The advances to date weren't even on the drawing boards in the original plans for space travel. They were a response, by science and industry, to the needs of NASA. (Parenthetically, the Soviet space program required equivalent innovation, but behind the Iron Curtain there were very few spinoffs for the consumer, because the consumer's needs weren't on the communists' radar.)
Another answer was equally obvious. One astronaut mentioned the clipper ships of centuries past, whose crews sailed for far horizons with technology as advanced in their time as spaceships are in ours, to bring back many exotic goods and ideas previously unknown on their side of the planet.
Who knows what we'll pick up when we venture even farther in space?
It has bothered me that we spend billions in space - $1.4 billion just since the catastrophe of Columbia to try to make the shuttle safe enough to fly again - while we're short by billions here at home. But I've also begun to appreciate the incalculable benefits, not only yesterday's but tomorrow's. After all, if President Kennedy had drawn up a list 45 years ago of the concrete benefits of a moon landing, he probably never would have set it in motion, and we might never have gone.
Getting this shuttle home, and scuttling future flights until the tile problem can be fixed, proves that NASA's post-Columbia safeguards are working. I just hope the postponement doesn't last long. There is something stirring about seeing man stretch his resources, and his intellect, and his courage, to the limit.
Everything from the calculations that guide Discovery to the power that ignited it are still almost inconceivable. As is our whole future in space, which I now believe is good reason to keep going, not good reason to stop.
Former News media columnist Greg Dobbs covered the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery for the high-definition satellite TV network HDNet.
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