STS-135 - The Final Space Shuttle Mission

LordSplodge said:
Stopped working in the office to watch that. Everybody was glued to my monitor. Such a sad day.

Godspeed Atlantis

My Facebook status: as we are descending into a world of petty wars, hatred for those who are different and Reality bloody TV.
Click to expand...

Well watching atlantis launch is pretty good reality TV. :p
 
That was amazing and beautiful, but also sad seeing the last launch of Atlantis and the last launch of NASA's Space Shuttle program.
 
I've been to Mach 2 at 58,000 feet, and I've seen a Space Shuttle launch, in person. Neither of these things are now possible. Why is it that we, collectively, can spend hundreds of billions fighting each other in futile wars, yet can't spend the fractions of that needed to advance our air and space capability. Progress? What progress?
 
Theres still progress. Obama speech backed manned space missions and wanted to create new jobs and technology, rather than just maintaining status quo. To support flight way past lower orbit.
Just a shame the budget can't do both. But then again by now we should have a much more international space agency.

I mean we have ISS, we have CERN, we have The ITER test reactor.
But we can't club together for a proper shuttle replacement. What happens if we want to do missions like capture a satellite or repair Hubble. There's no way the current alternatives(capsules) can do these sort of missions.
 
Last edited:
Merlin5 said:
Well watching atlantis launch is pretty good reality TV. :p
Click to expand...

I meant the type watched by mouth-breathers not good science TV!

AcidHell2 said:
Theres still progress. Obama speech backed manned space missions and wanted to creat new jobs and technology. To support flight way past lower orbit.
Just a shame the budget can't do both. But then again by now we should have a much more international space agency.
Click to expand...

Obama needs to put actions behind those words. NASA's budget is tiny. How about spending less on wars and more on Space, eh? There's plenty of money availible (look at the bank bailouts) but for some reason it isn't spent on space. yet space travel gives so many rewards (there is a massive list on the Internet!)
 
I agree but budgets have to be spent some how and military gives a huge return as well, far bigger employee and probably more technology.
It's one of the main reasons shuttle has been canned, freeing up over a billion to go towards the manned space project.
As one of the American people said, although it's a shame others can do ISS resupply and satellite launches. Leaving NASA free and with a bigger budget to do the real cutting edge work.
 
AcidHell2 said:
I agree but budgets have to be spent some how and military gives a huge return as well, far bigger employee and probably more technology.
It's one of the main reasons shuttle has been canned, freeing up over a billion to go towards the manned space project.
As one of the American people said, although it's a shame others can do ISS resupply and satellite launches. Leaving NASA free and with a bigger budget to do the real cutting edge work.
Click to expand...

Not really, the American economy is ****ed whatever happens. Which means they're ****ed if they do cut budgets and they're ****ed if they don't. I don't know about you, but if i'm going to be ****ed then i'd rather be ****ed with a **** off big space ship to boot ;)
 
AcidHell2 said:
Theres still progress. Obama speech backed manned space missions and wanted to create new jobs and technology, rather than just maintaining status quo. To support flight way past lower orbit.
Just a shame the budget can't do both.
Click to expand...

USA can't do either. Congress seem hell-bent on permanently neutering NASA. I can understand cuts given the US $14tn debt, if only they were actually cutting meaningfully. Closing NASA would barely even dent that deficit.

Right now, our best hope seems to lie with China. They're behaving like a Soviet-era superpower - we want a space presence, and we want it now.
 
Berserker said:
USA can't do either. Congress seem hell-bent on permanently neutering NASA. I can understand cuts given the US $14tn debt, if only they were actually cutting meaningfully. Closing NASA would barely even dent that deficit.

Right now, our best hope seems to lie with China. They're behaving like a Soviet-era superpower - we want a space presence, and we want it now.
Click to expand...

Yup our hopes lie in asia for the present, even India is talking about manned flight be 2016. Japan, assuming it's budget isn't too badly hit by the recent disaster, will hopefully feel competitive towards the Chinese efforts and push forwards as well.

I would like to think that the ESA might do something useful but for the time being any projects remain small although useful, until there can be a true inter-country large-scale project I don't think we'll see much of interest from us. And with European bureucracy I don't see that happening anytime soon.
 
It was always a fail design. What exactly does it do hat a capsule cannot, it looks like a plane which means it can land on a runway where as a capsule uses a parachute. not exactly that useful really.

Either use a capsule or develop a space plane that doesn't need massive rockets and is actually fully reuseable.

Still a cool bit of kit and has done some great stuff and I will miss it until something better comes along.
 
If this shuttle is the last one, and it is going to deliver 1years worth of supplies to the space station, how will the space station get supplies after this?!?
 
Andr3w said:
If this shuttle is the last one, and it is going to deliver 1years worth of supplies to the space station, how will the space station get supplies after this?!?
Click to expand...

We should have an FAQ :p

Soyuz will be used for human transfer, Progress and ESA's ATV will be used for resupply, also for boosting the station's orbit which used to be done by the Shuttle.
 
starfighter said:
It was always a fail design. What exactly does it do hat a capsule cannot, it looks like a plane which means it can land on a runway where as a capsule uses a parachute. not exactly that useful really.
Click to expand...

In one very big sense, yes it was. It limited us to 300 miles out, it wasn't truly reusable, it had major safety issues which were never fully resolved, and it didn't do what it set out to day - make space travel routine.

But it has capability that no capsule has, or is likely to have. Could a capsule repair HST? No. Can a capsule bring major external spares to the ISS? No. Can a capsule support extended scientific missions? Not really.

OK, all of these were designed to take advantage of STS, and all of them can be done other ways (JWST, if it happens, will be rocket launched, Mir, and parts of ISS, were robotically assembled), but nonetheless 132 (hopefully 133) successful missions counts for a lot. As does a 30-year history (most people here won't have lived without space shuttles).

There would be less of a problem if was a capsule to follow, but NASA has lost the plot. Yes, commercial can and will do the ISS resupply role, but NASA? What for them? They're announcing new stuff like capsules and heavy-lift rockets, but if they don't have the money or key personnel to make them happen, that's all utterly irrelevant.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom