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NASA STS-130 Report #01 4 a.m. CST Monday, Feb. 8, 2010
"After a one day delay due to clouds, space shuttle Endeavour launched at 3:14 a.m. CST Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a new module and an attached cupola for the International Space Station that should increase human understanding of our home planet. It was the last scheduled night launch in shuttle program history."
Print this articleWhoo.
Depression already?
Cheer up akear. Acceptance comes next! (According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross :)
In the U.K. we lost it ALL on 29 July 1971 but somehow we manage to space cadet on........
Don't worry perhaps us Brits will come to the rescue!
(God and the next Chancellor of the Exchequer willing.)
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon_overview.html
Another great job by a workforce down at the Cape that is largely going to be going on unemployment pretty soon...or working for foreign interests.
I have come to the conclusion that the Shuttle program is like an offensive lineman in football. When an offensive lineman does his job well, no one seems to notice. When they make a mistake, they draw attention and are given unwarranted criticism.
The Shuttle is the same way. It was never perfect, as it was built upon compromise literally before it ever got off of the drafting table. Still, it has performed extremely well through its long lifespan, given where it came from and what it was given to work for. Yes, I remember the 14 souls lost on two orbiters. Both incidents were system failures, both in engineering and management. But if we have rolled out over 120 of the venerable Saturn V's, how many of those would have been lost?
On paper, the Space Shuttle was supposed to be a 'game changing' partially reusable space craft that would dramatically reduce the cost of transporting people and payloads into orbit. And as many as 25 to 60 flights per year were contemplated. But the Space Shuttle never flew more than 9 times in one year and only flew 5 times last year.
The fact that it always had to be flown by humans meant that any fatal accident could substantial curtail its frequency of use. And it had its first fatal accident on its 26th flight. The Apollo/Saturn V nearly had its first fatal accident in just its 6th flight. Only 10 manned Saturn V missions were ever launched. While over 134 manned Space Shuttle missions have been launched. The Gemini program also nearly had its first fatal accident on its 6th flight. Space flight is dangerous.
Also, it turns out that refurbishing the SSME is just about as expensive as simply throwing them away. And the same appears to be true for the reusable SRBs. And, of course, the high maintenance of the fragile thermal tiles has been a problem right from the start. So the economic advantages of reusability in manned space flight so far appears to be a myth. Of course, we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't built the Space Shuttle in the first place.
The Space Shuttle is a remarkable machine that might have been a tremendous success if the Shuttle C had also been developed as a heavy lift companion back in the 1980s. This would have allowed NASA to launch multiple large instant space stations into orbit and large EDS vehicles for beyond LEO activities like returning to the Moon.
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel, it bears pointing out that the Saturn system cost three astronauts their lives before it ever rose an inch from the Cape's pads.
Space is dangerous indeed, as the Russians can tell you, and eventually, so will the Chinese, Indians and any other nation that dare place its men and women atop a rocket.
5 Comments
What is the difference if it launches are not. The program is finished.
Everything is rotten and awful...........