Viewing 36 posts - 1 through 36 (of 36 total)
  • Last ever Shuttle launch
  • crazy-legs
    Full Member

    Never mind the TdF, who’s watching the last ever launch of the Shuttle? I’ve found a neat Google Earth app which follows it from launch:
    http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/shuttle_google_earth.html

    Yes, it’s geeky. I don’t care!

    Pete
    Free Member

    T minus 9 mins and holding…

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    is it on tv in the UK?

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    soma_rich
    Free Member
    Kit
    Free Member
    ps44
    Free Member

    An emotional day for me as I worked on the first few launches. Seems like yesterday.

    MulletusMaximus
    Free Member

    28 minutes

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    Thanks

    deadlydarcy
    Free Member

    It’s on CNN.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Lovely HD feed here.
    http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

    See that countdown clock they keep showing?
    http://bit.ly/nAun1O

    (that’s me, in 2005)

    sunnrider
    Free Member

    thanks for the links, just switched over from the tdf

    soma_rich
    Free Member

    They are full of themselves aren’t they!

    andyl
    Free Member

    ooo didn’t know we had CNN. How nice to have news without any mention of NoTW and phone hacking.

    MulletusMaximus
    Free Member

    T minus 2 mins

    soma_rich
    Free Member

    countdown stopped at 31seconds!

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    yeah, something about not getting verification that the gantry has retracted.

    soma_rich
    Free Member

    resuming now phew!

    soma_rich
    Free Member

    go!

    RealMan
    Free Member

    That was cool. Why do the say T-minus..? Always wondered.

    sunnrider
    Free Member

    takeoff minus

    1freezingpenguin
    Free Member

    T = Time

    The big clock at NASA will now have a plus sign counting the time the shuttle is on its mission.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    As an aside,

    If you’re into Shuttle stuff, I can recommend ex-astronaut Mike Mullane’s “Riding Rockets” autobiography. It’s nicely written and quite eye-opening.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Military operations happen on H-hour on D-day in M-month etc, presumably so you can talk about it without giving away the date every time if someone’s spying. We still refer to Operation Neptune as D-day of course, but really they were the D-day landings – the landings happening on the first day of the operation which was itself a lot longer in duration. So the launch happens at T-time. 30 seconds to go is therefore T-30 seconds.

    I would imagine, anyway 🙂

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Penguin has it. “T” means ‘time of launch’ (though IIRC it actually stands for “test,” not “time”) so anything before is T- and anything after is T+.

    mrblobby
    Free Member

    Amazing sight. Certainly doesn’t hang about!

    1freezingpenguin
    Free Member

    Bit sad that never going to see it again.

    Frankenstein
    Free Member

    Good luck to the crew and I wish I could be on the shuttle!

    Northwind
    Full Member

    I always wanted to see a launch 🙁 Ah well, there’ll probably be a replacement at some point before I die. Maybe.

    1freezingpenguin
    Free Member

    10 years if ya lucky.

    TiRed
    Full Member

    Bought this for my boys this week

    I still remember sitting through school lunch at a friend’s house waiting for the first launch 30 years ago – it didn’t leave on time then either.

    Kevevs
    Free Member

    I remember our primary school class being brought into the assembly hall, sitting cross-legged and watching the first launch on a big old TV. I must’ve been 7 or 8. Quite a big deal for a kid obsessed with space lego and saturn 5 rockets. Always had a hankering since to go to Cape Canaveral to see a launch.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    It’s still an incredible machine. The size of a 737, it’ll take off like a rocket, accelerate to 18,000mph orbital speed and can return to land like an albeit very fast airliner. This just nine years after the last Apollo mission.

    Thirty years on the human adventure is sadly missing from space flight. I grew up with heroes like Gagarin, Glenn, Young, Aldrin and McCandless. Now all the Americans have is hired seats on Soyuz capsules and a possible return to Saturn V era behemoths. A truly lamentable occasion.

    richmtb
    Full Member

    I can remember sitting in primary school in a classroom full of drawings of the space shuttle. Sad its ending, like when they cancelled Concorde weems like humanity has taken a collective step backwards

    muddy@rseguy
    Full Member

    Its exactly like concorde, a great achievement but with hindsight, completely the wrong thing at the wrong time.

    The new rockets and spacecraft (HLLV, CEV, Falcon/Dragon, The Sierra Nevada shuttle and Blue Origin new shepherd) coming up in the next five years or so are going to be less cool but far more useful with the added bonus of getting us out of earth orbit and doing some manned exploration again.

    1freezingpenguin
    Free Member

    And when you look at the cost of a shuttle mission is $450 million dollars it’s not cheap either.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Quite a big deal for a kid obsessed with space lego and saturn 5 rockets.

    You are me AICMFP.

Viewing 36 posts - 1 through 36 (of 36 total)

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