genuinegirly

Are you excited?
Will you be taking a little time out of your schedule to watch it today?
Has anyone traveled out to the Space Coast to see a shuttle launch in person?
What does the end of the shuttle era mean to you?

Please feel free to share any neat photos you can find of launches, shuttles, astronauts, and photos of Earth from space.

I'll be watching the preparations all morning on NASA-TV: NASA - NASA TV
Our lab group and friends will be meeting up at a bar to watch the launch and throw a little party.
Unfortunately it looks like the weather in Florida isn't pleasant this morning, they're estimating a 70% chance that it will be delayed.

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keymaker

My uncle was a retired Air Force Colonel who worked on the design and was involved in the shuttle until he retired in the early 90's. I remember watching many launches with him it was really a blast to see and hear it live.

Not Me

I remember watching the landing of the first space shuttle. We were at work and the boss brought a t.v. and we took a break from work to watch it land.

MeltedMetalGlob

I just posted this in another thread, but I guess it's even more relevant here, so...


That's me with Colonel Lee Joseph Archambault, the pilot of the Atlantis shuttle! He was visiting Bellwood, IL, his hometown and I videotaped the event. Classy guy, all around. (him, not me.)

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ASU2003

Yes
Yes I did.
I have seen two of them, and was there for one scrub.
I hope it will mean that we will look for better methods of traveling to space now. Something like a space elevator or some other 'new' tech that wasn't tested because we have the shuttle. Why do we need something that does the same thing as the shuttle...?
Audacious & Outrageous: Space Elevators - NASA Science
Getting Out of the Gravity Well on One Thin Dime - NASA Watch

EventHorizon

this isnt the end of the shuttle era. hell, i'd even go as far as to say that NASA will begin to launch shuttles again sometime in the future but right now the commercial space company SpaceX is still making a shuttle that will still carry astronauts into space for years to come.

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Originally Posted by canuckguy Pretty simple really, do your own thing as long as it does not fuck with anyone's enjoyment of life.

zenda

Hi

I didn't know of this event, but what does it mean to me? End of an Era .. Yes.

The closest emotional connection for me is the final flight of the Concorde. I have lived in the Heathrow flight path all my life. When the Concorde started, I 'knew' that the 'future' was here 'now'. I saw or heard most of its flights, and as I watched its last one, I felt a wrench. This, in a much diluted sense, is how I feel about the space shuttle. Though, having been born and bred into notions of ion-drive, anti gravity, FTL, and, more recently, Stargate, then the impact of its demise pales beneath my childhood intergalactic expectations.

Actually, as I think about this, I realise that by age 20, any excitement I might have had about human capacity to go further and faster had transformed into passion for exploration of inner space - mind and communication. The space shuttle's passing is, indeed the end of an era, but one which had lost my interest long ago.

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Martian

Our whole office pretty much shut down for about ten minutes around 11:30 this morning to watch the launch. I suppose that might be related to the fact that we're all IT/tech geeks.

Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best. The sad part isn't the shuttle program ending, but rather that there's nothing to replace it.

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MSD

I stopped answering my phone and responding to emails at work today after the 20 minute hold, I wanted to see this shuttle go up. The US space program has personal meaning to me because my dad worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and my parents got me interested in the space program when I was really young, so young that my earliest childhoood memory is of a shuttle launch. I was just over 2 years old, my mom had brought me to a friend's house and my friend Douglas and I were playing with our model space shuttles; these things were great, they even had switches to detach the SRBs and main fuel tank. I hope I still have mine in a box somewhere so I can pass it on to my children someday.

Our moms called us into the TV room to watch the shuttle launch. We watched the launch and being little kids, enjoyed the smoke and the sound of the launch. We watched it go up asthe announcer was narrating, and suddenly everyone went completely silent for a few seconds. The debris from the explosion fanned out and the guy on TV said something along the lines of "obviously something has gone seriously wrong."

I didn't really understand what happened at the time, but I do now. The end of the shuttle era means we need unwavering support for continued human spaceflight for the sake of scientific exploration. The shuttle program was inefficient, dangerous, and built on foolish compromises; we need to overcome that with what will replace it. Whatever that is, we have to have a successor. What we've learned in Earth orbit and from our few flights to the moon only scratched the surface.

My greatest fear for the future of manned spaceflight is that declining public support for NASA means it ends now; I hope I'm wrong in my belief that the patches on the sleeves of the next people the US government launches into space will read "US Air Force" rather than "NASA." I'm a pessimist and a cynic but that's what I expect to happen. I have no faith in the American people and our government to recognize the importance of continued civilian space exploration. If we don't continue to put scientists and teachers into space to learn and to educate, the crews of Challenger and Columbia gave their lives for nothing.

snowy

The launch happened at a really bad time for me--I was on my way to work. I was listening intently on the radio, and then there was the hold related to the cap, and so I missed the actual launch while parking and walking from my car. I listened to the confirmation on the radio that they had dropped the boosters. My coworkers were kind of surprised by me walking over to the radio and turning it on before I did anything else--my boss asked who died We got into a conversation about the space program, and despite our very different politics, all of us agreed that it's ridiculous not to have something to replace the shuttle. I was disappointed to find out how uninformed my coworkers were about the space program and NASA, especially in regards to NASA's budget. One of my conservative coworkers said, "Well, we need to cut spending right now." Umm...we spend more on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than we spend on NASA's budget. Apparently that's all right though, because it's "supporting the troops." (Among The Costs Of War: Billions A Year In A.C.? : NPR) I'm pretty sure we can find money for NASA and true "moon shots" in terms of spaceflight if we try.

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zenda

Wow! Just this minute, recieved from a mate a link to this 3d virtual tour of the Space Shuttle's Flight Deck

Space Shuttle Discovery - 360VR Images


Best wishes

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supersix2

I watched the final launch from the mission control center a few hours before I was scheduled to come in and work my shift as a flight controller. I got to watch two launches, one just before I started working at NASA and one while I was working here. They were quite an impressive sight to see in person but I think I most enjoyed being in the control center for launch and seeing all that goes on behind the scenes to make each launch happen. I worked my last shift as Space Shuttle flight controller over the weekend and even though I've only worked at NASA for 4 years and have only worked 10 missions or so, I felt pretty nostalgic about the flights I worked, the people I got to work with and also the entire Shuttle program.

Fortunately I'm still able to continue to work for NASA as a flight controller for the International Space Station but many of my friends and co-workers will be departing a week or so after Atlantis lands. Many of them, like myself were hired just a few years ago right out of college and while we all were aware that the Shuttle program would be ending soon and some of us might not have jobs afterward, most of us were expecting to move onto the now cancelled Constellation program. I feel like we are like the lost generation of NASA since we came in at a time of transition and due to a failure of national leadership over the past 6 years the program we expected to work on next was not sustainable and got cancelled.

I am somewhat hopeful of the future though, with the commercial space programs and the extension of the space station until 2020. I just hope NASA can get an exciting and bold new mission to explore with humans somewhere else beyond low earth orbit in the near future. As long as nation puts a priority on exploration and gives it the resources it needs, there is no shortage of capable and inspired people at NASA to make it happen.

I figured I'd share this Youtube video that RealNASA (NASA's Youtube channel) put together. It's somewhat corny but has really great footage from the fully assembled Space Station and some really great images of the earth from space. I think it's inspiring to people to get interested in space.

YouTube - ‪What Kind of World Do You Want?‬‏

ASU2003

http://www.cosmosfrontier.com/files/SpaceElevator.JPG

Use our drilling tech to anchor and build the tallest structure in the world (probably around 10km high), the elevator will need to be able to move up and down, and the top of the tower will need to be able to bend a little, but still have guy wires... probably use some electromagnetic shock absorbers to counteract wind loading and such. Find an asteroid and figure out a way to maneuver it into geosynchronous orbit. Build a solar or small nuclear powered gyroscope to move the asteroid to ensure proper tension and position is maintained. Launch sections of carbon nanotube wire that can be combined in space and lowered. Then build the electromagnetic track going up.

Filling a hydrogen balloon and lifting the strands up might also work to get out of the atmosphere, but it's the remaining 35,000+km and dealing with the cold temps that would be a problem.

It sounds so easy...

lester

it will be the end of an era. brings tears to my eyes

james t kirk

Exactly.

The excitement and desire to explore space that was present in the 50's, 60's and 70's has been replaced with apathy and future programs will never even get off the ground due to budetary constraints.

Oh, there may be the odd probe or two, and there is the International Space Station that the Russians can get to with 50 year old rockets, however, there is not going to be any "next step" probably in our lifetimes.

The political will simply is not there.

Sad, because of all the things that the US does in this world (good and bad) the Space Program was one of, if not THEE most noble.

shalafi

unfortunately it was cloudy that day so we had to watch the streaming feed instead of going outside to watch it.

supersix2

FYI the final landing is scheduled at 5:57 a.m. EDT on July 21st.

AbelG

This thing excites me since i love watching space exploration things.. Hopefully, their launch is a success.

Bonkai

Yes, and no.

I say a few videos of it on you tube.

No, i guess i'll never get that chance now.

We need to do more in space, but when will that new era begin? When Gemini ended it had Apollo ready to go, I see our (USA) lack of a program to follow this launch as a sign of our decline in the space industry.

genuinegirly

Atlantis landed safely this morning. Here's a youtube of the landing

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

MSD

Awesome news that's chipped away a tiny splinter of my cynicism: NASA is working to help certify the Atlas 5 for passengers. SpaceX may be certified for ISS resupply as early as the end of this year, a little competition for passenger launches can't hurt.

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | NASA agrees to help modify Atlas 5 rocket for astronauts

hunnychile

It's all just a story of how great the USA "Used" to be. We can't afford all these missions when kids are hungry and unable to get a proper education. Plus, how about all the sick people who need SOME kind of Health Care in some fashion?

None of us need to see what the weather is like on Mars.

Amen.

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supersix2

Riight, because the ~16 billion a year we spend on all of NASA would make a huuuge difference in the the budget allotted for welfare and health care. Get real, the budgets for those programs are several times larger than all of NASA and NASA deals with high tech and puts stuff in space. These other programs are failing the very people they are trying to help and the solution has always been "throw more money at it." Additionally, we can spend the money on getting kids a "proper education" and then have them do what with it? Surely not get into an advanced science or engineering field since we've all but stripped that away. It's thinking like that, that really annoys me. We want to get kids educated to get into high tech fields but after the education we stop putting a priority on it as a national objective. Instead you'll just end up with a bunch of highly educated people collecting early social security, unemployment, and welfare. Great idea.

MSD

Our space program budget from Kennedy's 1962 speech promising to put a man on the moon to today costs as much as 16 months of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. NASA's budget this year is 80% of what air conditioning for troops in those wars cost this year. The space program is not the problem.

cchris

To think we are not going up because we cannot afford to go down depresses me

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