Comments on: Discovery lands safely at Kennedy

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:46:04 +0000

Indeed, Sir Bad. It is a pity it just flies up a wee bit into space and then orbits there for a while. It’s like building a massive manmade island … in your swimming pool.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 02:24:54 +0000

I was at the visitor centre when the landing happened. It was very exciting, as everyone had been notified the shuttle was landing and about 800-900 people were crowded around the astronaut memorial to try to catch a glimpse of it landing. We got the double sonic boom, but unfortunately the wind was in the wrong direction so instead of flying almost directly over us, the shuttle landed from the North.

I also attended a presentation by a former shuttle astronaut earlier in the day (I forget his name). The expected slide show of his missions was presented, but when showing a photo of Indonesian bushfires from space he went into a rant about how global warming was not occurring, and if it was then it was not man-made. I was horrified that the representative of NASA would spout such blatent crap – being a foreigner (from Australia) I had always looked upon NASA as being one of the USA’s premier organisation, and now one of their astronauts was feeding crap to the public during a NASA presentation! A bit off topic, but can anyone advise me of an appropriate channel to make a complaint, or is this just another example of the politicisation of NASA by the Bush Administration?

By: Shri

Shri — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 05:24:48 +0000

Kennedy? They land the shuttles in New York now? Oh, right – the shuttle.

(couldn’t resist)

By: dre

dre — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:27:40 +0000

i meant i was in florida yesterday morning. i was at the in-laws’, and the passage of time got all mushed-up and mangled.

By: dre

dre — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:25:35 +0000

i watched the landing on nasa tv, even heard the sonic boom (i was in the florida panhandle this morning). i thought it was interesting that nasa announced TWO mission elapsed times: one from launch until main gear touchdown; and one from launch to nose gear touchdown. there was, obviously, a several-second difference in the two times.

i heard it on nasa tv. it was official.

By: Zeke

Zeke — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 21:04:25 +0000

*Sigh* I was kinda of dissapointed that it didn’t land at white sands… I was getting ready to go see because White sands is only about 2 hours from where I live … Hmmm I was looking foward to seing a shuttle land

By: Nic Percival

Nic Percival — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:16:46 +0000

I find it interesting that this mission has been described as the most complex ever. Maybe they meant the most complex ISS mission.
To be fair, I don’t know in any detail what was done – but the Shuttle mission that most impressed me was I think the last Hubble mission – changing the power system – which had never been designed to be changed on orbit.
At least the ISS stuff had always been designed to do what was done.

No criticism here, but I wonder if this is a case of ‘bigging up’ the latest mission while it is on everyone’s minds. I know they did an amazing job – and an interesting comparison to Cernan and the other Gemini guys who struggled so hard to do relatively trivial things before the art was learned.

Nic