NASA has set the next Space Shuttle launch for February 7 at 2:45 p.m. However, a kinked hose may put the kibosh on it. We’ll see. Fraser has more.
When I read that, I was excited: I’ll be in Florida that day! But then I saw the time, and realized I’ll be on a plane heading back home. Drat. I’ve only seen one Shuttle launch and it was hawesome. I’d love to see another before they’re all gone. Maybe I’ll make a pilgrimage to see the Hubble servicing mission launch…
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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January 30th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I’ve always wanted to see the shuttle launch… WHILE I was flying in a plane.
That would be one of those moments. In this perfect scenario, the pilot of our airplane would come over the loud speaker and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you look to your left you will see the Everglades, and to your right… something awesome.”
Then they would play Ride of the Valkyries through the system, and we would all get served Pepsi and more then one bag of peanuts.
*sigh*
January 30th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I saw a shuttle launch a couple of years ago. When I was a teenager, I saw an Apollo launch (15, I think) from about the same spot. (Google Earth, 28 deg. 25′34.16 N 80deg 36′51.71W) It was 12 miles south of the launch complex, where the cruise ships depart from Cocoa Beach now.
The Saturn V was way cooler (by which I mean it was louder). The shock wave was visible on the surface of the water as the sound approached us.
Those were the days. I thought we were going to start actually doing something. 30 years later and the Moon just sits there staring at us.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The Apollo rockets truly were awesome. It’s amazing how much effort NASA put into pulling off that whole landing on the moon hoax.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Some friends and I from the RASC are flying down from Toronto on Wednesday, see you in Titusville
January 30th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I’ll be there!
…Well, I’ll be… On the internet… At work… Watching NASA TV.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:43 am
… because it’s a techno-turkey and I don’t see how NASA are going to finish the other turkey in LEO.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:48 am
Another problem, eh? This is what happens when you put social engineering ahead of the regular stuff.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:52 am
I’ll be right there with ya, Michelle! Thank God for NASA TV!!!
D
I haven’t missed a shuttle launch on television since the return to flight. I’ll never get tired of watching it!
Incidentally, for any space geeks out there who are also computer game nerds like me, I recommend Space Shuttle Mission 2007! ;o)
January 31st, 2008 at 4:43 am
I used to have a problem with kinked hoses, too. That’s why I switched to boxers.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:50 am
Lateral thinking BA -why not justchange your bookinganmd catch alater plane?
A kinked hosecan hold up the ultimate inAmercian technology? That’s sad … pathetic sad. Just like those insert-expletive-of you-choice faulty fuel sensors which, I suppose, we can at least say ain’t causing the woe this time..
I wouldn’t call the Shuttle a turkey though .. or the International Space Station either for that matter.
Both are really – despite high costs and various problems – really pretty staggeringly impressive enginneering marvels.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:58 am
CORRECTED VERSION :
NB Just in case anyone’s wishes to quote me with this post could you please do it from this corrected draft – I’d correct the first one above … but for the endlessly frustrating fact that I can’t do so here.
—————-
Lateral thinking BA – why not just change your booking and catch a later plane?
A kinked hose can hold up the ultimate in Amercian technology? That’s sad … pathetic sad. Just like those insert-expletive-of you-choice faulty fuel sensors which, I suppose, we can at least say ain’t causing the woe this time..
I wouldn’t call the Shuttle a turkey though .. or the International Space Station either for that matter.
Both are really – despite high costs and various problems – really pretty staggeringly impressive engineering marvels.
Too many of us have just become so blaise and jaded we’ve forgotten how remarkable and wonderful they really are..
————————————————
One of these days I’ll get one of thwse postz right first time. Today, alas, is not that day.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:59 am
Yes, I agree they are impressive. But they have no significant scientific value. Low gravity conditions can be simulated here, on Earth. And ISS is well protected by the Van Allen belts so you can’t study the radiation impact. If you want to go to the Moon or Mars you don’t need a station in LEO.
January 31st, 2008 at 5:11 am
Incidentally as I may not get to post this commemoration on the anniversary day itself I believe February 1st is the 5th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle ‘Columbia’ :
****
From ‘Reflections on the Columbia tragedy’
By StevoR (Published in the ASSA Bulletin newsletter May 2003)
As an eight year old boy I stayed up far beyond my bedtime one night watching and waiting for the historic launch of the first space shuttle Columbia. After several hours of commentary and discussion, watching images of the sleek white spaceplane with its vast external fuel tank, and booster rockets awaiting blast-off, the viewers at home were finally informed that the launch had been aborted. It was some technical problem or other.* Thus I missed the maiden flight of the revolutionary new type of recyclable rocket, the first spaceplane, designed to be flown time and time again, instead of the one-off rockets like Apollo’s mighty Saturn V destined to be flown but a single time.
Over twenty years later, and I was watching TV when I heard on a newsbreak something about the space shuttle breaking up on re-entry with all seven astronauts dead. The news that night was filled with the loss of the Columbia STS-107 mission and its crew including one of the most beautiful women to have flown in space, Indian-born Kalpana Chawla and the first ever Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, all killed as the craft disintegrated in a fireball through Texan skies. The STS-107 astronauts had been sixteen days in space and were but sixteen minutes from home when they perished.
In the days following the Columbia’s destruction, the astronauts – two women and five men, five Americans, an Indian and an Israeli obtained the headline news they could never have dreamed of had their mission been successful. We learnt far more about them in grief than we would have done in elation. We learnt the last song they heard was ‘Scotland the Brave’, the selection of mission specialist Laurel Clark. That the first Israeli in space Ilan Ramon was carrying a drawing by a Holocaust survivor which survived the Nazi death camps only to perish along with the astronaut above, among other places, the US town called Palestine. We learnt that the photogenic Indian mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, timed her meal breaks so she could see the sunrises from space, the earth moving from darkness to light below her. That another mission specialist David Brown had spent some years as a circus acrobat, stilt walker and unicyclist. And that the last words we received were “Roger buh ..” spoken by the Commander Rick Husband.
…. (SNIP!) ….
. Today, there are only the three surviving space shuttles left – the twenty year old Discovery, the eighteen year old Atlantis and the youngest at just twelve years old the Endeavour. Russia’s equivalent Buran has been cancelled and the Japans shuttle has yet to make its first orbit. We are no longer capable of putting folk on the moon.
In the interim much has changed. Columbia not only lifted off on that maiden voyage at last, it had, along with the others in NASA’s shuttle fleet, made many triumphant flights since; contributing to science, inspiring many individuals and, most tangibly, launching many spaceprobes and satellites. Some of the memories have been good, such as the like the night I stood rapt listening to the radio announcement while stargazing at an ASSA astronomy camp while Australia’s hero and first official astronaut Andy Thomas took flight launched aboard an American shuttle, the Endeavour, bound for the Russian Mir space station. Or the much heralded return to space of America’s pioneering hero, John Glenn, showing that even seventy year olds can achieve previously unthinkable feats. We’ve seen the launch and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope bringing us breathtaking images of incalculable scientific and artistic worth. We now know for a fact that other planets circle other suns and they are stranger than we expected. We have learnt about dark matter and gamma-ray bursters among other things; coming ever closer to understanding our planet and ourselves.
Other memories are not so good, like those of another dark day, in 1986, when another sombre Presidential special address informed us of the spectacular calamity that befell the lost Shuttle Challenger. Outside of space exploration and scientific discovery – but gravely affecting the global mood, the gestalt within which our society is set, the world was changed in the space of hours to a more paranoid, less secure place despite the end of the Cold war. This happened when we watched in horror as twin planes slammed into the twin towers and two more captured civilian airliners used as weapons of war on September 11th 2,001. And, like the shuttle, another leading edge wonder of its day, the Concorde has come down in flames and what seemed like an aircraft for the future has become a technological has-been, a curio of where we could have been but didn’t go.
As a science fiction writer I think a lot about the distant future. I imagine visions both horrid and splendid alike. And maybe this means reading too much into current events, maybe it means a viewpoint skewed too far into eccentricity. But I do know this, change is the only constant. The strongest efforts of those mean-minded and unimaginative people who try to hold the status quo forever are doomed. As doomed as the last flight of Columbia and as doomed as the vanishing Aral sea and low lying coral atolls in the new Greenhouse world. Change is unavoidable – but we do have a say in the direction of such change, whether whatever change comes improves our world or worsens it.
We have a choice in making the world better and advancing into space in new space-planes and rocket-craft or spending the same money on weapons to be used on third world countries and politician’s salaries. We have an endless variety of choices about our collective and individual futures. Perhaps most importantly for future generations, we now have to decide whether Columbia marks the end of our faltering steps into the greater cosmos or merely the end of the beginning.
We should support the space shuttle and wider space program – probably the most splendid and most significant thing the United Sates and Western world has ever achieved. Leaving the shuttle fleet grounded and failing to improve on them means far more than just losing the dreams I had while watching the Columbia readying for its first flight. It means giving up on positively directing changes that help our understanding and improve the world and thus falling into the path of stagnation and decline that leads to nightmares. We should hope that Humanity takes the road to the stars and we should support the development of replacement for the shuttle far more advanced and bolder in aspirations because we should seek to improve our world not lessen it.
Our children should sit glued to the screen as I once was for the lost Columbia, watching not mere shuttle flights but Mars landings and more.
The End.
* From National Geographic Oct. 1981 ‘Our Phenomenal First Flight’, Crippen & Young : “ We’d been through it [ pre-launch process] just two days earlier and had to scrub the launch because we couldn’t get our five flight control computers synchronised.” That first attempt was almost certainly the one I stayed up to watch …
****
“The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
- Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Mercury astronaut killed in the ‘Apollo 1’ fire.
If we are to err, let it be towards the side of compassion and bold hopes rather than their opposites.
Per aspera ad astra – ‘Through difficulties to the stars.’
– Latin proverb. (Quoted by Isaac Asimov in ‘Trends’ in “The Early Asimov vol. 1″, Granada, 1972.)
January 31st, 2008 at 5:20 am
Incidentally, in the off-chance that anyone enjoyed or if they generally wish to quote or forward on the above in part or full I grant y’all permission to do so.
Citation details if desired are :
‘Reflections on the Columbia tragedy’ in ‘The Astronomical Society of South Australia Bulletin’ (monthly newsletter),
by Steven C. Raine, May 2003.
Hope Idon’t sound too fullof myself
Its just in case folks wished & I thought that might help!
January 31st, 2008 at 5:45 am
# Svetlio wrote on 31 Jan 2008 at 4:59 am
“Yes, I agree they [the Space Shuttle & International Space Station] are impressive. But they have no significant scientific value. Low gravity conditions can be simulated here, on Earth. And ISS is well protected by the Van Allen belts so you can’t study the radiation impact. If you want to go to the Moon or Mars you don’t need a station in LEO.”
I’m not so sure they lack significant scientific value – maybe we just haven’t been imaginative or effective enough in making use of them and their capabilities – and don’t forget, to use just two examples, the Hubble Space Telescope and ‘Galileo ‘ spaceprobe to Jupiter were both launched via Shuttle and my understanding is, couldn’t be launched any other way.(Ok maybe I’m wrong but I think not ..)
One suggestion of mine for the ISS : Surely, surely we can actually find some way of adding a propulsion system of some variety to it and transforming the now stationary + Internat’l Sapce Station into an international Space _*Ship*_ in its own right!
+ Well sorta stationary anyhow – it is after all moving faster than any of us are likely to go right now as it orbits our Earth!
———————
Vale ‘Columbia’ & its crew of Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, David Brown, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Ilan Ramon & Kalpana Chawla : gone but not forgotten.
“The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
- Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Mercury astronaut killed in the ‘Apollo 1’ fire.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:53 am
@ Tucker
“Then they would play Ride of the Valkyries through the system, and we would all get served Pepsi and more then one bag of peanuts.”
More than one bag of peanuts? Nah, that’ll never happen.
Darn, NASA just pushed the GOES-O launch out of our Cocoa Beach vacation window this year. Now I gotta cheer for a 3 month delay on STS-124…
January 31st, 2008 at 6:57 am
StevoR: I’m not sure,but Cassini has been launched by a Titan rocket and the design is the same as the design of Galileo.
I’m not completely against a station in LEO. A Mir-sized or Skylab-sized station is OK. Structural components can be launched by Atlas 5/Proton class rockets. Such a station can serve as a spaceport to the Moon and Mars (if it’s in a proper orbit, the ISS is not).
As far as I remember Mir has some nice instruments aboard Kvant 1/2 modules and it served as an astronomy base, but I never heard about impressive scientific findings like these of HST (correct me if I’m wrong).
I’m not sure how Russia/Japan/ESA are going to support ISS after 2010, they don’t have the ability to launch critical components which can only be launched by the Space Shuttle.
Regards,
Sve
January 31st, 2008 at 7:53 am
I live in Florida and am embarrassed to say I’ve only seen one
But all other arguments aside. SEE ONE BEFORE YOU DIE! And bring the kids. It is a most amazing experience.
I went back in the day where we could park proly closer than you can now, but proly doesn’t matter. The ground shakes before the wall of sound hits you.
Read that again, you can literally hear the roar of the rocket in your bones, through your feet, before the sound waves propagate through the air.
There is no rational reaction. Just ‘OMFG! A f-ing skyscraper is floating in the f-ing air on a GD pillar of f-ing fire! And it’s LOUD as s*!’ Rock concerts aren’t even near the same order of magnitude. Seeing it on TV is nothing compared to the real thing.
Of course, then (hopefully) the understanding kicks in..once you get your hearing back..and it’s even cooler! Unless you’ve seen it in person, it’s really hard to truly understand what it takes to ‘break the bonds of Earth’.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:56 am
I saw a shuttle launch (STS-26, IIRC — the first one after Challenger) from a few miles away. Awesome is correct. I went with a group that, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to offer shuttle launch vacations anymore. (http://www.nss.org)
While I’m old enough, I’m from New York, and I never did see an Apollo launch in person.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:01 am
KeaponLaffin:
While I don’t recall feeling the ground shake before the soundwave hit, I do recall feeling the roar hit my chest. Your whole body feels the low-frequency waves so much more than your ears hear the audible range of the noise. I can’t imagine what a Saturn V felt like.
Also, don’t forget to take your eyes away from your camera’s viewfinder on occasion, to watch it directly.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:34 am
I work at KSC. I’ll be on base for some front row seats as usual- so neener neener. Phil: how come you’re in the swamp for the day?
To the above: as far as the usefulness of space station, there have been a number of good things to come out of it, and frankly nasa gets a rap for being much more expensive than it actually is. The whole organization is a fraction of a percent of the national budget, and furthermore is the national -aeronautics- and space administration, meaning it does a great deal more than just space stuff. On top of that, KSC alone is one of florida’s great weather centers (side effect of all the monitoring that must be done for launching spacecraft)(and in a place where weather information can mean life and death, IE hurricanes), and of course is a very unique wildlife preserve.
You might not always agree with the specific projects (even I certainly don’t in a few cases), but the body of work to come out of space exploration has been very beneficial to mankind.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:03 am
@DennyMo
Well, yeah, every fantasy has it’s flaws. If it were a perfect world, we’d all get to choose between a bowl of gold star chili, or some turkey and mashed potatoes, and we’d be getting massages.
*sigh*
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:49 am
What we hafta choose, Tucker?! If it was a perfect world surely we could have both if we wanted them …
Actually I can think of lots of perfect world fantasies :
sitting in a bar being surrounded by beautiful, admiring women having had my SF ideas turned into the first FTL drive ever .. & me laying back there at that bar with Coopers pales on tap watching as they get back the first pictures from Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri and Barnard ’s Star and hearing on the news that the Palestinean state just welcomed the visit of US President Al Gore and that “coming up in sport later, quintuple F1 champion Ayrton Senna just won the Grand Prix in Adelaide and Australia crushed India at the cricket ..”and ..
Well I could go on like that all day but I won’t …
I’ll just add that my “perfect world” would include me watching the launch of the Shuttle – or better yet the first human mission to Mars.
Svetlio : Thanks for your reply. It is a worry about what will happen when the Space Shuttle goes. My hope is that some other government actually purchases a ‘used shuttle’ and uses it to do the job. Prob’ly very unrealistic of me but, hey, we can dream …
It will be a sad day when the shuttles stop flying and even sadder if they’re not (yet?) replaced by something better.