NASA completed a small step toward the transition of the Space Shuttle era to that of the Constellation rocket era: the handoff of launch pad 39B.
While Atlantis was launched on pad 39A to service Hubble, Endeavour sat on 39B in case it was needed for a rescue mission. Endeavour was rolled to 39A on May 31, leaving behind 39B which will never be used to launch another Shuttle.
Launch pads 39 A and B were originally built to launch Saturn V rockets to the Moon. They were then modified to be used by the Shuttle. 39B was first used for the ill-fated Challenger launch in 1986, and the last launch from that pad was in 2007. It will be modified for the Ares rockets being built now as part of Constellation.
I know it’s just a launch pad, but it does signal the first notable sign of the beginning of the end for the Shuttle. This has special meaning for me, too. See that picture on the right, in the sidebar of the blog? It’s me in front of 39B. I was there in 2002 for a meeting, and we got to tour the complex. We got pretty close to the pad, and you can see the orange external tank and the tops of the two solid rocket boosters peeking over the service structure.
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It’s not terribly skeptical to feel attached to a piece of hardware, but there is still some atavistic piece of us that does so anyway. And this is an important transition in the history of NASA, from one major transport system to another.
And, of course, 39B isn’t going away. It’s being transformed to aid yet another generation of rockets and explorers, helping them to extend our boundaries and go on the grandest adventure of them all.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:24 am
I can’t wait to see where this next generation of travel will take us, forward and upwards I say!
June 11th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Why isn’t there going to be a shuttle on 39B in case Endeavour’s launch goes awry?
June 11th, 2009 at 8:41 am
It’s ok Phil, us black-hearted skeptics can be sentimental too.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Hell yeah. Sad day.
For all their faults I’ll miss the shuttles – & their launch pads even.
@ #1 Rowna Bulpit :
I hope so. I hope we do go onwards and upwards and replace the shuttles with something better … but … I’ll believe it when I see it.
One of my earliest memories is staying up late as a kid to watch the very first shuttle launch – this all-white wonderful reusable spaceplane with its amazing tiles and its potential to make space travel routine and y’know, it was The Future
The Future which now exists only in some alternate universe where the shuttles were all they were meant to be. The future which makes me feel old and kind of nostalgiac for that which never was and yet could have been. Yet at the time … they seemed and were such fantastic SF come to life astounding spaceplanes.
I don’t quite have the words to describe how I felt, what it meant and seemed to offer, but ..
Its just so sad that the space shuttles (like the Concorde) never really lived up to their potential and never truly delivered what was promised and yet … these space shuttles really are the peak of our technology so far and artificial wonders of the world.
Will I look forward to the shuttles being replaced by far better machines? Naturally.
Will I still look back at them fondly and with bittersweet delight? You betcha.
Do I hope they still fly – that they keep them going until their replacement is actually there? Yes I do.
June 11th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Is there or has there been, a third launch pad for Shuttles? Years ago I was there and was able to see two Shuttles on the pad a the same time. I recall being told the next day a third was being rolled and was the first time three would be out at once. I wonder now if that is an accurate memory.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Was there any specific reason why Nasa would choose to launch the shuttle from one specific pad over another, the like age of the superstructure, available facilities, or impacts of wind in two different area?
June 11th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Oops, sorry that’s Rowan Bulpit NOT Rowna. Failed to catch the typo in time.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:06 am
@ Scott
The only other (US) shuttle launch pad was the one at Vandenburg AFB, which was never used.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:06 am
I sure hope 39B sees some use. I’d hate to see another “ABANDON IN PLACE”.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Phil,
you should have photoshopped a tear in your eye …
June 11th, 2009 at 9:15 am
All hail the era of the recycled Apollo wearing strapons. Back to the future, on the cheap and dirty.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
The Space Scuttle is obscene: 3-5 times the cost/gram boosted of a use-and-toss Saturn V with 80% of the boosted mass being the bullbleep Space Scuttle itself. Net payload is further downgraded for “safety” reasons. Constellation models predict human cargo will be shaken into bloody tapioca during liftoff.
How stupid and corrupt (professionally managed) must a $17 billion agency be (twice FEMA) to have the from-scratch solution arrived at with slide rules and fail to reproduce it 40 years of experience and development later with 10,240 Itanium-2 processor Columbia supercomputer? (Named after the disaster. Originally built with Itanium-1 CPUs, it didn’t work.)
Even the SciFi channel lacks the crapistic gall to suffer the planet’s premier heavy lifter (snigger) taken out by a small dollop of polyurethane foam. Repeatedly. Hey stooopids: add fiber to the top two inches’ thickness. It works for Fiberglas bathroom vanities.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Wikipedia has a lovely picture of Enterprise at Vandenberg on SLC-6. As far as I know, it’s the only time a shuttle was in launch configuration at SLC-6, though obviously not actually launchable.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I feel your pain, Phil. I took the NASA tour when I was a kid in the early 70s and remember the launch pads as being like footsteps left by titans. Without a vehicle in sight, the pads were still these tangible frames which I’d seen on our B&W TV for years. I’m glad to know that they’re still in use and that my kids will now see them in glorious HD when Ares hits the skies.
June 11th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I’m looking forward for the next launch on saturday midday (local time). Hopefully the new administration will add the flight for the AMS. It would be too bad to have a fully buildt experiment to stay on earth, just because there is no money for just that one flight…….
June 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
End of an era, this is.
Kind of sad to see it go. What’s going to happen to the remaining shuttles once they’re retired? Auctioned off to the highest bidder, or gifted to museums, or locked up in government storage?
June 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am
uncle al strikes again!
btw i ordered three Galileoscopes. i hope they arrive soon!
June 11th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Anyone been to a shuttle launch? Anyone planning on catching any of the remaining launches? How does one go about planning one?
June 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
There was a guy on Usenet who relentlessly harped that every piece of NASA hardware should be kept and put in museums, forever. He wanted (at public cost) to move the shuttle gantries to some spot and keep them well-preserved, including full-scale space shuttle replicas posed for launch. He considered it almost a crime that Hubble won’t be brought back down. I remember he even once thought the Apollo crews ought to have lugged the LM ascent stages back to Earth. The impossibility of that one went right over his head.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Like millions of other Americans, I, too, will miss the grand and amazing machines that are the Space Shuttle program. Never has such an impressive manmade spectacle reached my eyes, and I went out of my way to watch coverage of each and every launch and landing that I possible could over the last 17 years.
At the same time, I sincerely hope that the next generation of man-bearing safecraft are FAR safer and FAR less a product of the science of wishful thinking that the shuttle program was accused of and eventually revealed to truly be.
Let us hope that the words of Feynman durung the 1986 Challenger investigation serve as a prime directive for all managers and engineers involved:
“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
June 11th, 2009 at 10:05 am
17. Bigfoot
“less a product of the science of wishful thinking that the shuttle program was accused of and eventually revealed to truly be.”
The space shuttle was a mouse designed by government committee and we all know what THAT does,,,
Gary 7
Yoh, Dude, enough with the five o’clock shadow, already. Get real and grow a BEARD,,,
June 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I found this page on the soviet Buran the other day. It has a very detailed history of it’s development.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm
It’s covers the various strengths and weaknesses of the soviet space tech when they were developing the Buran, compared with the US.
It’s not short but still a good read.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Soyuz FTW!!!
June 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Dean (#2): Atlantis was going to launch into an orbit that prevented it from getting to the ISS in case of an emergency, so Endeavour was kept at the ready to rendezvous if needed. The remaining Shuttle flights are all to the ISS, so no need for a backup rescue Shuttle.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Uncle Al (#12): You understand that NASA is a gov’t agency, and beholden to political whim that changes every two years, right? That’s why the Shuttle is such a white elephant.
Also, it’s easy to talk about protecting those wings now, isn’t it? Your snark would’ve been far more interesting (and more helpful) pre-2003.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Good riddance!
June 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Based on past history, the Shuttle will be replaced by something better, faster, more innovative……….(but not until China lands their spacecraft on the Moon…….and begins surveying for a future base.)
June 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
>Why isn’t there going to be a shuttle on 39B in case Endeavour’s launch goes awry?
Its not needed: Endeavour can abort to the space station whereas Atlantis was in a different orbit and could not.
There a multiple launch pads on the cape (Cape Canaveral Air Station next to KSC) but only two shuttle pads at KSC.
Uncle Al – I think everyone can agree that the shuttle did not live up to its potential, but please drop the armchair rocket scientist routine!
June 11th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Hang on. Are there enough Soyuz capsules on the ISS for everyone, in case of an emergency? If the shuttle is docked at the ISS but can’t return home, you need enough soyuz for everyone on board in case of some other emergency with the ISS itself, no? I suppose the shuttle can detach and stay in orbit until some other vehicle is sent. Anyone know of the contingency plans in case of a shuttle problem?
June 11th, 2009 at 11:28 am
“Anyone been to a shuttle launch? Anyone planning on catching any of the remaining launches?”
I’ve been to roughly 40 of them. And I plan to catch at least five or six of the remaining flights.
” How does one go about planning one?”
In the Titusville/Cocoa Beach area, there are few good hotels and restaurants compared to Orlando. (I ought to know, Cocoa Beach is my home town.) That said, I would recommend to folks that are flying in to the area to stay in Orlando and take a Grey Lines bus to KSC. Hotels are cheap and plentiful in the Orlando area, especially if you use a travel search site like Hotels.com or Priceline. Stay in the International Drive area, it’s close to Universal and is not on the other side of the city from Cocoa Beach as is Disney. We usually score a four-star room for around$75 a night. You just won’t be able to do that in Titusville, Mims or Cocoa Beach.
You will be able to choose between watching at the Visitor’s Center, which has an occluded view (you will not see the Shuttle lifting off until it is well clear of the launch tower) or the better view out on the Causeway, which is about 5.5 NM from Pad 36A. You can and will see every bit of the launch from the Causeway, and if you are going to come any distance at all to see it, see it from the best view.
Secondly, the Grey Line tour will leave directly back to Orlando shortly after the launch and you will actually beat a lot of the traffic. For those who drive in and park, expect a 3-4 hour line of traffic to get to I-95, roughly 8 miles away.
Here is a view of the launch of Atlantis in May from the Causeway, using a prime lens (no telephoto) that I took:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maggieandcharles/3528191698/sizes/o/
More info on the Grey Line tour is here:
http://www.grayline.com/Grayline/destinations/us/shuttlelaunch.go
One last thing, my Flickr page has a few of my Grandfather’s documents and such (he was Telemetry Director for MILA and MIS for KSC from 1954-1969) as well as my Dad’s, who was Assistant Fire Chief at KSC and in charge of astronaut safety until launch. I still have a literal mountain of stuff to scan in, as well as photograph things like extra parts for Apollo 11 that he ended up with.
June 11th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Is there a way to send links of sites to you Phil if we see something on the net that we think you might find interesting? I saw this one today about a kid that is claiming he got hit by a meteor. http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090611-19857.html
June 11th, 2009 at 11:42 am
^ Mail his Facebook account — or leave a comment on his wall. Seems to work.
And Phil, it is “Saturn V”, not “Saturn 5.”
June 11th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I’m really concerned that President Obama, after saying all the right things about NASA and Ares during the campaign, is setting the stage for pushing Moon exploration way, way back into the future.
I’m not an engineer so I can’t really comment on the merits of Ares I/V vs. Delta IV/Atlas V. But dammit, we need SOMETHING (that doesn’t say “zdelano v Rossiye”) to keep flying our people in space!
June 11th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Charles Boyer,
Thanks for the info!
June 11th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Phil Plait Said:
“Also, it’s easy to talk about protecting those wings now, isn’t it? Your snark would’ve been far more interesting (and more helpful) pre-2003.”
I’m not sure I understand what this is supposed to mean. Even before Columbia cracked up, orbiters came home from work with chipped and missing tiles; and there’s no good reason why anyone back then couldn’t have known that foam would flake off under conditions of very high drag.
The space shuttle program was writing rubber checks way back in the early ’70s. Anyone could figure out that lifting a satellite to orbit is cheaper with a small throwaway booster than with one that’s bigger, and only because it also has to carry up a bunch of people, their life support, and in general an entire aircraft.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Phil: “It’s not terribly skeptical to feel attached to a piece of hardware”
Surely scepticism is about rationally evaluating factual claims, not about defining what emotions are OK to feel? We don’t need rational evidence to tell us what is beautiful or moving, because that’s the one area where if something feels true then it is.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
ND@#22:
My favourite comment on Buran came from Dr. Georgi Grechko, one of the old cosmonauts who kept working in their space program, and whom I caught on a speaking tour several years ago. The man had a wonderfully dry sense of humour. Let’s see if I can recall this correctly:
“I will never understand the thinking of those who made Buran, the soviet Shuttle. When the Americans built their space shuttle, they thought it would be the most efficient way to get into space. When we built ours, we already knew it wasn’t.”
June 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Bryan Feir,
I think there was a certain sense of military threat felt by the SU from the US shuttle. This may have motivated them to come up with an answer to the shuttle. They ended up going with a shuttle clone after investigating other configurations. And why not, the US did a lot of the work on the shuttle design
I see both shuttle systems as accomplishments, with a large coolness factor, even though they were unnecessary and we would have been better off without them. Well at least for the US. The soviet shuttle is often seen to have contributed to the collapse of the SU.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
some of my best childhood memories involved the shuttle.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@ T.E.L.
You are right, they did know that foam being released during ascent was a possibility. However, the foam they expected to come off was only small pieces that could not cause critical damage. The piece that is believed to be responsible for the Columbia disaster is a completely different animal. The chunk of foam that came off was protecting a piece of equipment near the forward attach point. The only other option was to install a heater over this equipment and that would add a substantial amount of weight. The decision to use the foam was probably made because there was not enough evidence to show how dangerous it would be if it came off in a large chunk. They (NASA) never did ballistics testing of this magnitude until after the disaster. It is a very sad thing, but there are always flaws built into designs. There are still flaws nobody has found, and the SSV will retire with these flaws never having caused an accident.
Also, the SSV would have been cheaper than other missions if it was actually carried out as planned. They were expecting the orbiter to have about a one to two month turn around time. This quick turn around would be able to generate much more revenue than it actually did. They probably should have known better though.
BTW, I will be at the launch. I have to go in to work at 0200. I will be on the mound or on the east side of the VAB, right in front of High Bay 1 or 3, whichever has a better view.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
On another note. Ares-1X is about to start the stacking process. Just about all of the pieces are in the VAB now. They just moved the dummy fifth SRB segment with the frustum from the ARF (Solid Rocket Booster Assembly and Refurbishment Facility) to the VAB today. Late tonight they are going to start the operation to mate the AFT SRB segment to the AFT skirt. Once that is complete they will move it to the VAB also and start the stacking process. Very soon pictures will be available of the next generation of launch vehicles coming together. AWESOME!
June 11th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
TEL is right – “Several opportunities to revise the status of foam events, the hazard they represented,
and how these events were to be handled in-flight, occurred prior to the launch of STS-
107. These missed opportunities are represented by the damage suffered on shuttle
flights STS-27R, STS-45 (and similarly on other flights).”
http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/woods/space/Create%20foresight%20Col-draft.pdf
June 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Another interesting site about the Buran shuttle, but more about the technical details.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:53 am
Now, now, Phil. Did you have to embiggen your picture? Those canines look mean.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:41 am
The last launch from B was Dec 9 2006, not 2007.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:29 am
“The space shuttle program was writing rubber checks way back in the early ’70s. Anyone could figure out that lifting a satellite to orbit is cheaper with a small throwaway booster than with one that’s bigger, and only because it also has to carry up a bunch of people, their life support, and in general an entire aircraft.”
Lifting into orbit, sure.
But returning a multi-billion dollar Keyhole spy satellite to Earth? Your throwaway booster is useless.
It is no small co-incidence that the payload bay of the shuttle orbiters are exactly the right size to carry the Keyholes.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Charles Boyer Said:
“But returning a multi-billion dollar Keyhole spy satellite to Earth? Your throwaway booster is useless.
It is no small co-incidence that the payload bay of the shuttle orbiters are exactly the right size to carry the Keyholes.”
Yeah, I know all about that. Can’t help noticing that they never did enough of that sort of thing to pay for the entire program. That includes before the Challenger crackup. After Challenger the shuttle was abandoned altogether for that sort of thing, seeing how it was grounded for an extended time and therefore became unreliable for classified payloads. Since classifieds had to learn to live without it anyway, the shuttle turned out to be completely unnecessary for spysats.
Nearly every object that ever went to space got there without lugging passengers along for the ride. Space stations? The Soviet Union built and staffed an entire series of space stations more cheaply with disposable boosters and ferries. The evidence is in: the space shuttle was never necessary.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Good riddens to the Boring shuttle program, around and around, yawn.
I’m a disappointed kid of the sixties who watched the Apollo moon landings with great excitement. Then the Big Letdown, no more missions to moon, no moon base. How stupid was that??
June 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
They did however come up with a safer rocket start/jet landing system, and with more robust (thermal-wise) tiles. Practice makes better.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
@ND #38:
I think the other part of the issue is that at the time, the Soviet Union didn’t really have a single central space agency like the U.S. did, but instead had a number of politically competing groups. The main space agency was tied to the military and rather set in their thinking; Buran was created by TsAGI, a more civilian group that was more into aviation rather than missiles.
Arguments over whose pet projects are getting funding can lead to all sorts of interesting fallout.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:16 am
@ # 32. Charles Boyer Says:
“And Phil, it is “Saturn V”, not “Saturn 5.”
Uh, Charles ‘V’ is ’5′.
It’s exactly the same just the Roman numeral used versus the Arabic one. But then you knew that already … right?
@ #30 Charles Boyer – again :
You are SO lucky to be living so close.
I live in Australia and I’d absolutely LOVE to see a shuttle launch live rather than merely via TV or net but flying over to the States is wa-aay more than my limited means permit. I’m jealous of you.
Americans, treasure these shuttles while they last because you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.
Sadly, I’ve a sinking feeling that it’ll be a very long time between the shuttle and its replacement. I hope I’m wrong but …
June 13th, 2009 at 7:37 am
This guy looks seriously nasty.
http://www.buran.fr/polious/Photos/50-Sur le pas de tir-On the launch pad-6cl-4.jpg
Polyus: http://www.buran-energia.com/polious/polious-tass.php
June 14th, 2009 at 9:06 am
i’ve had the space shuttle running through my veins since i was born (father worked on it) and as a second generation engineer in the aerospace industry i had the opportunity to visit the cape just last week. it brought a tear to my eye to see the the shuttle on the pad and to see 39B being dismantled for very different reasons. glad to see other people geek on this as much as i do! looking forward to the future, whether it be ares/orion or “renegades” like spacex!