Polyus: http://www.buran-energia.com/polious/polious-tass.php

“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 …

Arguments over whose pet projects are getting funding can lead to all sorts of interesting fallout.

“[...] When we built ours, we already knew it wasn’t.”

They did however come up with a safer rocket start/jet landing system, and with more robust (thermal-wise) tiles. Practice makes better.

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??

“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.

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.

http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/woods/space/Create%20foresight%20Col-draft.pdf

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

Thanks for the info!

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!

And Phil, it is “Saturn V”, not “Saturn 5.”

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.