@#7 StevoR : Various museums are competing to be the final resting place for the retired shuttles once they are decommissioned, although the exact sites aren’t known yet. If you have a spare $40-$45 million lying around (the cost to get a shuttle ready and transported to a location), you can bid for one too. NASA is trying to figure out the best locations to ensure the maximum amount of people can see them.

&

@ 8. Ian :

@stevoR- there has been 128 launches including Challenger

&

@ 19. anonymous :

Corrections: There are seven more shuttle missions planned, and there have been 127 missions through this one. STS-134 is slated to be the final flight.

Thanks.

BTW. One correction of my own – the first ever shuttle flight was the ‘Columbia’ in 1981 on the 12th of April. So I was out by a year.

NB. Trivia fact : NASA’s 100th manned spaceflight was an ‘Atlantis’ mission to the Russian ‘Mir’ (“peace”) space station back on the 29th June 1995.

@ 20. Torbjörn Larsson, OM :

The “much more” includes the ISS, …

& the ESA’s Spacelab and John Glenn’s second and so far last spaceflight as the oldest ever astronaut (aged 77) on October 29th 1998.

Among many other things such as satellite launches, Hubble repairs, transporting astronauts and cosmonauts to & from Mir, etc …

The USA has certainly done a great deal in terms of helping other nations get into space and co-operating with even its rivals like Russia in that arena. I think that reflects pretty admirably on them and the shuttle has been almost a diplomatic vehicle in that respect.

Of course, without the shuttle NASA and the USA will soon be depending on other nations to return the favour ..

Source : ‘Time magazine lift-out poster “From Glenn to Glenn (1962-1998) circa 1998. ( For all dates & facts mentioned here.)

The completion of a space mission is just as dangerous as the launch and the space portion of the event.

Statistically completion is exceedingly the most dangerous part. Soyuz 1: 1 dead; Soyuz 11: 3 dead; STS-107: 7 dead; total 11 dead out of 22 dead astronauts. [Wikipedia.]

The shuttle is the first (mostly) re-usable spacecraft, it has launched more people into space than any other spacecraft and it has played a key role in fixing and maintaining the Hubble Space Telescope, launching the ‘Galileo’ probe to Jupiter and much more.

The “much more” includes the ISS, enforcing standardization and expanding the number of space faring nations hugely. (Canada, Japan, as well as EU; China was booted for political reasons). Also keeping the Russians in the game (by way of the ISS).

This is one of the areas where US egocentricity is both astounding and unsettling.

@Charles Boyer: “You can bet on the Cape, Huntsville, Houston and the Smithsonian being your finalists.

And I would put money down on the Cape, Houston and the Smithsonian were I at a Ladbroke’s office.”

Although I’m reticent to place a bet, I would think California has a better than fair chance of landing one, considering that’s where they were built.

Since the Smithsonian already has Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy facility, I wouldn’t be surprised if some horse trading was done to relocate Enterprise to the greater Los Angeles (Palmdale-Lancaster/Edwards/Dryden) area in exchange for Discovery, Atlantis or Endeavour.

Of course, if one of those final three flights were to land at Edwards due to weather at the Cape during end-of-mission time, it would make sense — from an economic standpoint — to keep it there rather than fly it back cross-country.

Speaking of which, any bets on NASA 905 and NASA 911 (the Shuttle Carrier Aircrafts)?

You can bet on the Cape, Huntsville, Houston and the Smithsonian being your finalists.

And I would put money down on the Cape, Houston and the Smithsonian were I at a Ladbroke’s office.

Sure it can, once it’s placed in its proper perspective…

The cost of the Apollo program from July 1960 (when first publicly announced) to July 1975 (the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) amounted to around $25 billion in 1960 dollars — about $150 billion in today’s currency.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1971 “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” for an American population of about 200 million people, the annual cost of the Apollo program was less than $20 per person per year.

During that same 15 year period, the average American spent about $80 each year on cigarettes, $50 on beer, and over $50 on liquor.

Now, let’s fast forward to today with the U.S. population now over 300 million. NASA’s annual budget of $18.5 billion today works out to about $60 dollars per year ($5 a month, $1.25 a week or $0.18 cents a day).

At the same time, Americans consume 50 billion pints (200 million gallons) of beer each year — second in the world behind China, but ahead of Germany. At the going Pub rate of $3.87 a pint (plus tax), that’s $169 billion Americans are literally and figuratively flushing down the toilet each year — a little over nine times NASA’s budget in the same time frame.

I know what we’ve gotten in return for investing our tax dollars in space exploration and the benefits we’ve all received in the process.

Can anyone kindly tell me what we’ve gotten as a benefit in return for drinking beer — besides people acting and/or doing incredibly stupid things, such as unwanted pregnancies, or contributing to the annual Darwin Awards after removing oneself from the gene pool by wrapping your car around a lightpost at 2 a.m.?

Not simple enough to explain to your friends or opponents? Let’s explain it another way to those ignorant citizens who want to do away with NASA for more “social welfare”:

NASA’s funding for one year -– if cancelled and used elsewhere –- would only cover ONE of the following (take your pick):

Two months of U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, OR;

One month of Social Security, OR;

Three weeks of Medicare, OR;

Three weeks of Unemployment Insurance, OR;

Three weeks of the Budget Deficit, OR;

Two weeks of Medicaid, OR;

Two weeks of Interest on the National Debt.

Once that money is burned up (without really making a significant dent in anything in the process), what do those NAySAyers propose to do next, now that we no longer have a space program (and now have another couple of hundred thousand highly skilled workers on the unemployment line)?

Sobering, huh? Guess we better get ourselves another beer…

Various museums are competing to be the final resting place for the retired shuttles once they are decommissioned, although the exact sites aren’t known yet. If you have a spare $40-$45 million lying around (the cost to get a shuttle ready and transported to a location), you can bid for one too. NASA is trying to figure out the best locations to ensure the maximum amount of people can see them.

@#3 Gary Miles

Actually, the number is seven, IIRC. NASA was instructed by Congress and the Obama Administration in its budget to launch another flight with the AMS telescope to the ISS. But, like with many Congressional instructions (see Constellation program), NASA is told what it must do but so far hasn’t been given the money to do it yet.

It landed at 10:48EDT, and last I checked, EDT is GMT-4.

I’d love to see a launch but I don’t think I’ll get the chance. I am though far more interested in what the commercial companies are doing these days than NASA. As much as I’d love to see it I don’t think the cost of returning to the Moon or going to Mars can be justified with public money. I wish it was other wise.

The shuttle is the first (mostly) re-usable spacecraft, it has launched more people into space than any other spacecraft and it has played a key role in fixing and maintaining the Hubble Space Telescope, launching the ‘Galileo’ probe to Jupiter and much more.

Since its first launch in 1980, there have been well over 100 space shuttle launches – maybe 200 or 300 plus – I’d have to check the exact number. Of course, people only seem to remember the two that failed – the last flights of Challenger and Columbia respectively and not so much all hundreds of really successful ones like ‘each shuttles first flight, like Discovery’s return to flight post-2002 with Aussie Andy Thomas aboard, with the HST repair missions and .. well, … just so many others that did wonders and brought more people into space.

I for one will miss the shuttles if not uncritically.

Moreover, if you thought the “shuttle era” was bad then what about this coming time when the USA has NO manned spacecraft – when the new Ares /Orion rockets are struggling to be built and the International Space Station is left to rely on ancient Russian Soyuz craft? Seems to me that’s worse.

Hopefully this will only be a very short span of time but I worry that, like the gap bewteen the Moon-landings and the yet to happen Return to the Moon, we’ll find time dragging on and on with nothing going on in further space exploration and development.

Personally, I’d much rather we kept flying the shuttle until we had a better replacement for them actually flying.

The Shuttle may not have been all that was advertised – but lets NOT be so ungrateful for what we have with them, what they ‘ve accomplished or forget how remarkable they are.

By the way, anyone know what the final fate of the shuttles themselves will be? Will the various orbiters be sold off, turned into museum pieces, dismantled or what? Personally I hope NASA considers selling them off and allowing others to fly them …

@ # 5 Bigfoot : I agree & well said. I too will have a lump in my throat when the last shuttle lands for the last time.

To anyone working on the current Endeavour mission – congratulations for a job well done and wishing you all the best for a safe and smooth landing.

I regret that the unrivaled magnificence and beauty of a shuttle launch never got a chance to play itself out directly on my retinas — it has been a dream of mine for 28+ years to witness a launch, and now I know that I cannot make that happen.

Endeavor: Have a good trip home and drive safely!

-Joseph