Hum Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 CAPE CANAVERAL, FL. ?-- America's longest space-flying streak ends this week with the smallest crew in decades -- three men and a woman who were in high school and college when the first space shuttle soared 30 years ago. History will remember these final four as bookending an era that began with two pilots who boldly took a shuttle for a two-day spin in 1981 without even a test flight. That adventure blasted space wide open for women, minorities, scientists, schoolteachers, politicians, even a prince. On Friday aboard Atlantis, this last crew will make NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight. It will be years before the United States sends its own spacecraft up again. NASA managers were looking for space vets when they cobbled together this minimalist crew with seven spaceflights among them, to deliver one last shuttle load of supplies to the International Space Station. Ferguson and his crew want this final flight to be a celebration. They point to the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched and repaired by shuttle crews, as well as the International Space Station. Nearly one-third of the 135 shuttle flights were spent building or supplying the nearly 1 million-pound orbiting laboratory. That added a new wrinkle: What if Atlantis were damaged? There are no more shuttles to rescue them. The only viable option is the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The capsules can carry a maximum three people at a time, and at least one must be Russian. That's why Atlantis' crew was capped at four, instead of the usual six or seven. more Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 SpaceX Dragon has flown x2 (3rd in Oct-Nov) and tests its launch abort/landing engines next May, SNC Dream Chasers hybrid engines are already tested & #1 under construction, Boeing CST-100 #1 is under construction. All are supposed to have manned flights in the 2014-2015 time frame. I know folks wax nostalgic about shuttle, and it is impressive in scale, but it was a bad design from day one because of being a sidesaddle stack, it tried to do too many things, and was too expensive by a factor of 6-10. The time to move on was in the early 90's when Dream Chaser (as HL-20 & HL-40) was in its first development and was cancelled at the last minure because of politics (it was a threat to shuttle - duh!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spudtrooper Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 hmm.. Will Man Rating space missions always mean there will be a required backup mission? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 And upon return of Atlantis to Earth so too will end America's dominance of space flight and exploration, it will be a sad day indeed. Who knows maybe one day we will return to our dominance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neufuse Veteran Posted July 5, 2011 Veteran Share Posted July 5, 2011 *sigh* I remember when the center fuel tank was white.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 *sigh* I remember when the center fuel tank was white.... I saw on TV the launch of Columbia, I was 9 then, was awesome then and is still now whenever a Shuttle launches Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenwizard88 Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 When I was a kid, I got a space shuttle sticker. The booster was orange. I never even knew it used to be white.. Anyone know why it changed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 ^^ Wikipedia says it was to save on weight!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfuk Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 By not painting the fuel tank the shuttle payload capacity was increased by Tons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HSoft Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 Yep going down to see it. Leave tomorrow. That's a really good photo (ops pic). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted July 5, 2011 Share Posted July 5, 2011 Paint also would trap moisture in the foam, which would freeze due to the cryogenic fuel & LOx and fracture the foam even worse than without it. Sidesaddle was a horrid design choice. As for dominance: the day Dragon flies a crew we will be dominant again because it can carry >2x the number of passengers as Soyuz (7 vs. 3) and can stay in orbit much longer because of its large solar arrays and much larger fuel capacity. In cargo mode it's also a big advance in that it can return cargo to Earth, while Progress (Soyuz cargo), Orbital's Cygnus and the European & Japanese cargo carriers burn up. In DragonLab confoguration it's a robotic space platform that can fly pressurized and unpressurized experiments for up to 2 years, and return the pressurized ones to Earth. Also, Dragon and NASA's MPCV (multi-purpose crew vehicle) will both be capable of beyond Earth orbit missions - something the shuttle could never do. This means asteroids, the Lagrange points, Moon, Mars and its moons etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadishTM Veteran Posted July 8, 2011 Veteran Share Posted July 8, 2011 Watching the live feed now - http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ Gonna miss the Space Shuttle program, end of an era (Y) :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted July 8, 2011 Share Posted July 8, 2011 And upon return of Atlantis to Earth so too will end America's dominance of space flight and exploration, it will be a sad day indeed. Who knows maybe one day we will return to our dominance Umm, says who? Just because they are retiring the space shuttle specifically, doesn't mean we are stopping space flight all together... Silly comment IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neoadorable Posted July 8, 2011 Share Posted July 8, 2011 good luck to the crew and to Atlantis on this final shuttle mission. but in the longer run this is good news, it's time to move on to bigger and better things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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