Atlantis has landed

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bunnyboy
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Atlantis has landed

Post by bunnyboy »

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And one era is now history, so have anyone something to say. Any last words or experiences to share?
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Grayhome
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Grayhome »

Send in the robots.

Wintermute
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Wintermute »

I'm happy that the launch and landing of the Space Shuttle was a success.



I'm sad that I'll never see another one.

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GeoModder
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by GeoModder »

Grayhome wrote:Send in the robots.
Or rather, sent out the robots.
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Arioch
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Arioch »

Though it's irksome that we're retiring the shuttle without even a plan for a replacement and must now depend on hitching rides with the Russians on the Soviet-vintage Soyuz to get to the space station (which must seem positively surreal to the surviving Cold War-era Mercury astronauts), I suppose it's appropriate that the private sector start taking over.

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icekatze
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

I have quite a few words to say about the politics of funding and the direction wealth has been flowing in the United States, the majority of which are not particularly kind... but this is neither the time nor place to risk a flame war I suppose.

I have to take some small comfort in the fact that many of NASAs unmanned probes have been scoring outstanding successes lately. I'm barely able to contain my excitement as I wait for photos from Vesta via Dawn. Things like that give me some reassurance that we're not about to stop our exploration, save perhaps in the event that our world comes crashing down.

I suppose I'm waiting now for the people to start coming up with conspiracy theories about how the shuttle missions were faked, that way I can tell them that I personally saw the shuttle dock with the ISS through a telescope.

Alexandr Koori
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Alexandr Koori »

Soyuz - amazing spacecraft. Soyuz program was started in Soviet lunar program and therefore distinguished by high reliability and manufacturability. I don't want to think that after the closure of both programs (Space Shuttle and Buran ) the wings would not return to spacecrafts. It is hoped the success of systems MAKS (RAKS) and X-37b.

Karst45
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Karst45 »

At least it didnt go out in a big boom!


Well to boost private space exploration, just claim to have found some petrol on mars ;) (cant find the comic that gave that idea but still.

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Ktrain
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Ktrain »

Why lie when Titan is nothing but a pile of hydrocarbons? This assumes than mankind would rather mine space oil rather than develop alternative fuels, though given the myopic policies in the U.S....
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Voitan
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Voitan »

At least we got this little guy...

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Too bad the missions are always classified. :|

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Cy83r
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Cy83r »

Karst45 wrote:At least it didnt go out in a big boom!
Not to be an apathetic jackass, but maybe a few more catastrophic explosions might, in a typically contradictory fashion, renew public interest, demand rather, in manned space exploration. My perception of the zeitgeist is not very kind, I should admit.

Voitan
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Voitan »

When China builds a moon base, interest will sky rocket.

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Trantor
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Trantor »

Arioch wrote:Though it's irksome that we're retiring the shuttle without even a plan for a replacement
Yes, astounding. Good days seems to be over. Change you can believe in...
and must now depend on hitching rides with the Russians on the Soviet-vintage Soyuz to get to the space station
The irony, delicious. scnr. :mrgreen:
Arioch wrote:I suppose it's appropriate that the private sector start taking over.
Yeah. With broken deadlines, exploding costs, tax(payer) funded bailouts, cutting corners and subsequent fatalities...

Nah, NASA were at their best when they performed the Apollo-project, mankinds only BIG project ever since that didn´t exceed the budget.

To the Shuttles: They came to early. The were planned before substantial engineering processes kicked in, eg composites, computers, design processes etc.
So they were too expensive, absorbing all the money necessary for robotic space probes, telescopes and so on.

But still they boosted science. Lots of good hings were explored in the spacelab, without it my Audi would have no aluminium body. :D

Farewell, STS.
sapere aude.

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Mjolnir
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Mjolnir »

Honestly? Good riddance. 3 decades stuck in LEO, launching the same vehicles, each Shuttle launch sucking away huge amounts of money from other projects, its payload return capability ultimately being used largely to ferry garbage back from the ISS, which was itself long delayed and had major components cancelled because it was relying on the Shuttle to launch them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge ... ons_Module, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitation_Module). The wings that ate into its launch payload capacity and gave it its never-particularly-useful cross-range capability resulting in the loss of an orbiter, science payload, and seven lives.

It was a massive mistake to dump all our launchers and standardize on the first generation of fancy new Shuttles. Rather than making spaceflight cheap and routine, they became one of the most expensive ways to access space, and were so expensive to fly that NASA couldn't afford to develop a replacement while flying them, and so expensive to design and build that we never got even a second generation, never more than minor upgrades. The Shuttle held us back for 30 years, now we can finally go forward.

And yeah, NASA's not doing much to come up with a coherent plan to replace the Shuttles, though the MPCV is something. A good part of that is due to Congress pressuring them to build rockets they can't afford to operate, mandating details of launcher engineering, etc. Utterly failing to give NASA timely and complete budgets doesn't help anything. Commercial options seem moving along well, though. SpaceX has launched and recovered an unmanned variant of Dragon, and could be launching humans now if the Shuttle's level of reliability were acceptable. Boeing's working on the CST-100, which could launch on either the Falcon 9, Atlas V, or Delta IV. And a few others have their own projects going.

Alexandr Koori wrote:I don't want to think that after the closure of both programs (Space Shuttle and Buran ) the wings would not return to spacecrafts. It is hoped the success of systems MAKS (RAKS) and X-37b.
Why don't we work on boats with wheels first? Cheaper, and makes as much sense.

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Ktrain
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Ktrain »

Winged spacecraft might be practical if you use an aircraft as a launch vehicle as a way to minimize fuel costs. Also the Buran's demise was perhaps the most depressing space related thing I have ever read about (well maybe second after that Soviet disaster where they lost all their top scientists).
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Mjolnir
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Mjolnir »

Ktrain wrote:Winged spacecraft might be practical if you use an aircraft as a launch vehicle as a way to minimize fuel costs. Also the Buran's demise was perhaps the most depressing space related thing I have ever read about (well maybe second after that Soviet disaster where they lost all their top scientists).
Air launch only slightly reduces propellant requirements, and propellant costs are a tiny fraction of launch costs. The main costs are in operations and such...putting an orbital launch vehicle on a special-built ultra-heavy-lift airplane and trying to run orbital launches out of an airport will only make things worse.

Pegasus already does air-launch. To fit on a reasonably sized plane, it's tiny, with very limited payload to LEO. It bears the distinction of being the launch system with the highest cost per kilogram to orbit.

NOMAD
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by NOMAD »

Personally, I'm sadden by the shuttle retirement. I know the program never achieved its original dream of making space travel "easy", but it did achieve alot in its time. First repair jobs on Sats ( Hubble amongst the most famous), helps build the most of the ISS ( except the larger central units). Advanced robots on space craft forward (THANK YOU MDS/SPAR :D ).

Thought manned fleet will be more expensive in the long run and unmanned mission are doing great, Its still not exploration without a human in the command chair.

STS you will be missed
I am a wander, going from place to place without a home I am a NOMAD

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Arioch
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Arioch »

Trantor wrote: Yeah. With broken deadlines, exploding costs, tax(payer) funded bailouts, cutting corners and subsequent fatalities...
This would be different from the NASA-run program how? ;)

Alexandr Koori
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by Alexandr Koori »

Air Launch is not so complicated and dangerous, don't need the infrastructure and the space launching base. I do not know about other projects, but in Russia are being developed lung MiG-31-Ishim, were the development of secondary carrier to start with the IL-76, and a relatively heavy - MAKS-Molnia. Clipper project, alas, closed.

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bunnyboy
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Re: Atlantis has landed

Post by bunnyboy »

I heard once that most succesfully designed part of the shuttle were the boostrockets on its side.
They were about 10% more fuel efficient than calculated.
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