Anyone else watching?
NASA should have ditched the shuttle long ago, but I’m still kind of sad, especially as we no longer anything have any idea when we’ll launch manned spacecraft again and will have to rely on the Russians for the foreseeable future.
I remember The Who’s last tour.
A sad day for the U.S., a sad day for the world, and arguably a sad day for the future of humanity.
I’m watching online. Been there live once before, for a nighttime launch, it was breathtaking. Sad to see it end, but it’s time. Sadder there is nothing coming along anytime soon to take it’s place.
I’m trying to watch, but the adobe flash plugin keeps crashing. Anyone got another link for this?
I waited years for the opportunity to see a launch. It finally came in '07, and I was able to take my kids to see Atlantis take off on STS-117.
It was awesome to behold.
Our annual June/July vacation in Ponte Vedra starts on Sunday, but I’ve been planning to go see the launch for weeks even though we have no place to stay. After much consideration and soul-searching I decided to forego the trip; it’s estimated that up to 1 million people will be there in Titusville for the launch. Hell, it can take 4 hours to get out of Buckhead after the July 4 fireworks, and that’s just 100 or 200k people!
I’m currently watching online, but I’ll head to the conference room 65" TV in just a few minutes!
Rock on Atlantis!
The clock has stopped with 31 seconds to go.
Why was that?
minor glitch, it’s fixed and launched, shuttle is currently approaching orbit, 8 minutes into the flight.
Spectacular.
The Dope rules. I’m in a salon, saw this thread, downloaded the NASA app on the iPhone, and watched it from T minus 5 minutes. I saw the first launch in April 1981 and I can now say I saw the last (on tv of course). Awesome!
Why? The Shuttle can’t even leave low Earth orbit - all the really interesting science is elsewhere in the solar system, and there’s no reason whatsoever to send men there anyway. Probes can teach us far more, cheaply and safely, than manned spaceflight ever could.
As to the mystical idea that a human presence in space is a prerequisite for the survival of the species - pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. You could slam Earth with as many nukes or asteroids as you care to, we’d still have oxygen gas and liquid water - show me anyplace else in the solar systems that can boast the same. Earth on its very worst day would be infinitely more hospitable than any other world in reach on its best.
I will have to ask my mom if I saw the first launch. I was barely five and honestly don’t remember.
Count me in the camp of “shuttles should have been retired and replaced years ago”, but it still makes me sad. And worried about what’s going to happen next.
A friend of mine went down to Florida to watch. He had a great deal on flight+hotel and if we weren’t leaving on a trip this weekend, my husband and I may have seriously considered going! It’s sad that it’s the end, though at the same time it’s well past due. What’s next?
Space is now further away. Those who believe profit is the only accomplishment worth pursuing have won again.
I’ll repeat what I said in the other shuttle thread:
The shuttle program was misrepresented from the beginning, cost many times more than it was supposed to, and was never managed well.
I’ll miss it.
It may never have been what it was supposed to be, but it was the only manned program that we had. I remember getting up early with my father and brother to watch the first launch and the excitment of the return to space. And unless the private companies are able to fill the gap, I fear that we’ll be limited to Soyuz trips to the ISS for a long, long time.
We had to have canoes before we sailed across the Atlantic.
As to asteroids, it only took one to cause a near total extinction event.
Not the extinction of an intelligent race, but the extinction of nearly all of the life on Earth.
And this has happened not once but several times to our planet alone.
Of course if the extinction of the human race is o.k. as long as some bacteria, and some algae survive then its not really a problem for you is it ?
And making huge scientific advances if we ever get off of this planet for more then a comparative blink of the eye doesn’t really matter much, because we’re never going to run short of natural resources are we ?
O.K. a gallon of gas/petrol may well cost a weeks wages in the not to distant future, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve run out does it ?
But I’m curious…
Why are you so aggresively hostile to mankind developing space travel and generally expanding the knowledge of the human species ?
I know that there are some who are against it on theological grounds, and those who are against it because they don’t like change, or things happening that they can’t understand, though of course they never give those reasons for their enmity .
(Its always on the lines of "Oh we could have cured cancer with the money, or ended warfare, and equally such silly excuses. But never "lets everyone give up warfare, mobile phones and T.V. which makes the money spent on space exploration pale into insignificance)
Why on Earth do they want to develop electricity ?
Steam and oil lamps are here right now, and they’re much more reliable then any of these new, unknown, untested scientific novelties.
And we’ve got them right now, not at some unspecified time in the future…if of course electricity ever turns out to be anything more then an interesting parlour trick of no use to the real world .
And just to finish off, I won’t bother pulling the other one as I don’t swing that way
(Though I have no moral objection to others who get off, er …pulling certain parts of the anatomy, I’m really, really hoping that you mean leg…
and why do you attach bells to that part of your body ?
Is it some sort of Tantric sex thing ?
No don’t bother, I don’t really want to know the answer, you just go ahead and enjoy yourself)
And it keeps getting worse and more dangerous the farther out you go. Astronauts could really end up in a tight spot on Uranus, for example.
And when Santa-bot makes his annual Xmas Eve rampage from Neptune, we’re gonna need to develop defenses.