The Glade 4.0

Makes me cry that this is the last time we're likely to see this.

Congratulations, heroes.

/salute

Just a bit over 30 years too. I was 5 years old, in Kindergarten when STS-01 lifted off. Now I'm 35 and my own daughter is going to Kindergarten this year.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I remember making a scrapbook of the first shuttle launch for my 1st grade (or was it kindergarden) class for extra credit.

Last summer, my wife & I took the kids to see what at the time we thought would be Atlantis' last flight - STS-132. Growing up in Tampa Bay, I'd seen nearly every launch either up close or across the state, until 1995 when I moved to MI. I knew that was going to be their only shot at seeing it live. It was picture-perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and a flawless launch.

STS-135 was a glorious launch too.

/Salute the Space Shuttle Program

Kinda sad. sadder that there is nothing waiting in the wings (no pun intended) and no one seems to care.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Lots of us care Rori, we just don't make the right voting blocks to matter.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I mean no one with the authority or resources to make it happen.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

As much as I used to laud Reagan for accellerating the fall of the Soviet Union, I have to think, in retrospect, it wasn't a good idea. Regardless of economics or politics, all of human endeavor relies on competition. The arms race did a lot for science, but the Space Race was even more important. Without the big reds on the other side of the Iron Curtain, we've stagnated.

The Shuttle program was amazing then it started, I remember Columbia's first launch very clearly as a child, and it was filled with such promise - making human interaction in near orbit routine rather than an amazing feat. But we let the program stagnate. It's not that the Shuttle Program shouldn't have ended years ago...it's long past its time. It's that we haven't replaced it yet, even now that it is ending.

NASA may be the single most important agency toward human advancement, even now. And we've let it get dusty and fall into disrepair. (As a Canadian, I have to say, even though we didn't have our own space program, we always participated eagerly, cooperating with NASA in joint programs.)

I can only hope China decides to restart the space race, and that we take their bait and make a real competition out of it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

We have other projects underway, just nothing as "spaceshippy" as the shuttles. The shuttles are not particularly efficient, and it's become clear over time that reusable spacecraft may not be the way to go.

How much more efficient and reliable would reusable craft be today if we hadn't stopped developing them 30 years ago?

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I don't think the real problem is in "reuseable" so much as the awkwardness of the piggyback configuration.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And even the shuttles were only supposed to supplement one function of NASA. However, glorified bicycle courier was not supposed to be NASA's primary role, ever. "Please put this in orbit for us..."

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The space shuttles, as originally envisioned, weren't really for NASA, or at least not for NASA exclusively. They were designed around rapid launch of military payloads. They never really developed that route for their use though, especially with the end of the cold war, so we were left witha sort of hybrid cargo launcher/orbital taxi, with all the compromises tht hybridization entails.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."