Shuttle Away...!

Jul 08, 2011 15:31

 Last flight of the Space Shuttle. There goes another emblem of my childhood. And they won't be replacing it with any other system any time soon, if ever. How foolish can we be?

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mark_asphodel July 8 2011, 21:54:50 UTC
How foolish can we be?

Plenty, given the House now wants to kill the Webb Telescope, too.

OTOH, the shuttle was inherently a bad design. It needed to end. The loss of another orbiter and crew would have happened had the remaining orbiters fulfilled their original 100-mission-apiece goal.

Can't say I didn't get teary-eyed over Atlantis, but we're paying now for Nixon's mistake in killing Apollo four decades ago.

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shining_valor July 11 2011, 15:03:26 UTC
I won't say there weren't problems with the system, but now we've gone from one space travel system to none. From what I've read, plans for space travel now depend on the Russian program for travel to and from the International Space Station, until the private sector gets other options up and running.

Seems like pretty slipshod planning to me.

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mark_asphodel July 13 2011, 02:56:14 UTC
We did go for six years in between the very end of the Apollo era and the first shuttle launch. Not that this was an example of good planning in the least; we've just taken thirty years to get back to where we were... when I was born. OTOH, at least the Russians are cooperative now (for a price).

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