Ode to STS-133

[simbagirl]

Earlier this week, space shuttle Discovery made its final voyage from the Vehicle Assembly Building to its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The shuttle may reach speeds above Mach 25 in space, but this 3.4 mile journey took a staggering seven hours. Discovery’s final flight was postponed in November, but

Comments

[johncoxon]

Currently using NASA software to plot spacecraft trajectories so that my supervisor can make better instruments for an upcoming mission :D

[simbagirl]

That's so cool!

[johncoxon]

It's alright, yeah! :) Although learning the subroutines I'm expected to use is a bit daunting, it's been a while since I used C/IDL so I'm having to kinda re-learn the code as I go. (Mind, my supervisor is also a geeky Mac user, so our meetings get onto technological tangents pretty easily...)

[mortnme]

It's sad because my generation has no understanding or feelings for space flight whatsoever. This was really great though, wonderful writing.

[simbagirl]

That is indeed sad. I remember something from Apollo 13 that said even by that flight, only the second since the moon landing, people had lost interest because it appeared 'routine'. But at the same time, the shuttle flights are still classed as experimental because so far there have only been 132, which is nothing compared to commercial airliners. I come from a sciency family, so it's not really surprising that something like this sparked my interest (my brother has a lego space shuttle with working payload bay doors and fibre optics around the engines to make it look like fire....which at the time it was released was THE COOLEST TOY EVER). Once during my first year at uni I spent an entire day on the NASA website listening to a mission :)

[simbagirl]

Also, there are currently always people living in space in the ISS. That's amazing!

[mortnme]

That still sounds like the coolest toy!! I would love to see that haha. Indeed, space exploration definitely is stil experimental, but I think that especially for the North Americans we've seen too many tragedies that we're tired of caring and feeling let down and sad over them. I'm only in Canada, but NASA doesn't exactly advertise or have very good public relations in mass media either, which is also part of the huge divide I think.