Discovery

Mar 09, 2011 10:27

I watched the Discovery shuttle make its last landing this morning. The shuttles have been around as long as I can remember. Even as a small child I though they were the coolest thing ever ( Read more... )

shuttle discovery space final

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technoshaman March 9 2011, 20:48:51 UTC
Oh, but there is. It hasn't gotten a lot of press, for whatever reason, but SpaceX's Dragon is the designated replacement for the shuttle; they are scheduled to do a cargo-only flight to ISS later this year. The capsule is designed to be not only man-capable, in a very Apollo-looking fashion, but re-usable, a lot more re-usable than the shuttle. The goal is to get the *entire* spacecraft to be re-usable for several hundred cycles - boosters, capsule, the whole shebang.

I forget where it is, but tickets to the official areas for the launch are on sale right this second. 'course, that's subject to mission scrub, etc.

And I do think we can get some unity out of the idea of going to space as a species. 120,000 people watched the re-entry live on Ustream, from Europe, Japan, Argentina, all over the world. I didn't see any Arabic go by, but I was sure getting katakana a LOT...

I've seen a shuttle launch. STS-48, Discovery ironically, with UARS aboard... It's pretty impressive ( ... )

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prettyshrub March 9 2011, 20:59:31 UTC
Good to know they have plan! Yeah, I found out info about the launches and ticket sales and such. The next one is scheduled for the middle of April, and after that the last is in June. It would probably cost $600 to a grand to go, depending on how long I stay etc, and yes I know the mission could be scrubbed.

120K isn't bad, but still a drop in the bucket. I wish more people would at least occasionally look past their own little patch of life.

Money being no object, I'd go to space in a skinny minute. I have a secret fantasy of owning my own spaceships. Notice the plural. If you are going to think big, you might as well think REALLY BIG.

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technoshaman March 10 2011, 15:14:29 UTC
Whoa. A whole fleet? A lady admiral?

I *LIKE* the way you think!

As for getting people to look past their own lives? I think the way to do that is to do it oneself, and just be public about it.

Like we're doing.

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