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Science & Technology
Discovery shuttle poised for final launch
2011-02-25
[Emirates 24/7] Discovery, NASA's oldest and most journeyed space shuttle, is poised to launch on Thursday on its final mission, wrapping up a near three-decade legacy of orbital travel.
With its mothballing we officially retire from being outwardly oriented, yea, proponents of high adventure, and return to navel gazing and poring over our genealogies. We're a lot better at making movies about heroism than we are at actually doing it.
When the storied spacecraft lifts off at 4:50 pm (2150 GMT), it will mark the beginning of the end of the US space shuttle programme, with Discovery the first of the remaining three shuttles headed for retirement this year.
We don't have the money and still less have we the determination to build more of them, or even better, to build successors to them using newer technology.
The closure of the US shuttle programme will forge a gaping hole in the American space mission, and leaves astronauts to rely on the Russian Soyuz space capsule for transport to the orbiting International Space Station.
Ptui.
Posted by:Fred

#3  I think it's far better to put everyone and anyone on the dole than to do silly stuff like space exploration.

/sarc off
Posted by: Jefferson   2011-02-25 18:21  

#2  We have more than enough money to develop something better IF we had the will. But for roughly the last fifteen years you couldn't get money to develop an RLV or a cheap mass-produced ELV if you actually believed that either was possible.

They took away the contract for developing the DoD RLV from McDonnell Douglas, gave it to Lockheed, and then cancelled it when they couldn't build the fuel tanks the way they said they could. They also gave sole authority to build RLV's to NASA. They've spent most of the time since then trying to build a next-generation expensive expendable launcher around a stretched version of the SRB's that brought us the Challenger Disaster.

All we really have to do is get back into the business of actually building X-vehicles and things would eventually improve a lot.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain   2011-02-25 02:17  

#1  It had a beautiful launch
(see space.com)
Posted by: Water Modem   2011-02-25 01:31  

00:00