Decommissioning the Space Shuttles

[Fabio]

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2...uttles/100271/

[Rigel]

The old birds really look beat up in some of those photos.

[bmckain]

Don't care what anyone says this is a sad moment in American history.

[JackN]

I agree...

[DELTA]

As someone who lived in Florida during the early days of the shuttle program, and as one of the Civil Air Patrol units that helped out doing VIP croud control during a few launches, also one of the units that assisted during the Challenger disaster this hits me hard. I remember looking for those round tanks from the air... I think the ones on the Challenger were green. I was told they were hydrogen generators for power... Will they be scraped or cleaned up and sent to museums?

[Tenement 01]

The saddest pictures for me are the pictures of the shuttles without the engine bells. It just says grounded for good. I hate to see pictures of decommissioned aircraft.

[Meurig]

If film has taught me anything it's that these will only be in storage until the aliens invade. At which point they'll be hurriedly reassembled by a desperate but plucky hero as a means of delivering a nuke to blow up the alien mothership.

[Reaperman]

Originally Posted by Meurig

If film has taught me anything it's that these will only be in storage until the aliens invade. At which point they'll be hurriedly reassembled by a desperate but plucky hero as a means of delivering a nuke to blow up the alien mothership.

These... 'shuttles'... they are a formidable craft?

[Starbase1]

Great photos.

But personally I feel that the shuttle was so insanely expensive to operate its pretty much wiped out manned space flight as an economically viable option, both in the US and in the USSR where trying to emulate it was a major factor in the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.

[JimCrafton]

Very formidable - deep inside these craft are advanced binary machines, capable of astounding feats of calculation and advanced logical analysis. These magical and revolutionary devices can in fact send out invisible rays of information processing, beams that can take control of an enemy vessel, and cause the vessel to purge itself from the known universe.
Powering these fantastical machines is the System of Operations known as:

Mac O.S. 8

Tremble and cower in fear at the majesty and genius of Infinite Loop 1.

[bmckain]

Originally Posted by Reaperman

These... 'shuttles'... they are a formidable craft?

Originally Posted by JimCrafton

Very formidable - deep inside these craft are advanced binary machines, capable of astounding feats of calculation and advanced logical analysis. These magical and revolutionary devices can in fact send out invisible rays of information processing, beams that can take control of an enemy vessel, and cause the vessel to purge itself from the known universe.
Powering these fantastical machines is the System of Operations known as:

Mac O.S. 8

Tremble and cower in fear at the majesty and genius of Infinite Loop 1.

Ok, take me to your leader.. LOL, where do you guys get this stuff. I love it.

[JimCrafton]

Unfortunately I cannot. Our leader has recently passed away, and all at Infinite Loop are awaiting the return of the Wow signal. I can, however, offer you a great deal on an iPad 4....
Completely with 5G network support and 5678 by 3497 pixel resolution display.

[bmckain]

Originally Posted by Starbase1

Great photos.

But personally I feel that the shuttle was so insanely expensive to operate its pretty much wiped out manned space flight as an economically viable option, both in the US and in the USSR where trying to emulate it was a major factor in the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.

Sorry but I can't support that argument. The space program is a mere fraction of what we spend on other budgetary matters. I'm not saying what is or isn't more important but just the fact that the space program is only a fraction of the overall. In the last 37 years NASA's total budget only exceeded 1 percent three times between 91 and 93. Currently they are less than half a percent. Interestingly we spent more money and a larger percentage of our budget between 1962 and 1974 when we hit a high of 4.41 percent of the US budget. We also spent 32 million as opposed to 17 million for 2012. In contrast our medicaid budget is 23 percent of the total US budget while Social Security is another 20 percent. Defense comes in third at only 19 percent of the total budget.

With that in mind the Shuttles hardly qualify as the demise of the space program. While you may disagree with the shuttle mission and feel there are other missions to focus on the cost of the shuttle program really isn't the issue. It's pretty obvious what congress places it's emphasis and it isn't NASA and a space program and that is the real reason the space program is stalled. It always comes down to money.

[bmckain]

Originally Posted by JimCrafton

Unfortunately I cannot. Our leader has recently passed away, and all at Infinite Loop are awaiting the return of the Wow signal. I can, however, offer you a great deal on an iPad 4....
Completely with 5G network support and 5678 by 3497 pixel resolution display.

ROFL!

[Starbase1]

Originally Posted by bmckain

Sorry but I can't support that argument. The space program is a mere fraction of what we spend on other budgetary matters. I'm not saying what is or isn't more important but just the fact that the space program is only a fraction of the overall. In the last 37 years NASA's total budget only exceeded 1 percent three times between 91 and 93. Currently they are less than half a percent. Interestingly we spent more money and a larger percentage of our budget between 1962 and 1974 when we hit a high of 4.41 percent of the US budget. We also spent 32 million as opposed to 17 million for 2012. In contrast our medicaid budget is 23 percent of the total US budget while Social Security is another 20 percent. Defense comes in third at only 19 percent of the total budget.

With that in mind the Shuttles hardly qualify as the demise of the space program. While you may disagree with the shuttle mission and feel there are other missions to focus on the cost of the shuttle program really isn't the issue. It's pretty obvious what congress places it's emphasis and it isn't NASA and a space program and that is the real reason the space program is stalled. It always comes down to money.

Oh, I definitely didn't mean that the budget was too high, just that the shuttle is a spectacularly expensive way of getting stuff into orbit. (The figures I have show over $10k per kilogram to low orbit, I've seen numbers over double that)

It was meant to provide cheap, routine access to space as key goals, and it failed massively in both regards.

I don't believe the current planned NASA built manned spacecraft will ever fly, and I think manned space flight for the USA will effectively be handled by US companies like SpaceX, rather than directly by a government agency.

(Spacex manage $2k per kilo, and are expecting to lower that a lot more)

I was also emphasizing the manned aspects - the USA remains decades ahead of all others in things like deep space unmanned probes.

[Mikala]

NASA is way more efficient at decomm than Star Fleet. Bam bam bam done!
Sad to see these ol girls mothballed. Part of history now. Wonder how long it will take before children are saying "What shuttle program?" or Space Program for that matter.

[Reaperman]

Originally Posted by bmckain

Ok, take me to your leader.. LOL, where do you guys get this stuff. I love it.

Stargate SG1

for what its worth i dont think we'll see any meaningful advances in space exploration other than dipping our toe into the cosmic ocean until we get orbital tethers set up enabling really cheap way to get large amounts of infrastructure into orbit

[3D_CG]

wow
those are some pictures

So sad to close it down...

So sad it would have been real easy to keep the program going.....

We could have had a real Star Trek Era..

Now the journey instead of Space as the Final Frontier ...

It will be Face Book..

[DELTA]

Originally Posted by 3D_CG

Now the journey instead of Space as the Final Frontier ...

It will be Face Book..

Unfortunately...

[Rigel]

Sad to see them go, yes. But on the other hand, they've had a good run. I was 16 or 17 when the Enterprise started atmospheric flight tests. I'm 51 now. Those birds flew for quite some time.

[Vendigo]

The real tragedy is while it was soon realized the shuttles weren't up to their original task (100 launches a year for the fleet), no effort was taken to reconsider the design, nor to come up with an improved version. Instead, the design went into odd directions with NASP and X-33 and several SSTO projects, all of which got canceled.

If not for the misplaced complacence in the shuttle, we'd all be celebrating the introduction of a new, improved space access vehicle, but instead we're seeing the (hopefully temporary) end of manned space flights by NASA. It's a sad sight, but perhaps it's the shock treatment neccessary to bring full awareness of the need of commercial crew space access. It just has to settle in for a bit. I'm so looking forward to the Dreamchaser first flight and Dragon's first ISS docking.

[Starbase1]

Originally Posted by Vendigo

The real tragedy is while it was soon realized the shuttles weren't up to their original task (100 launches a year for the fleet), no effort was taken to reconsider the design, nor to come up with an improved version. Instead, the design went into odd directions with NASP and X-33 and several SSTO projects, all of which got canceled.

If not for the misplaced complacence in the shuttle, we'd all be celebrating the introduction of a new, improved space access vehicle, but instead we're seeing the (hopefully temporary) end of manned space flights by NASA. It's a sad sight, but perhaps it's the shock treatment neccessary to bring full awareness of the need of commercial crew space access. It just has to settle in for a bit. I'm so looking forward to the Dreamchaser first flight and Dragon's first ISS docking.

I agree, any dam fool can succeed if they ignore the budget.

[Starbase1]

One for shuttle fans, a giga-pan of extreme detail:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...orama-science/

Nick

[Crook]

National pride - retired.

No heavy lifter, or crew lifter for years, probably a decade? Stupid.

Spend the money again. Be glorious again. Explore. That's what I'd tell the US govt. It wasn't that expensive as explained above, and was worth it.

Very saddened.

[3D_CG]

Originally Posted by Crook

National pride - retired.

No heavy lifter, or crew lifter for years, probably a decade? Stupid.

Spend the money again. Be glorious again. Explore. That's what I'd tell the US govt. It wasn't that expensive as explained above, and was worth it.

Very saddened.

it would have been cheaper to keep nasa going...
Ya think..

[JackN]

Originally Posted by Crook

National pride - retired.

No heavy lifter, or crew lifter for years, probably a decade? Stupid.

Spend the money again. Be glorious again. Explore. That's what I'd tell the US govt. It wasn't that expensive as explained above, and was worth it.

Very saddened.

Sorry... We need the money to bail out companies that don't know how to run a business...

[DELTA]

Originally Posted by Starbase1

I agree, any dam fool can succeed if they ignore the budget.

The US Government has been doing that for years and look where we are at...

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Starbase1

One for shuttle fans, a giga-pan of extreme detail:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...orama-science/

Nick

Very cool reference picture.