Oops, Try Again Next Week (July 13, 2005)

Date: 13 July 2005
Time 3:51pm EDT
Location: Kennedy Space Center
Conditions: Partly Cloudy
Temperature: 92°F
Launch Status: Canceled

Well folks I tried. :(
I’ve wanted to watch the Shuttle take off for a long time and I just never got around to it. Well this time I made sure I wasn’t going to miss it.
And to make this day even more special I put on my CIC shirt and planned on making a little news report to post up here for you. One of the Security guards noticed the shirt and thought it was for some local news channel 5. I quickly straightened that out.
Unfortunately, as we all know, it never launched.
But hay I did go to the Space Museum and take a lot of pictures so it didn’t turn out all bad.

Can I make it to the next one? I hope to!!!! :D
 
Dyret said:
I'm just glad they noticed it *before* the launch for a change.
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Sounds like you've never tried to attend a shuttle launch.

Delays like this are a completely normal thing. On an average mission you get launch holds and scrubs over and over and over for issues just like this one -- you're only hearing about it this time because the media is sweet on the story.

The awkwardness here is compounded by the fact that you have a small window in which you can get the shuttle launched under the necessary conditions (daylight) to get to the ISS -- so they have a limited number of days this month with a five minute or so window in each one to put the shuttle into a proper orbit for rendezvous. That means you can't have a big launch hold to fix an issue... you either launch today or you wait until tomorrow. If the shuttle were just going up into orbit you'd have a lot more room to fix such problems.
 
Shades2585 said:
I’ve wanted to watch the Shuttle take off for a long time and I just never got around to it. Well this time I made sure I wasn’t going to miss it.
And to make this day even more special I put on my CIC shirt and planned on making a little news report to post up here for you.
Click to expand...

Hey, that's great. More people should wear their CIC shirt to major events and report back with an exciting story.

bruceloaf.jpg
 
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Well I hope to go to it again when they get this sensor problem fixed. This time I plan to leave really early. If I can I’ll make another “official” post with some pictures. (If I can figure out how to do it.)
I heard it said that Wednesday was the highest turnout in twenty years or so. Considering the traffic jams I went through I can believe it.

What is the file size maximum for posting a picture and how can I do it? I was playing around with it but didn’t get it to work and the FAQ didn’t answer it well enough for me.
 
Although I think it's probably a good thing that the public is once again watching and interested in NASA and the shuttle launches I find it somewhat disturbing that nobody paid attention until the shuttle crashed. I mean when an airliner goes down...there's no big hub bub about the next Boeing 747 taking off. Oh well, at least they're taking interest...
 
There's a big fuss, because a full third of NASA's space shuttle fleet has been lost in accidents. Had a third of the world's 747s been lost in accidents, there'd be a big fuss about 747s, too.

And also, why is it disturbing that nobody paid attention until the shuttle crashed? What's so exciting about yet another resupply flight to an unfinished space station that serves no purpose? Who cares?
 
I'm quite interested in the space station, but I agree that it's no surprise nor disturbing that a lot of people are interested in this launch. If no large airplanes were allowed to take off for two and a half years, everyone would be watching the launch of that as well.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Although I think it's probably a good thing that the public is once again watching and interested in NASA and the shuttle launches I find it somewhat disturbing that nobody paid attention until the shuttle crashed. I mean when an airliner goes down...there's no big hub bub about the next Boeing 747 taking off. Oh well, at least they're taking interest...
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There actually was a big fuss about airplanes here in Norway a few years back. A big flight company didnt maintain their planes properly, and nobody knew anything about it until the planes quite literally fell apart... I dont think anyone got hurt, though.
 
I lived in Orlando for about 3 years and got to see several shuttle and rocket launches. The shuttle launches at night were truly spectacular. Several of us would make our way to the roof of the hotel where I worked and check it out. Even from over 50 miles away the shuttle's engine exhaust would light up the entire sky with a brilliant orange/white flame. It was truly something awesome to see as the ship climbed into the sky and slowly rolled over onto its back as it approached orbit.

The landings were cool too. We would always get the twin sonic "booms" as the shuttle approached the Kennedy Space Center at several times the speed of sound. If you weren't paying attention they could give you a good scare!
 
Dyret said:
There actually was a big fuss about airplanes here in Norway a few years back. A big flight company didnt maintain their planes properly, and nobody knew anything about it until the planes quite literally fell apart... I dont think anyone got hurt, though.
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Sounds like the same situation for the space shuttle to me--well except for the last bit.

Yeah, these shuttles need to be trashed. They should have been after Challenger, but esp. after Columbia. When is NASA going to stop fiddling with the hunk of pre-historic junk and use something mod-ible. They're like consoles when we need PCs.
 
Iceblade said:
Yeah, these shuttles need to be trashed. They should have been after Challenger, but esp. after Columbia. When is NASA going to stop fiddling with the hunk of pre-historic junk and use something mod-ible. They're like consoles when we need PCs.
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Hehe, that's a pretty ridiculous analogy, but they have been working on a shuttle replacement for a couple years now. I believe the current shuttles, whether the replacement is ready or not, are due to be retired in several years.
 
Iceblade said:
Yeah, these shuttles need to be trashed. They should have been after Challenger, but esp. after Columbia. When is NASA going to stop fiddling with the hunk of pre-historic junk and use something mod-ible. They're like consoles when we need PCs.
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Fortunately, NASA knows what they're doing better than you do. "Mod-ible"? For what? You want them to use the same ship for orbital flights and voyages to Mars or something? Makes no sense, it's a total waste of resources to have a ship capable of doing two completely different things when 99% of the time, the ship only has to do one of those things.

Besides, NASA was working on a new design to replace the space shuttle, but it got cancelled due to budget cuts - just a few months before Bush's great big space initiative, ironically enough.
 
Iceblade said:
Yeah, these shuttles need to be trashed. They should have been after Challenger, but esp. after Columbia. When is NASA going to stop fiddling with the hunk of pre-historic junk and use something mod-ible. They're like consoles when we need PCs.
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That's stupid. This is exactly where the shuttle program got fucked up. To get the money to build the thing, it needed to be capable of an unreasonable number of different mission objectives. In the end, it resulted in a platform that's okay at a bunch of things, can do a suprising amount of things as long as you aren't trying to get higher than it can go, but is more expensive per launch than was originally wanted, takes quite a bit of rebuilding between launches, and is generally overkill for whatever you're trying to do.
 
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