Discovery glides into history Space shuttle Discovery ended its 39-mission career this afternoon at 16:57 GMT, when it landed at Kennedy Space Center. Discovery touches down at Kennedy Space Center this afternoon. Pic: NASA The shuttle's swansong was a 13-day trip to the International Space Station to deliver spares and the Permanent Multipurpose Module. …
I was in 8th grade when the shuttle program was assigned to LA-area building companies after it was designed by NYC-area engineering companies. There were NIH problems in that the LA-folks really never 'owned' the design of the ship. The space shuttle design did not evolve over time, so the 1968-dreams became well-past-obsolete in 2011.
I will miss the Shuttles, but they really needed evolution to stay-fresh and remain viable like other aircraft and high-tech assets.
Back to the olde space capsules! We can only hope that privatization will bring new-ideas to this field.
....as the space effort staggers on, hog tied by incompetent bureaucrats and health and safety nuts.
Hopefully, the new generation of private operators will revitalise the industry, assuming they don't get strangled by self-interested corporations and dinosaur government agencies.
"hog tied by ... and health and safety nuts."
It's because of "health and safety nuts" that you got off the last flight you took, and also the reason that any shuttles are still flying, rather than all of them being in pieces.
"...don't get strangled by self-interested corporations and dinosaur government agencies."
However I'm with you 100% on this.
if they really had hogtied it, then perhaps the Challenger and Columbia would still be flying now, without any loss of crews. I recall a commentator some time ago remarking that the three X-15's made almost two hundred flights between them, but were never regarded as more than experimental and quite dangerous aerospacecraft to operate - however with the Shuttle, a far more complicated and higher-performing piece of equipment, they made four test flights and declared it fully operational.
That;'s even before you get to the design compromises forced upon NASA in the 70s when they were having the thing approved by the US administration, making it the 'DC-1 1/2' of space rather than the DC-3 it was meant to be. And what are NASA replacing it with? essentially, the same concept as Apollo - disposable one-shot craft.
paris, because you have to wonder if there's any point to her at all as well.
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