STS-119 Finally Launches Into Space 83
Iddo Genuth writes "After several delays, including twice over the past week, the space shuttle Discovery has finally been launched into space. The spacecraft took off at precisely 7:43 p.m. EDT, embarking on the STS-119 mission, which will provide the International Space Station with the fourth and final set of solar arrays — and which will make the ISS brighter than Venus. The shuttle will also deliver to the ISS its newest crew member, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, who will replace flight engineer Sandra Magnus at the station."
Re: (Score:1)
2) What is zero-g ejaculation like? Does it make floating semen balls?
Actually zero g ejaculation has been done in a porn
Funny as it may sound the film was called Uranus Experiment.
-Which I guess is something you trolls do a lot (experimenting with Uranus that is)
They made it zero g the oldschool way in a plane that dropped altitude very fast
Some pornstars are fucking amazing (no pun intended)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's a space station! And it really is, too!
Brighter than Venus (Score:1, Funny)
Good Luck Boys (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good Luck Boys (Score:5, Informative)
This site looks like just what you want:
http://www.heavens-above.com/ [heavens-above.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
NASA's satellite sighting page is also very good:
http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Getting old? Shuttles are old - the Discovery alone is 25 years old and the Enterprise first flew in 1977. Hopefully the next generation of spacecraft will be able to last as long (or longer) in a very reliable fashion.
I didn't think the shuttle Enterprise ever actually went into space, am I not remembering correctly?
Re:Good Luck Boys (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good Luck Boys (Score:4, Informative)
It's sitting in the Smithsonian Annex at Dulles on public display.
The reason they built Endeavour is because Enterprise lacked a number of improvements to the flight design made in building Columbia and the other shuttles. Retrofitting Enterprise would have been more expensive than building Endeavour was.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention because Enterprise was a prototype which was never intended to fly in space, it is way over built. As such, it is the heaviest shuttle ever created. Because of its weight it could have barely achieved LEO, making it unable to service many of the missions to which the other shuttles currently service.
In short, making Enterprise space-ready means paying more for less capability than what is achieved with Endeavour.
Re:Good Luck Boys (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point i'm hoping there will be a "next generation of spacecraft" in my lifetime.
where's that... one sec:
I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last.
Dr. Jerry Eugene Pournelle
Re: (Score:1)
What's "EU-style socialism"? It can't be anything like socialism, since the EU isn't a socialist state.
And remind me again, how exactly did the US "lead in space"? Was that through private means of production, or a Government funded organisation?
Re: (Score:2)
Was that through private means of production, or a Government funded organisation?
Both. The Government didn't build spacecraft. It gave a mandate to private industry to do it.
Re: (Score:1)
By "mandate" you mean money as well as the decision. I'm aware that companies sometimes build parts, but in a socialist state, the work is still done by the people or organisations - the point is that the decisions and the money come from the state. And NASA are not private industry in any meaningful sense.
My point being, if someone is going to make a troll-ish statement about capitalism versus socialism, space exploration right now is the last example you want to pick! (And I speak as someone who is pro-ca
Re: (Score:2)
By "mandate" you mean money as well as the decision. I'm aware that companies sometimes build parts, but in a socialist state, the work is still done by the people or organisations - the point is that the decisions and the money come from the state. And NASA are not private industry in any meaningful sense.
Just because the initial entry into and exploration of space was done by public institutions, doesn't mean it had to be that way. If we'd let the porn industry find a way to commercialize it, we'd have fry cooks on Venus by now.
Re: (Score:2)
Well doy. "The Government" doesn't run a national health service- it pays doctors to. "The Government" doesn't run an army- it pays soldiers to.
"The Government" is just a fancy term for about 1000 people who make laws and dish out money. A "Government Project" isn't one where politicians do all the work, it's one where the Government is the principal financial backer.
"The Government" built spacecraft in that the scientists who designed it were paid by the government and the companies who assembled it were p
Re: (Score:2)
And remind me again, how exactly did the US "lead in space"? Was that through private means of production, or a Government funded organisation?
Well, both, actually. NASA didn't build most of the stuff that went into space; private companies did.
Re: (Score:2)
NASA didn't build most of the stuff that went into space; private companies did.
And food stamps are not socialist because the food was manufactured by private companies.
Re: (Score:2)
NASA didn't build most of the stuff that went into space; private companies did.
And food stamps are not socialist because the food was manufactured by private companies.
In a really truly socialist country, the food isn't manufactured by private companies; it's manufactured by the State Ministry of Nutrition or whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoosh!
Re: (Score:2)
Whoosh!
No, I got you, I just don't buy your position. "Socialist" is a term that gets misused a lot. Food stamps are not socialist. State ownership or control of the means of production is socialist. If the government told the food manufacturers, "you must give away 20% of your annual production to the poor", that would be socialist. Nobody forced the Apollo program contractors to participate; their work was not forcibly expropriated. NASA (and food stamps) may be Keynesian in nature, but they're not sociali
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You are already seeing the next generation [wikipedia.org] of spacecraft.
Soyuz is a type of craft... not a specific model.
Re: (Score:2)
So what? Outside of the consumer products, equipment and vehicles in the real world routinely stay in service for decades.
Re: (Score:1)
Considering that there have only been 5 shuttles made for spaceflight and 2 of them have been destroyed, I think age is a factor that needs to be considered, even if the two causes for shuttle disasters were not directly related to age.
Re:Good Luck Boys (Score:5, Informative)
I like http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544 [n2yo.com]
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=99999 [n2yo.com]
and http://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=33442&tz=GMT-05:00 [n2yo.com] is fun/interesting as well.
It's fun to have all three up at once, Discovery is right over my head now...
Re: (Score:2)
I hope there will be no footage of blown O-rings or damaged tiles. Shuttles are getting old.
I wish people would stop saying this. While technically true its also misleading and surrounded by an endless list of exceptions.
Simple fact is, the reason the shuttle costs so dang much to send into space after each mission is because so much of it is replaced and refurbished after each flight. Literally every inch of wiring is reviewed. All suspect wear components are replaced. This basically leaves the structure i
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Your car doesn't see 1/1000 the care and attention airplanes receive on an annual basis. Airplanes don't receive 1/100000 the care the shuttle receives after each flight.
Get back to me when you fully disassemble your car annually, bore scope the engine, remove the pistons, allowing for cylinder and crank analysis, perform metallurgical analysis of your oil after each change, x-ray your chassis and frame, ensure it is never overloaded, so on and so on. There are many 50-year old planes which are in better sh
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
It also occurs to me that, since the Shuttles complexity is it's downfall, it should be replaced with something simple. There is no need for it to be that complex, and believing so is a byproduct of listening to people who are trying to keep their jobs, or support the monstrous space segment of the aerospace community. It can be done lighter and cheaper, by an order of magnitude. Look at SpaceX or OpenLuna...
Full Power for Full Science (Score:3, Insightful)
I really liked that line.
Fly-over times (Score:2)
Can somebody recommend a website or an application which can be used to calculate the fly-over times of the spaceshuttle and/or the ISS from a certain location on this planet? I would love to show a special "star" to my little boy.
Re:Fly-over times (Score:5, Informative)
NASA, surprise, surprise.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/ [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
I had that page open along with Realplayer live stream at 4 AM in the morning on my poor G4 Mini 1.42 Ghz.
As poor thing doing live stream same time and java, there was some glitch in communications from NASA and I actually heard it like 8bit Atari 800xl explosion effect. Same time, Java not having enough CPU power made shuttle disappear instead of moving it.
Funny is, I had another friend in same setup using dual core Macbook and he swears same thing happened on his machine.
Re: (Score:2)
The ISS will be almost directly overhead where I am (Indiana) tomorrow night, I'm hoping the shuttle will be visible as well. I don't know how close they are in their orbits right now though.
Re:Fly-over times (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I like http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544 [n2yo.com] [n2yo.com]
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=99999 [n2yo.com] [n2yo.com]
and http://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=33442&tz=GMT-05:00 [n2yo.com] [n2yo.com] is fun/interesting as well.
It's fun to have all three up at once, Discovery is right over my head now...
Re: (Score:2)
Kewl, first Japanese, then (Score:1, Funny)
my boyhood dreams of dueling space mecha warriors will come true after all.
Strangely enough, one of them is a transformer that morphs into something that resembles the old International Space Station...
"Koichi, this is Sandra."
Great Job NASA @ crew. (Score:1)
Beautiful launch, and I am very much looking forward to the mission, But what I want to know is why was did CNN and Fox have better/more interesting coverage than NASA TV? (Leave it to NASA to make something as spectacular and awe inspiring as a launch and make it so boring/mundane. I ended up having NASA TV, FOX and CNN all on.
NASA should kick them a couple bucks (or whatever) and let them do the coverage... We need to get more people interested in Space, and with that boring coverage, you are not going t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
gosh I don't know, maybe NASA's slightly more interested in getting plain facts out instead of hyping every latest piece of new information to maximum sensationalistic mediagasm proportions?
Re: (Score:2)
Point taken. However, from my own experiences trying to watch NASA TV, I think there's really just one simple thing that they could do. This simple thing would go a *long* way towards the channel being watchable and interesting. What is this simple thing?
Fire the half-asleep drunken hobo who runs their A/V control room, and replace them with someone at least half-way competent!
Re: (Score:2)
gosh I don't know, maybe NASA's slightly more interested in getting plain facts out instead of hyping every latest piece of new information to maximum sensationalistic mediagasm proportions?
Since when?
Re: (Score:2)
He must have tuned 1 or more hours earlier than actual launch, I did too and man it was really really boring. I didn't want to lose my spot on realserver so I kept it open.
You don't air any live event like that. They aired the media feed to NASA TV watchers. It was like definition of ''dead air'' for TV broadcast newbies.
Speaking of the Fox, CNN style broadcasting, there was a guy on NASA TV, trying to explain (why?!) what it means to have 30KW power. Man, it is NASA TV, you don't have to explain 30KW espec
Re: (Score:2)
If there is a house using 1000 watts of power at idle time
It's actually not that hard to get there, particularly if you have "luxuries" like a swimming pool or hot tub.
owner should be given to Greenpeace to get executed.
Why, because they aren't living the lifestyle that you approve of? What if they are paying extra for wind power or some such?
Re: (Score:1)
If NASA's is to deliver plain facts to - the American Public - They need to do so in a manner that they can understand, or, perhaps more importantly, /want/ to understand. It's like the difference between a dry textbook or "Popular Science" or "New Scientist" Why are their subscription rates so much higher than your average peer-reviewed journal? (Other than the insane costs - but their are ways to get the same info free/cheap) Simple, the information is presented in an easy to understand way, with enough t
Not quite accurate (Score:3, Funny)
The spacecraft took off at precisely 7:43 p.m. EDT
Having watched NASA's official feed, I can inform you this is incorrect. The precise time was 7:43:44 EDT.
Precision Problem? (Score:2)
The precise time was 7:43:44 EDT.
How precise could that time be when the Shuttle takes a second or two to get moving? It's not exactly a quicky off the pad in the way the Saturn V's were.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, compared to the Saturn V, the shuttle stack seems to jump off the pad.
The Saturn V seemed to take an eternity to clear the tower.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It also helps that the shuttle system, including boosters and the external tank, is a heck of a lot lighter than a Saturn V.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fully fueled, the Saturn V weighed about 6 million pounds. Each F-1 in the first stage was about 1.5million pounds of thrust for a total of 7.5million pounds. The Shuttle weighs about 4.5 million pounds fully fueled.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, compared to the Saturn V, the shuttle stack seems to jump off the pad.
It doesn't seem to... it does. The shuttle main engines are ignited 6-7 seconds before "0" or launch because they take that long to work up to their working thrust. If you ever see a close up of the orbiter during the final ten seconds, you'll see it rock a little from a slightly leaned-back angle to straight vertical as this happens.
The solid rocket boosters are bolted to the platform to prevent the shuttle stack from launching (or toppling) while that's happening. Imagine a car -- since this is /. -- s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gorgeous launch (Score:2)
I'm in Florida and was able to walk into the street to see the launch. Absolutely gorgeous. It happened at sunset so the plume was colored just like clouds would be during a sunset - white, yellow, pink, and orange. Here's a pic of how it looked [flickr.com] (not shot by me, but that's how it looked where I was. Search Flickr for STS 119 for more.) Also, it was a perfectly clear day and you could easily see the boosters for a long time after separation. Thanks for the great show NASA, and good luck spacemen!
Re: (Score:2)
It was awesome! (Score:2)
The wife and I stepped out into our driveway and watched the shuttle until it disappeared to the east. We weren't the only ones, about half of the neighborhood was out watching.
Kind of reminded me of the rocket launches back when I was a kid in South Carolina.
The bat (Score:1)
I wonder what happened to it...