8 ms·
Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)
- jbri 15y agoIt's somewhat sad to see the shuttles go, especially without a replacement immediately to hand. Though hopefully the end up the shuttle program will pave the way for a manned launch vehicle that can get us out of LEO.
- jasonkester 15y agoThere's no timer on the feed, but at the moment they appear to be vacuuming. I'll take that as a sign that it's not going to launch in the next hour. Anybody have an actual time when that's supposed to happen?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- whiskers 15y agoIt's due to be around 4:30pm GMT (edited to correct the time, I was out by an hour)
- timroman 15y ago11:26am EDT or a little less than two hours from now. The launch window for today is only about 30 minutes. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/releases/2011/release-20110630.txt http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/releases/2011/relea...
- dmboyd 15y agoI think im seeing the same vacuuming footage. Slightly off topic, but what's with all the people wearing baseball caps indoors. Wouldn't it obscure a large portion of your vision?
- Udo 15y agoThis is probably intended to minimize contamination of the equipment with hair. Apparently, they also have metal-on-metal seals on the main hatch, so the smallest pieces of dirt could potentially prevent them from working.
- Sukotto 15y agoCountdown timer here: http://countdown.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/cdt http://countdown.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/cdt
- teoruiz 15y agoThere is a bigger version of the video here: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html
- nicolasp 15y agoAlternative: http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv (parent's link doesn't work for me).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jgrahamc 15y agoIt's sad to see the Shuttle go without a replacement. And to jog my own memory of the day I saw the shuttle in the UK, here's a set of pictures from the day Enterprise visited Stansted Airport in the UK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_ward/sets/72157603394672289/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_ward/sets/7215760339467228... I was there as a boy standing against the wire fence with my father to see this amazing machine. Bloody marvellous!
- eftpotrm 15y agoThank you for posting them. I understand I've seen the Shuttle in the UK too. Difficult to know by now what I'm remembering and what I'm remembering being told / seeing photos; I'd have been four. But I'm still glad to know that I have. The shuttle may well have been too expensive, too dangerous and too limited in capabilities. But to me as a simple enthusiast it's still a truly glorious machine that would be sad to see go even with a better replacement on the next pad. Without that.... One day, we will return.
- OstiaAntica 15y agoThe Shuttle program is coming to a hard stop because the program was a failure. The Shuttle is monstrously complex, killed astronauts on routine low orbit missions, and its runaway costs enveloped NASA's budget, crowding out any alternative manned platforms. There is no next-generation Shuttle or iteration of the Shuttle because simply running the current version of the Shuttle consumed NASA. After this last mission, the U.S. manned space program's capabilities will be back in the 1950s.
- jordan0day 15y agoWhile I have to agree with your overall point, I'm not ready to cede that the shuttle hurt manned space exploration more than it helped. Despite its' shortcomings, the Space Shuttle has been a point of national (and I would imagine international) pride, it's an incredible machine that has inspired the dreams of millions. Perhaps it did hurt more than it helped, in that it made the phrase you use, "routine low orbit missions" not sound ludicrous. Perhaps it was all just a massively expensive house of cards one gentle breeze away from failure, and on the occasions it did fail, people were surprised. We've only been sending people to space for fifty years, there's still nothing "routine" about low earth orbit, and every astronaut that has died in a shuttle knew exactly the risks they were taking. My greatest hope is that the retirement of the remaining shuttles won't be seen by Americans (and the world in general) as a failure or a "sign of the times", but will be a rallying point. It's time to move on to bigger and better things.
- evilswan 15y agoAnyone else see that plain text ASCII character randomly appear on the in-cockpit views?
- lgeek 15y agoIs there a stream which doesn't require Flash?
- chippy 15y agoView it in VLC Media > Open Network Stream > Address http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163 http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163
- spydum 15y agojust fyi, at least for me, Yahoo stream is about 20 seconds behind.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hugh3 15y agoIt's strange to think that in fifty years of manned spaceflight, NASA has only ever built four types of spaceship: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle. The Shuttle had a good run. It was both technically awesome and in many ways ridiculous and pointless. Anyway, time for the future now.
- OstiaAntica 15y agoThe vast complexity of the Shuttle literally killed innovation at NASA.
- fhars 15y agoIt was a horrible failure. It was projected for 75 launches a year at about 25M$ (thats million dollars, not a software company in Seattle) per lauch from 1977 until the late eighties when it was scheduled to be replaced by something better. Instead it was 135 launches in 30 years at 1.6G$ per lauch, and it totally crippled NASA's capabilities to develop a replacement.
- kevindication 15y ago(thats gillion dollars, not g-forces)
- sukuriant 15y agoyou may want to change G to B. In the United States, where dollars are used, G is more likely to mean "Grand", or 1k. B would be billion. Or, when all else fails, just type it out.
- brudgers 15y agoIn 1979, I watched the Enterprise+transporter fly in to Kennedy for the first time from the Indian River - that was a long time ago. Hell, it's even been 25 years since I turned on the TV to see Dan Rather using a model to explain the various external tanks and knew something bad had happened. So while it is the passing of an era, with the ISS at the sharp point of manned space flight, I'm not about to let nostalgia cloud the objective fact that it doesn't matter whose hardware gets us off the ground and out toward the stars. [edit] But that's not to imply that shuttle launches aren't really cool.
- lhnn 15y ago> it doesn't matter whose hardware gets us off the ground and out toward the stars. On this, I disagree. Flying in an even older device (Soyuz) provided at a ridiculous rate from a "business partner" (calling Russia an ally is not quite accurate) is not the way we should be letting ourselves get into space. I know the shuttle is far from perfect, but we should have had the Dragon or Orion capsule ready before shuttle retirement. Turn off some air conditioners and get out of a few wars, and we could have easily kept going strong.
- ugh 15y agoAt least Soyuz is more reliable than the Space Shuttle.
- chrisjsmith 15y agoAs far as we know. The Russians weren't always that honest about who they blew up by accident.
- ugh 15y agoAha, and what’s your evidence for that? Soyuz 1 (1967) and Soyuz 11 (1971) both ended with fatalities. Four cosmonauts died. The Soviet Union did not hide those fatalities. Here is what best illustrates that: All their names are on the Fallen Astronaut memorial on the Moon, put there during Apollo 15, only a month after Soyuz 11 ended in disaster. There have been no fatalities on Soyuz flights since Soyuz 11, all fatalities occurred early on. That’s forty years without fatalities, and that’s mostly why Soyuz is so safe and reliable. Sure, more astronauts died during Space Shuttle missions but the Space Shuttle also brought many more astronauts into space than Soyuz. If you look at the percentage of fatalities Soyuz is only doing marginally better – one more dead cosmonaut and the percentages would be about the same. It’s not so much the raw numbers, it’s the forty years. Soyuz is a mature spacecraft, all the kinks have been worked out, the Space Shuttle was always too complicated to ever really work out the kinks, to ever really be considered safe.
- sung1 15y agoThis is so sad. Are we betting on SpaceX to get us back into space now?
- jordan0day 15y agoThere's no betting going on at all. We're using the Russians (Soyuz) for now, and for the foreseeable future. Private firms like SpaceX or another NASA vehicle are a possibility, but neither of those options has been proven out at all, and certainly will not be ready for at least several years.
- OstiaAntica 15y agoSpaceX has the Dragon. http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php
- jordan0day 15y agoYes, but the earliest estimate for a manned Dragon launch is 2014. Don't get me wrong -- I'm really pulling for SpaceX and sincerely hoping they are successful. In hindsight, my "proven out" comment sounds more pessimistic than was meant.
- ramidarigaz 15y agoNot exactly correct. Spacex hopes to do the first resupply mission to the station before the end of the year. http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php
- jordan0day 15y agoYou're absolutely right. I probably should have qualified my statement as referring to manned exploration. (Sung1's comment did say "get us back into space"... I assumed the "us" referred to humans).
- ramidarigaz 15y ago
- delinquentme 15y agojust verified the time: +/- 2 mins EASTERN: 10:40 am CENTRAL: 9:40 am PACIFIC: 7:40 am
- AdamTReineke 15y ago11:26am Eastern should be the correct time.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- clobber 15y agoWhat will happen to the International Space Station?
- robin_reala 15y agoSoyuz will carry on doing resupply missions as per usual. No change there.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ugh 15y agoThe supply situation of the ISS is quite interesting. Soyuz[1], the Russian spacecraft, will continue bringing and returning people to and from the ISS (three each – seven is a typical Space Shuttle crew). Two Soyuz will continue to be permanently docked to the ISS (they will, of course, be regularly switched out whenever a new Soyuz flies to the ISS) and serve as lifeboats for the ISS’s crew of six. They are actually the limiting factor for the crew size – an evacuation of everyone on the ISS has to be possible at all times. Soyuz will be the only spacecraft that can return something to Earth after the Shuttle retires. Since it’s designed to fly people and not cargo it’s certainly easy to imagine that Soyuz is far from ideal for this job – forget bringing back any big experiments. Progress[2] is the unmanned cargo version of Soyuz. It will continue bringing cargo to the ISS. (Two to three tons per flight. The shuttle could bring about 25 tons to low earth orbit.) It’s, just like Soyuz, a very capable and reliable work horse. (It was the only spacecraft bringing cargo to the ISS when the Shuttles were grounded between 2003 and 2005.) There are two other and newer cargo spacecraft: The European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV[3]) and the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV[4]). The ATV automatically (like its name indicates) docks to the Russian part of the ISS and can bring up more than seven tons of cargo. It can also boost the station into a higher orbit (as is regularly necessary). The second ATV Johannes Kepler only recently successfully finished its mission, was filled with trash, undocked and burned up in the atmosphere. The HTV can bring about six tons of cargo to the ISS. It has a pressurized and an unpressurized cargo section (meaning anything that’s supposed to be attached somewhere outside the ISS doesn’t have to go through and fit through the airlock, it can be brought to the ISS in the unpressurized cargo section). It has no complicated automated approach system like the ATV, it is simply grappled by the Canadian “robot” arm (well, it’s more a crane than a robot, really[5]) and attached to the American part of the ISS. Since it’s docking to the American part of the station, the docking hatch is large enough to accommodate International Standard Payload Racks[6] which are used everywhere in the non-Russian part of the ISS. The ATV can’t bring those racks to the ISS since it docks to the Russian part of the station (and their hatches are too small). The HTV also only recently successfully finished its second mission and burned up in the atmosphere. That’s the current situation, I will leave it to someone else to explain what the future might hold (SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, for example). Bringing cargo back from the ISS is the only real problem, there will only be Soyuz after the Shuttle retires. The ISS can currently also not be extended, well, at least not the non-Russion part. Bringing up all the modules was a job the Shuttle was perfectly suited for. That’s no problem since the ISS is done. They actually managed to pretty much complete it, even looking at the original plans. Heck, even the Cupola[7] made it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_spacecraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_spacecraft [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-II_Transfer_Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-II_Transfer_Vehicle [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm2 [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload_Rack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload_... [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_(ISS_module) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_(ISS_module)
- delinquentme 15y agohttp://twitter.com/#!/NASA/status/89341036589101059 http://twitter.com/#!/NASA/status/89341036589101059 "The countdown has entered a 45-minute hold at T-9 minutes."
- Splines 15y agoI find the Nasa stream is timing out. The UStream one is more stable for me: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- seles 15y agoThank goodness for HN, wouldn't have wanted to miss that.
- TeMPOraL 15y agoThey did it! Congratulations to Atlantis crew, NASA, and everyone involved. Maybe the Space Shuttle program wasn't exactly cost-effective and had it failures, but it sure sparked imagination of many, me included.
- knarf55 15y agoIt's sad to see that we are retiring the US Shuttle program. In a recent article in the Economist about how the space race is now dead, the US is now are reliant on other countries to send folks up into space or the ISS ... even though they are planning on retiring the ISS in 2020. I'm hoping that the privatization of the space programs (like SpaceX or Virgin Galatic) gets enough interest to fuel more funding and research into space travel though only a handful of rich folks could ever pay for a ride in one of those programs ...
- rbanffy 15y agoSpaceX can, sort of, already deliver people and cargo to the ISS. And the Dragon looks more spacious than a Soyuz. The shuttle, cool as it is, is a money drain. All but one of its mission profiles can be fulfilled by cheaper vehicles.
- huihe9849hjjgkg 15y agoThanks for letting me watch this NASA. Wow.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dsmithn 15y agoCongratulations to NASA for the successful launch. Time to focus on our next space endeavors.
- ender7 15y agoBeing able to watch a live video feed of the launch is pretty amazing. Previously, TV coverage (if it existed at all) was terrible. This makes me wonder what the fate of NASA would have been if the past few generations had grown up with access to this kind of coverage. I'd like to think that NASA would have had a lot more support than they currently do.
- owenmarshall 15y agoNearly 10% of the earth watched the lunar landing. But IMO the problem is that the "space race" was initiated & presented -- well, as a race! The goal was to beat the Russians, and once we did, interest waned. The most depressing realization comes from comparing our actions between the Apollo days & now. As a response to Sputnik, this country managed to go from an insignificant investment in space to putting a man on the moon, and we did it in just over a decade. Today? We don't seem to pay attention to these challenges.
- rbanffy 15y agoYou can still present the space race as a race. Landing on the Moon is the first lap. If a goal for the second lap existed - like a permanent moonbase or something like it, it could have continued. As marvelous as the shuttles are, they are just an expensive way to go knee deep in space. LEO is boring because we already went much further. Let's set foot on the Moon once again, and launch from there (using local materials is a good excuse) to Mars and the outer planets. Imagine how big a telescope could be with the lower gravity and how crisp its image with no atmosphere to disturb it or absorb parts of the spectrum. Or a radio telescope shielded (by the Moon) from Earth's radio emissions. And, if something broke, someone would dress up and drive there to take a look instead of taking a year of planning and a billion-dollar mission to, maybe, fix it.
- 127001brewer 15y agoThis was an amazing, historical moment of our time. I even ran outside to grab my two-year-old son so he could watch it on TV with me. (Although he doesn't understand the significance, he keep saying "Space ship, daddy! Space ship!") Hopefully, mankind will continue the exploration of space...
- Cherian_Abraham 15y ago4 among us today, in an aging vessel slipped the surly bonds of earth, and with outstretched hands touched the face of God. - Borrowing from Peggy Noonan, Aaron Sorkin & John Magee
- Killah911 15y agoJust saw it from Cape Canaveral. Quite an extraordinary feeling to watch and feel the very last shuttle take off. What makes it even better is that there was only a 30% chance that the shuttle would take off due to the weather. In my mind I'd written it off, being an entrepreneur, I should've known better than to do that :-P