I have no disagreement on the history and the pride. It was big during the 60's. I just hated to see it begin the decline in the 70's.
If I understand correctly, part of the decision to end the shuttle program was based on the fact that the shuttle itself was designed and built using early 1970s technology. Many tech components are now completely obsolete and replacement components are near impossible to find. Retrofitting to modern tech standards would have been almost as expensive as the entire R/D and operations cost for the program since its inception. The original projected service life of each orbiter was 20 years. It's actually been 31 since Columbia launched for the first time.
I'll miss the shuttle. I took a few trips to Cocoa Beach to watch launches including the Challenger accident. I love aviation and this is just part of it. It's just an end of an era. Exciting things are still in the future. There's alot that went on. More than one realizes. Here's an interesting read on satellites. http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-satellites-are-orbiting-the-earth.htm
I have to disagree, the shuttle was just a means of getting to and from ISS where we have made many monumental discoveries, many in the medical field...Beng able to reuse the unit made it very valuable and said alot about how far we've come... Going to the moon is worthless, we know enough about it and there's no life there...Mars on the other hand is a viable objective to me, "where's there's ice, there's [could be] life", but until we develop better propulsion units, it won't happen with a man on board...I'd be happy with more unmanned missions to Mars as they've, literally, only scratched the surface...
The moon is worthless only to a point and opinion,. Can you imagine if we had managed to find a way to exist for a time on it?
LMAO.. I just got this mental picture of a NASA engineer walking into an auto parts store and asking for a HVAC blower fan and the kid at the register says "What type of vehicle?"
We could do that now, I think the cost:benefit is too low...Now if we needed it for a place to stage longer runs, like to Mars, then I think it would have more value...It goes back to the amount of fuel needed to get to Mars...If they launched 2 vehicles, one with people and the other with just propellent and used the moon to stage them, if they couldn't once in space, then I think it would have long term value...OR just use the moon for fuel storage so a ship could take off light and refuel there...
Earth orbit seems like it would be a better staging area. They can dock stuff together in space like how they built the ISS. Even though the moon's gravity is 1/6th what we have on Earth, zero is even better, plus you're already travelling 17,500 mph (relative to Earth's surface). Lunar orbit would be better because the speed of the moon's orbital speed around the earth can be used as a speed boost if you time your departure right, however for several reasons it would be better to do it in Earth orbit. The Earth's ionosphere would protect space-walking astronauts from solar radiation if they have to get out to hook stuff up, .. you know, ... to crank up the dolly legs and hook up the trailer lights. But then if they were using some kind of nuclear rockets that would emit all kinds of radiation or electromagnetic pulses, ... they'd want to wait til they're far enough from Earth before they light those babies up so it doesn't fry the circuitry in all of the satellites. So I guess I don't know which would be better for staging a Mars mission. I guess it's a good thing I don't work for NASA.
