Shuttle Discovery final flight
 

Leaving Kennedy Tuesday morning around 8am or so? Arriving IAD between 10-11...after doing a city-tour fly-by at 1500ft. Hopefully it comes up the Potomac from the south, flys the DCA departure, and then intersects the pattern for IAD 19L. Would be super cool to be on the Potomac in a boat if that's the path.

Yep. Launches about 30 mls from my house. Amazing piece of technology and history.
Hate to see the program scrapped.
60 mins did a segment on the loss of jobs in the area but I have not watched it yet. Similar to an auto plant folding up their tent and leaving town but w/tons more history.
Our favorite hotel up there in Cocoa Beach was owned by 4 of the orig astronauts.

Just watched it land on the news. Very cool and a shame we don't have another program in place to replace it.
:flag::flag::flag::flag::flag::flag::flag::flag:

If I can figure out how to get photos from my phone, I'll post 'em.

let's see how these come out...

http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
http://media.washtimes.com/media/ima...3d50eb7d86d89b
The Washington Times

I flew right over my office about 2 hrs. ago. Pretty cool to see! Too bad i couldn't get any pics.

Cool pics. We recently paid Russia to launch a satellite for us. :(

The shuttle was scheduled for replacement way back in 2005/2006. At about 30 years old, the time had come. It was very costly to launch just payload with the shuttle, many times more expensive than other means. It's primary advantage was in reusable and people-transport. This was great for the ISS, but with upgrades costing $300 to $400 million a year, it's age and drag on the budget set the timing. I think NASA was working on replacement in the early part of last decade, but talks of going to the moon and all changed that.

NASA had to be overhauled to have any sustainability. Now we have private companies working on separate solutions, and many people are being employed in these areas. NASA and the KSC will be far more targeted, and accountable.

Not great pictures, it it was very cool to see!!! :cool:

Awesome photos, guys! What a sight that must be! :cool:
Another event marking an end of a remarkable era in American pride and technology.
:flag:

The pride doesn't end here! I'm still proud of all the fighting men of WWII, and everytime I see a B25 I'm proud of the Doolittle raid!

No other country has ever had a reusable space vehicle, or even a manned transport vehiclel; the USSR tried and quickly scrapped their copy!

It was way cool to see flying over the Washington monument.

I walked outside of Constitution hall just in time to see it fly by

Independance Hall is in Philadelphia... Just sayin! :stooges::ernaehrung004:

The Manned space program is over.


http://i44.tinypic.com/hve8mx.jpg

I didn't take this one a friend did... but thought that it's pretty cool.

And here are some photos that were taken by the Architect of The Capitol.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscapit...75231294/show/

I'm in complete agreement. I meant not to imply that pride is no longer with us, but rather that it's simply an end of an era we ought to be proud of.
:)

NASA had to be overhauled to have any sustainability. Now we have private companies working on separate solutions, and many people are being employed in these areas. NASA and the KSC will be far more targeted, and accountable.[/QUOTE]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU...layer_embedded

take the time to watch this and look into it factually.

I believe one of the biggest problems the Shuttle program had were the private contractors and their accountability not NASA

I have followed closely since early Apollo culminating with several hours of flight testing autopilot repairs and GPS upgrade certification with a rather famous guy that worked through a little problem during a trip to the moon that literally united the world for a brief time while they chose to get their butts home.
During this time I heard a lot of what I expected to hear about todays NASA I guess, about the wrong people running the show instead of the ones wanting to keep the programs running and moving forward.

Rutan and his Genius put a bird up twice within the allotted time, the FIRST try, to win the $10mil award. I read it cost $25mil to accomplish, in the grand scheme that ain't bad. I learned to roll an aircraft in one of his brainchilds the Varieze. He would be a great mind to tap


we need to keep the space program moving forward...

incidentally the first shot of spaceship one barrel rolled all the way up.... by a guy in his 60's I think!

bobbo

Today was a bitter sweet day for me. I was lucky enough to spend some time at KSC and around the NASA space program. Designed some hardware that lives on the ISS that rode up on STS134. The program was over due for a upgrade but awfully sad to see us stop the pursuit of any direct maned flight completely and be dependent on other countries. Is the conversion to private sector more efficient? Absolutely, but somethings should be driven by the bottom line IMO.

I'm sure life at NASA would have been different without the massive recession, but many programs were being challenged for cost as far back as 2005/2006. The Mars programs were suspect, even with the splitting of costs with the Europeans. I'm sure the shuttle could have given them a couple more years, but I think they were increasingly worried about that program.

But Orion carries on. NASA is doing a great job adapting I think.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/co...ion/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/index.html

Sorry to see the end of it all. I worked on the Shuttle's maintenance building a few decades ago. I wish I could have seen the last flight. Thanks for the pix.

Oops my bad
Constitution hall