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Last NASA Spacewalk Marks End of Era 80
An anonymous reader writes "Astronauts embarked on the final space walk of the U.S. shuttle era at the International Space Station, where Atlantis is docked on the final mission of the 30-year U.S. program. Atlantis carries a year's worth of supplies — more than 3,600 kilograms — for the International Space Station. It will also bring up a system that will be used by Canada's Dextre robot to test a system for refuelling and repairing spacecraft and satellites in space."
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Agreed (Score:2)
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The problem with the last poop is that you aren't going to necessarily know if it's the last poop on the shuttle until all the astronauts strap in for reentry.
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Actually, until they get off on the ground. Shit happens...
If I was part of the cleanup crew I'd take a dump in there after they get off just so I could tell my grandkids I was the last one to do so.
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It certainly wasn't for lack of trying on NASA's part. They can't advance anything without approval from the government, and the government keeps jerking them around. "Build a new shuttle! Wait cancel that. OK, start it up again, but you gotta start it from scratch - Build a new new shuttle! Nope, stop, don't do that, go to Mars! Wait, go back to the moon! Wait, no, go to an asteroid. And Mars. Maybe." And I'll bet that the next election will bring new marching orders for NASA that will require to, once aga
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Yes, I'm looking forward to the last of the "Last" articles now. I'm gutted that the shuttle era is over, especially as it won't be visible from the UK in its orbit (I was secretly hoping for a delay so I could see it go overhead one last time).
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Read it carefully. It's the last space walk of the shuttle era. The ISS guys will probably be space walking again next month - it just won't be during the shuttle era then. So this one is really a big yawn.
How about... (Score:1)
How about the end of an era for a father?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZqPQPhsuX4 [youtube.com]
End of an era, but... (Score:2)
Yes, this is the end of an era. It is worth noting, and we should have serious discussions about the future and direction of American space travel. But this is the last space shuttle spacewalk, not the last NASA spacewalk. Who approves these headlines, anyway?
(NB: the headline comes from TFA, so don't blame /. completely.)
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"Who approves these headlines, anyway?"
People trolling for page hits. If Fox News can do it, so can /.
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It's our fault the program is over (Score:2)
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It's our fault our government spends more money on lawyers than on astronauts.
Well if it isn't your fault (collectively) then democracy has failed and the government is not acting in accordance with the will of the people.
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I blame the people that go around spouting nonsense like "there's no difference between the major political parties" and other cynical non-witticisms. Or in other words, teabaggers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It failed to live up to that statement which is why the military has been using the Delta V.
There is no such thing as a Delta V. There is a Delta IV, and an Atlas V, and the military uses both.
I just don't want new readers/non-space-enthusiasts to get confused over a typo.
Re:It's our fault the program is over (Score:4, Funny)
Delta-v has always been an important part of space travel.
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Please try reading before responding next time. And to whoever modded this guy
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Please try reading before responding next time. And to whoever modded this guy up, the same goes for you.
To paraphrase Robert J. Hanlon, "Never ascribe to ignorance that which is adequately explained by tomfoolery".
In the words of that noted philosopher Foghorn Leghorn, "That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is."
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I mean this administration actually has the gall to claim the president has the right to assassinate Americans on American soil with NO oversight or trial, and this is irrevocable under "war powers".
You should have studied history, or at least watched some Westerns as a kid. The "Wanted: Dead or Alive" offers have existed for centuries. Claiming that this somehow violates the constitution - or that it's a form of "assassination" unique to the Obama administration - is ignorant beyond belief.
Sadly my friend the late great Bill Hicks nailed it more than 20 years ago "Well I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well i think the puppet on the right has my interests at heart...hey wait a minute there is one guy controlling both puppets!".
Great, another Alex Jones fanboy. You know that you guys have your own forums, right? You don't need to pollute Slashdot with this bullshit.
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Oh boy. The woo is strong with this one.
If I could find a single clear, rational question in your entire rant, I'd try to answer. I'd probably be wasting my time, but I'd give it a shot. However, much like your idol, you seem to be mixing together dozens of incidents and topics as if they were part or some grand conspiracy, and then spewing it out in one giant heap of vitriol.
I like Hicks, I like Carlin, and I don't particularly like Obama, but I can honestly say that you, my friend, are nuttier than squ
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Yea, I didn't actually expect you to take me up on a perfectly reasonable offer. Thanks for the confirmation. Take care.
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and its been proven that most do not care about the space program so be careful for what you wish for
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No one has the money, and very few people share your mysterious enthusiasm for tin cans in orbit.
I think a few people do, but yeah, not enough for an industry .. unless they can bring down the price and risk by a lot. Personally I don't care about space at all... but there are definitely a few people who would spend at least as much as they would on a 2 week cruise just for the experience of, as you said, staying in a tin.
I do forsee the private sector exploiting the resources of space at some point. Mining asteroids/other planets .. turning the moon into a waste dump.. whatever.
No one cared then, no one's cared in 15 years. FIFTEEN YEARS and NOT A SINGLE BOLT in space.
Indeed. I think it stil
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No one cared then, no one's cared in 15 years. FIFTEEN YEARS and NOT A SINGLE BOLT in space.
Indeed. For example, Bigelow Aerospace don't have two private space station modules orbiting the planet right now for long-term testing (at least I believe both are still in orbit). There's a big market for space tourism, but not at current prices... and a gap between current prices and viable prices that's hard to cross without spending lots of money on R&D without an immediate market.
But to me the more important question is: if we can put a man on the moon, why can't Slashdot build a web forum that do
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Its also our fault that after 30 years we are still getting excited over a space walk, cause we let the program stagnate and not progress much if at all since 1978
Last shuttle defecation coming up (Score:2)
Soon the toilet will flush on the Space Shuttle for the last time. The end of an era.
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no flushing - the thing is air flow driven [wikipedia.org] :)
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just to be clear (Score:3, Informative)
i think that headline might be misleading. just want to be clear: this is not the last ISS spacewalk. The ISS has an airlock and can perform spacewalks with not shuttle support. (In fact, this spacewalk was actually carried out by ISS crewmembers and not shuttle crewmembers). This is, however, the last spacewalk while the shuttle is docked. Others will not have the extra shuttle assets to lean on.
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Maybe you can pay for it by getting an extremely dangerous but very high paying job working a mining operation on the moon ;p
Seriously though... this is what I see being the ultimate outcome of the private sector in space. Tourism will be there, probably first, but eventually the focus will shift towards exploiting the resources that are out there.
I can totally see a company form up that takes nuclear waste (and other waste) and hurls it into the sun.
Is all this a good thing or a bad thing... I really don't
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I can totally see a company form up that takes nuclear waste (and other waste) and hurls it into the sun.
Not if you know anything about orbital mechanics.
Anything launched from Earth is in Earth's orbit of the sun. Which means unless your rocket is astoundingly powerful, it is going to keep crossing Earth's orbit over and over to get a gravity assist to slingshot it to the sun. Look at the orbit for MESSENGER [nationalgeographic.com], and that diddnt even go all the way to the sun.
Besides with as much uranium as coal power puts into the atmosphere it probably doesn't matter.
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Which means unless your rocket is astoundingly powerful, it is going to keep crossing Earth's orbit over and over to get a gravity assist to slingshot it to the sun.
Uh, no. The only remotely viable plans I've seen for shuttle-based waste disposal (if launching nuclear waste on a shuttle could ever be considered viable) were based around rotary launchers that would cancel out most of the orbital velocity and drop it into the sun.
Using a rocket would be silly when you can use some solar panels, an electric motor and a few bits of spinning metal.
ISS suits? why is this the "last spacewalk" (Score:2)
Ok. It's ISS crew. Are they not using their own suits? Or did they go over to the shuttle, use their suits and go out their airlock. And if so WHY?
More than the end of the shuttle program. (Score:2, Interesting)
End of an era? Yes. But the era that has ended is not just the shuttle program. It is the end of the U.S. Space program. The United States will never be prominent in space again.
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Robert Goddard independently invented liquid-fueled rockets before Werner von Braun. The problem for Dr. Goddard was that the U.S. in the 1930s was in the middle of a great depression and wasn't ruled over by a maniacal dictator bent on ruling half the world. Dr. Goddard had to finance his research from private donations. Werner von Braun on the other hand, had the backing of the Nazi government and the German Army. It's no wonder that von Braun built bigger, better rockets than Dr. Goddard.
To say that the
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End of an era? Yes. But the era that has ended is not just the shuttle program. It is the end of the U.S. Space program. The United States will never be prominent in space again.
And we'll never need more than 640k of RAM.
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The sky is falling. We must continue legacy systems so we can be trapped by them. The Soviet Union never sleeps. If it doesn't put humans in space it isn't science. If the US doesn't fund most space efforts humanity won't benefit from them.
Did I miss anything?
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The United States will never be prominent in space again.
You show me one other country that has probes exploring the outer planets or landers exploring the inner planets. Go ahead and show me. I'll wait right here.
Yeah, the U.S. may be retiring a flying 30 year old POS brick that has more potential failure modes than a God damned boat made of Swiss cheese. But how, exactly, that leads to the U.S. failing to be prominent in space when the U.S. is the only country investing in actual space exploration (and not just dicking around in LEO) is completely and utter
Another Misleading Head line. (Score:1)
It's not the Last NASA space walk... It's the last space walk from the Space Shuttle..... I expect better from CmdTaco....
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Well, it's the last NASA space walk until they design and build an entirely new launch platform. That's, what, a decade or so away? And, if they lose the political will to do it, possibly even longer.
Once they decommission those shuttles, the US has no capacity to put people into space short of renting it from the Russians (or possibly the Chinese).
It may not be the case that NASA will
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freefall much..?? (Score:1)
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I suspect that the US will still be around and still be more relevant than you long after you're dead and dust, Tantrum.
People were saying that about the British Empire in the 1930s.
Decline and Fall (Score:2)
Part of a larger trend (Score:2)
Although space gets most of the attention, arctic and ocean exploration is way down, too. In the 1960s, there was talk of "undersea cities' and "cities under the ice". A few small underwater habitats were even built. The only one still operating, at Key West, is being used as a hotel for divers. No manned submarine has been down in the Marianas Trench since Trieste, in the 1960s.
That field, too, has been taken over by robots.
30 Years.. (Score:1)
30 years of Space Shuttle.... 30 years of Donkey Kong..... Conicidence? I think NOT!!
Last poop on the shuttle? (Score:2)