11:26am- still looking like a go.
 

T-31 minutes.

Anybody else watching?

http://mashable.com/2011/07/08/shutt...tlantis-video/

End of an era. Last shuttle launch in 40 mins
 

Sad day.

You can watch it live in HD:
http://mashable.com/2011/07/08/shutt...tlantis-video/

LOL, Joe feel free to merge our threads or delete my other one or whatever.

Note that's T-31 to the end of the last scheduled hold. ;)

Yeah, sad indeed.

The feed from the link you posted plays much clearer than if I stream it directly off nasa's main page even though they both say NASA HD. Thanks for the link!

Thanks for the link, watching. Wish I had sound at work, should have brought headphones.

Ha! Looks like we both had the same idea at the same moment.

Tim, I had trouble getting the direct NASA feed to play at all. Just amazed this one works, given how badly our connection at work sucks.

It's such a weird feeling. The shuttle program has existed for almost as long as I've been alive (and certainly as long as I can remember understanding what spaceflight was.)

I remember where I was when Challenger popped, and when Discovery finally went back up nearly three years later, and when Columbia came apart, and when Discovery was again the first bird back up to resume the program...


And now, after this, that'll just be it.


It took the US nearly 50 years, but we finally pulled it off. We lost the Space Race to the Russians. Nobody knew it was an Enduro, not a Sprint.

What's the smoke or vapor that's coming off around the base of the boosters?

FUCK, the feed is getting choppy!

mgeoffriau, I've had the video in the background so I'm not 100% sure what you're looking at, but remember that the whole main tank is one huge cryogenic bottle filled with supercooled LOX and H2, so it's normal for some gas to be bled off of it as things heat up.

I hope my launch is a go for Vegas this afternoon. Mission Control is expecting thunderstorms and flash flooding at Dulles.

http://svmomblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00...57ff970b-800wi

there are a few options for streams on the nasa page. ustream seems pretty flawless at the moment.

The countdown clock is running. -8:30.

I'm watching the mobile stream. Seems a little smoother though obviously the quality isn't as good.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-mobile



EDIT:


They just showed a close up of the base of the shuttle....little white nozzles spraying what looks like a vapor. So is that bleeding off excess pressure?

countdown resumed from t-9 minutes

Watching, thanks for the link.

Holy shit, I did not realize the main nozzles were directional. Badass.

thrust vectoring? they look to have a lot of range of movement.

Ruh-roh.

oh shit!

failure at :31

Aargh.

AH DAMMIT, I'm trying to watch this before I leave for class.

who forgot to release the parking brake!?

Good to go! Lets do this!

Awesome.

Its live? I opened it just in time.

Still blows my mind. Glad I was able to watch the final launch.

I missed it :vash:

Doesn't look like much now... they are orbiting?

Heading toward the ISS.

:cry:

12000 miles per hour?! Holy Ef.

edit: now 15000

Now, Im not sure I understand this all. Are we no longer exploring space? OR are we no longer sending men into space?

BS Afghan internet connection, I couldn't even watch the mobile feed.

my friend's sister is the person who steers the shuttle for docking with the ISS. She goes by "Moose"

http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/n...ball_HiRes.jpg

Wow.

Just fucking wow.

That's it.

Good show :bigtu:

Thats pretty f'in badass.

Stopping shuttle launches to fund R&R for new technologies to launch. Also I think we are trying to do more international stuff vs just the US.

Gotcha, I was extremely confused trying to figure out how we could stop exploring space.

Google "escape velocity".

24382 mph according to the netz to escape Earth.

Only 671 million mph to escape a black hole.

needs MOAR BOOSTers

Except that Project Orion has been more or less scrapped.

That was the character Dimitri Moisevitch, speaking to former NCA chairman Dr. Heywood Floyd, allegedly in the year 2010, as envisioned way back in 1984 in the film "2010."

Chillingly prescient.

Yes and No. It's a little bit more complicated than that, and I'm at work so don't have the time to write out a detailed reply. The shuttle stays in a bounded orbit @ approx 17,500 mph. That gives it enough deltaV to make orbit around the earth, but not enough to truly "walk away".

But if you could orbit a black hole's accretion disc, you could go back in time (effectively).

Also, buffoon, the launch is being replayed at: http://mashable.com/2011/07/08/shutt...tlantis-video/

Joo, I am going to lunch now...

I used to wonder how the average Brit felt at the end of WWII, as he watched the old empire fall apart, and no longer be a major power on the world stage. Now I know.

Our gov't has fucked up so much, and this is just one more step towards second place status. The next generation shuttles should be ready to fly by now, but instead NASA has pissed away the huge lead it had in space. I weep for the future.

The original Orion project (fully funded in 2004, development begun in 2005) had us beginning the construction of a moonbase- an actual frikkin' MOONBASE, in 2019. (The purpose of said base being to take advantage of the Moon's lower gravity to construct and launch large vehicles for interstellar missions in the manner of Clark's "2001."

Now we're taking a cue from Douglas Adams and just hitchhiking our way into space.