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.