The Last Flight of Endevour.

This morning I took this picture of Endevour taking off on it's last flight over the town in which it was built. It was exciting to see the old girl in flight one last time but sad because it was so final. I look forward to visiting her in retirement at the California Science Center.

Cool Pictures

Last night the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars and here are some awesome pictures.

one of the first panoramas...

And this is cool, the orbiter got a picture of Curiosity parachuting down. You gotta admit that's awesome

Cool Picture.

This is a picture of the landing site of Apollo 17 taken recently by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Pictures of the Apollo landing sites have been taken since the probe entered orbit, but these are the clearest yet. I just think pictures of human presence on another planet are neat.

The other pictures from the LRO can be found at nasa.gov

Discovery's Flight Deck in 360 Degrees.

This is a link to a 360 degree view of the space shuttle Discovery's flight deck. I thought it was pretty cool. Thanks for user name Eric Morin at the John Byrne Forums for the tip.

http://360vr.com/2011/06/22-discovery-flight-deck-opf_6236/i ndex.html

The End of an Era.

Hello this post should have been earlier, but I was at Comic-Con (more on that later) when Atlantis Landed and I didn't have a computer with me.

Last Thursday the space shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center. It was the 33rd flight of Atlantis, and the 135th flight of the Space Shuttle program, it was also the programs last. At 30 years the Space Shuttle program is by far the longest space exploration program undertaken by NASA.

It's too soon to really know the legacy of the Space Shuttle, but as of now there are a few things that are clear. On the positive it filled the dreams of an entire generation, myself included, who have never known a world where people weren't going to space in a gleaming white bird. More people of different walks of life have gone to space than would have been possible without the relative ease of use and safety of the shuttle. And lastly it kept America in space, believe me despite all it's problems, we would have abandoned space long ago if we had stayed with disposable spacecraft.

Of course there always is a but. And the big but is that the Space Shuttle never completely delivered. First it took nearly ten years from, the issuing of the first contracts and the first flight of Columbia. The craft was also oversold, with claims of one week turnarounds, between flights. There was probably no way that the shuttle could have ever made this, but it captured the public imagination and gave it's detractors instant ammunition. It cost more than anticipated. And while it still had a better failure rate than most jetliners, When it failed it did so spectacularly in the loss of Challenger, Columbia and their crews.

But it was not the death of the crews, the overruns, and the failure to meet oversold expectations that killed the Space Shuttle. It was us. The danger of space travel is so great that it's almost a miracle that NASA only lost two of the Space Shuttles, no disrespect to the crews. And the cost of the entire program is a fraction of the cost of our millitary action in Iraq, and i'd be willing to say we've gotten more value for our money with the Shuttle. No we doomed the shuttle with our apathy. Space travel became ordinary, more so than ever because of the Shuttle's dependability and reusability. With minor exceptions we don't know the names of any astronauts any more and until the last few what the shuttle crews where doing in Space didn't even warrant a second on the news. Even as an advocate of space travel, I found myself not caring anymore. Was it because it wasn't as exciting as the day's of the moon? Maybe. But I hate to think that we're that cynical that Human's in space are boring.

The official reasons for the end of the Shuttle are going to forever be listed as cost and safety. But it's us and our lack of interest. I know this because in 1986 when we lost Challenger, the same issues where brought to the forefront, but back then we believed in space travel and the program returned. Too bad that spirit was gone when the next dark day came.

Atlantis Sets Off on it's Final Mission.

The space shuttle Atlantis set off this morning at just after 11 am est. on the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. The mission led by the first four person crew since the early eighties is to bring final supplies to the ISS. For thirty years this vehicle has been the way an entire generation of Astronauts has gone space and soon it will be all over. The time for reflection will come but the final mission has just begun so as always I wish the crew of the Shuttle Atlantis well and that their mission be a success.

Godspeed Endevour

After many setbacks, The Space Shuttle Endevour has been launched on it's final flight. It is taking supplies and such to the International Space Station. After it's flight it is to be retired and put on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles CA. Which of course has me (Living one hour from L.A.) excited. To the crew of STS 134 I'd like to wish good luck with your mission and have a safe return.

A Moment.

This is a picture from the end of April that I found on nasa.gov. The heavens did not want the shuttle to fly that day.

A Moment.

With the shuttle program winding down, I think we need to set aside all cynicism and just look at this picture for a second and think. We, Human Beings built this... in space. Just take that in for a second. Pretty awesome huh.

50 years.

I would have written this in a more timely matter, but, I was AFK for a week. So Pretend it's Tuesday okay....
The human race has been in space for a half century. Last Tuesday, April twelve, fifty years had passed since Yuri Gagarin was launched atop Vostok 1 where no man had gone before (couldn't resist:). It always amazes me how much chutzpa the space pioneers had. But no more so than the Soviets, you see we in the USA after 1958 had a centralized space effort but there was no such thing in the Soviet Union, what they had instead was a bunch of military weapons designers with big dreams. Their bosses weren't interested in manned spaceflight, but big rockets that could destroy all who opposed them. There was a great rivalry amongst the rocket designers and a government that was fond of funding and canceling, and reassigning projects on the smallest of whims. But it was in this environment that Sergei Korolev and his people made Vostok happen. By the early sixties Korolev and his people had already made the R-7 rocket, a craft that still is the back bone of the entire Russian manned space program to this day, as well as launched Sputnik 1 the worlds first artificial satellite. But Korolev was after sending a man up into space, so his team set about making the craft to do so, Object K what would come to be known as Vostok. however this was not the plans of the higher uppers. They wanted a spy satellite. So Korolev a master at working the system made a spy satellite out of Object K, so work could continue on the manned mission. As time went on however, Primier Nikita Kruschev, learned that space flights had great propaganda value, and a manned flight was put into works. The Vostok craft was far from an ideal spacecraft, essentially an artificial satellite with cargo space for a human payload. It had some basic controls and on re entry due to uncertainty of the shock of landing the Cosmonaut had to eject and parachute, at 7 km. But the mission was a success, the Soviet Union placed a manned space craft in orbit and the space age was truly born, sadly it would be many years until the anyone in the Soviet government saw space as anything more than propaganda currency, but more importantly it spurred on the Americans leading to that amazing period of technological growth that we call "the space race" eventually NASA would flounder and the Russians would become the leaders of space station technology. Eventually both programs joined forces to make the ISS. So that's 50 years down, lets hope for 50 wonderful more.

for many years the Soviet/ Russian space program was a great mystery to Americans. But these days we in the states have a great deal more available. If you want to learn more about this very interesting space program, a good essay, is the pamphlet "Russian Space Craft" by Robert Goodwin. and a good book is "Challenging Apollo" by Asif Siddiqi.

Also worth noting, April 12 was also the day of the launch of STS-1. the first of NASA's space shuttle flights, launched very purpously on the 20th anniversary of Vostok 1. I would opine about my thoughts on the Space Shuttle's demise later this year, but this is Yuri's day so I'll save it for later.

I hoped you enjoyed this quickie, I'll be back to my normal comics reviews next week. Cheers.

We Interupt this Blog.

This is not this weeks regular post but I had to write about it. This is the first picture that NASA's MESSENGER probe has sent back from the orbit of the planet Mercury. Though not the first probe sent to Mercury, MESSENGER, only the second in thirty-five years is the first to go into orbit. And send us pictures of this quality of this least explored planet. On it's way MESSENGER also did flybys of the Sun, Earth, and Venus Giving us some of the first pictures of Earth from deep space since the Apollo Program. Since space exploration doesn't get the front page too much these days I just thought I'd show you what NASA does with less money than the military spends in a day.