Cool NASA video.

[TwoTeasChris]

Videos from various SRB cameras on Atlantis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxE3KBRorZI

Separation occurs about 2 mins after launch. Amazing to see the shuttle accelerate away.

(I've yet to think of a disability angle.)

[Burgerman]

You dont need one.

I still think though after watching the sheer expense, push, danger, and intensity, size of the moon landings with 1/10th the technology that the shuttle was a sad and boring thing to do afterwards. As a kid I absolutely expected the apollo missions to simply carry on to mars, etc. I thought 5 years later we would be on mars. It never occured that things would stop or stagnate. Been driving me nuts ever since.

Sadly I am now 51 and nothing much seems to have happened as big or as intensive since I was 10.

[ex-Gooserider]

Impressive. especially the cameras with microphones... The GF and I had the good luck to have been able to watch one of the few night shuttle launches a few years back, definitely an incredible experience, even from several miles away.

As far as the disability angle goes, if we had gone into space at the rate of the early days, especially before NASA and other gov't agencies hijacked the free market space program, it is almost a certainty that we would have had large scale space habitats. There is a LOT of reason to believe that a low / zero G environment would be a lot easier for many folks with handicaps to deal with.... Gravity sucks!

ex-Gooserider

[JoeC]

When the space shuttle program was proposed, it had a goal of being low in cost per launch, reliable, and fast to re-launch. If the original proposal had been carried out, then the shuttle program would have had many more flights, and would have had a lot more utility. It could have been what we used to assemble much larger interplanetary craft in orbit, or other things that would be larger and more useful than the international space station.

The problem is that when NASA brought the project's budget to Congress, they were told that they could only have 1/3 of what it would have cost to develop the proposed spacecraft. Rather than saying, "Sorry, we can't do it on that budget.", NASA's administration agreed to make due with what they were given, and still try to achieve something that sounded like the proposed shuttle. Sure, the shuttle is an amazing piece of technology in comparison to many of the things we're used to encountering, but it doesn't wow us when held up to Apollo because we didn't spend the money to develop the NEW stuff.

Private aerospace is finally picking up the torch, and I hope that in long run we will look back at this whole thing as a speedbump in our road to space.

[TwoTeasChris]

You dont need one.

I still think though after watching the sheer expense, push, danger, and intensity, size of the moon landings with 1/10th the technology that the shuttle was a sad and boring thing to do afterwards. As a kid I absolutely expected the apollo missions to simply carry on to mars, etc. I thought 5 years later we would be on mars. It never occured that things would stop or stagnate. Been driving me nuts ever since.

Sadly I am now 51 and nothing much seems to have happened as big or as intensive since I was 10.

Yeah, very disappointing. I was born 1964 so just about remember the landings. Remember saying to my dad "Why can't we see it land?" and my dad saying "Because there's no-one there to film it yet." Hey, I was five!

Anything seemed possible after the moon. But I also remember reading c. 1982 of a Japanese project to perfect A.I. (intelligence not insemination!) by 1990. I went on a chatbot website last week. Within a few sentences I typed "Fail" and gave up. Seemed little better than the 80's efforts.

And I'm still waiting for my jet-pack. <--- Disability angle.

[ex-Gooserider]

Interesting read from lots of angles, but for the disability question (One of the major characters is a para) I liked "Pallas" by L. Neil Smith...

ex-Gooserider