Well, by now the shuttle Discovery is within sight of western Europe (the shuttle can see them, they won't be able to see the shuttle). I've had the video from spaceflightnow.com playing in the background all this afternoon. I took 20 minutes to bite my nails as there was a glitch at the range (did you know there are systems on standby during every launch to blow the shuttle out of the sky if we lose control of it and it starts kareening toward a populated area?!?!) and to watch the subsequent launch. It was an amazing sight. Even with the little piece of tile that came off and was plastered over with a sharpie and the BSOD that happened at the firing range, it's an amazing feat that men can launch themselves into space, orbit our planet, and meet up with other spacecraft in space.
This will be the final flight of the Discovery. After it lands, NASA is going to mothball the whole thing and put it in a museum. This makes me sad. I wanted to see a time when i could take a weekend trip to the space station and, who knows, maybe run into the Doctor. Thank you US Gov't for destroying the dreams of every Star Wars fan who dared to think that we could actually make this work.
No comments:
Post a Comment