OT?: Goodbye to an era

Did anybody have sex in space? And what did we learn from it that was worth $200e9? Is there a movie?

John

You have to use spring retainers ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

I'm sure that's been "known" for some time.

Why?

Someone is.

You wrote that pile of crap and want me to buzz off? Sorry Charlie.

Apparently, there was a documentary >

Well I suppose the real value of the thing was to test the viability of building a spaceship that large, landing like a plane etc. No other space vehicle humans have built so far comes even close to that.

I am somewhat surprised so many people here are against such a beautiful piece of engineering - could have anticipated that in any non-techie group but not here. OTOH, seems all these people are Americans so it has been their cash and not mine so I can only respect that, too... :-). I do feel grateful some people built the thing, it is what it is, after all - a milestone in human history.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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Here sparky...................................................Fetch!

Another troll flushed out. Join the AlwaysWrong club.

Johnny boy has no clue how many thousands of science experiments and fact validations were completed on shuttle missions.

Why are you speaking in the past tense? The ISS lives!

Have not seen any zero gravity environments at ANY high schools yet.

Thousands of experiments and validations that one cannot perform down here.

You too are brainless.

It launched and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope.

It launched several other telescopic satellites that peer out in other spectrums.

You are truly the blind one here.

You wouldn't know.

I don't know of any useful science that the ISS has produced. Do you?

Most of the stuff done up there was silly PR make-work.

"The reason for the Shuttle is to access the Space Station. The reason for the Space Station is to give the shuttles somewhere to go."

"Shuttle" is, in retrospect, an especially ironic name.

Well, at least it's over.

John

I'm not aware of anything useful from the many microgravity experiments. Are you?

John

The Shuttle has one unique capability, it can return heavy loads (several tons) from orbit.

Why on earth would anyone want such capability ? Returning a few hundred kilograms (a few persons) should be enough.

If someone wants to build reusable rockets, the only sensible way would be to use a reusable first (and perhaps second) stage.

It is idiotic to make the last stage reaching orbital velocity reusable. The structures of the last stage should be as light as possible, in order to keep the trust of the lower stages at sensible levels.

Good riddance. It should have been grounded years ago.

Sylvia.

Actually hardly anyone wants to use the ISS zero gravity facility for serious work - too expensive and facilities too limited. Clever ground based techniques have allowed much to be done on Earth. ISS is useless as a telescope platform the assembly flexes too much as it orbits.

Yes you can see what happens when X is grown in zero g. Big deal. It is producing tedious low grade research of virtually no use whatsoever.

You should learn to distinguish between the Space Shuttle and the ISS. The ISS is a useless tin can in low Earth orbit doing poor experiments most of the important ones were already done by MIR or SkyLab.

You should get a clue. ISS SpaceShuttle.

Regards, Martin Brown

The Shuttle has done some useful work. Mostly putting satellite in orbit and most notably mending the HST as manufactured myopia and subsequent servicing missions. Those were fine examples of it in action.

Sadly I have to agree.

It went to the Hubble telescope too - nervously in the last instance since they had no transfer orbit to the safety of the ISS from there.

Regards, Martin Brown