BF2S Forums Discovery Launch March 15 2009

Morpheus wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

It was delayed once already. I wish it wasn't on a Wednesday night though.. . I'd go see it.

Don't you like... step out into your backyard?

Havok wrote:

Out of curiosity, how far away can shuttle launches be seen?  I'm 30 miles from the launch site, so I can always see them, but I've always wondered how far away you could be to still see them.

EDIT:  Whoops, shuttle launch scrubbed due to fuel leak

[TUF]Catbox wrote:

They say you should be able to see it up and down the east coast... I am gonna go outside at 910 ish and see (in Virginia)

jamiet757 wrote:

What is their mission exactly? Where are they going and what are they doing there?

The space station's mass will increase to 669,291 pounds - 335 tons - by the end of Discovery's mission and, with eight shuttle flights remaining before the fleet is retired in 2010, the complex will be 81 percent complete.

"We're flying the last power truss to the ISS," Suffredini said. "In fact, this is the last major U.S. element built ... by the Boeing Corp. and flown by the Boeing-NASA team and I couldn't be more proud of the performance to date."

The solar array truss segment, known as starboard 6 or S6 for short, will be attached to the far right end of the station's main power and cooling truss, which extends at right angles to the lab's pressurized modules.

S6 weighs 31,060 pounds and measures 16.3 feet wide, 45.4 feet long and 14.7 feet thick in the shuttle's cargo bay. According to Boeing, the price tag was $297,918,471, which includes costs from a lengthy Columbia-triggered launch delay.

Once attached to the station, its two wings will be deployed, giving the station four panels on each end of its power truss. Total surface area of all the arrays will be roughly one acre, generating 84 to 120 kilowatts of useable power, depending on the time of year and angle to the sun.

The S6 truss segment "takes up the entire payload bay, so unlike the last flight (in November), this is pretty much what our focus will be on the mission, getting the element installed and activated and the wings deployed," Suffredini said. "And after doing six wings we feel like we kind of understand them, so I'm hoping this one will be just a normal part of our everyday activation as an element. Of course, it won't turn out that way, but I can always hope."