BF2S Forums Final US Shuttle Launch Scheduled For Tomorrow

the speed that thing took off at!

Toilet Sex wrote:

siiiick

2600mph... puts the lambo to shame

it's pretty quick

aaaaaaaand 12,000mph

Uzique wrote:

still one of the most (literally) awe-inspiring experiences of my life seeing it go up close-range in real life... should be more like the most awe-struck experience to feel it go up. every single one of the senses is stimulated by something that, really, just shouldn't ever be experienced and processed by the human mind. so much energy, noise, spectacle... it really does leave you speechless. even from miles back you can feel the ground shaking and even the atoms of air around you shaking and vibrating, as the shockwave saturates everything. the sound as well! that crackling sound of burning fuel reverberates and echoes off every surface, but where it seems to hit you hardest is square in your chest... crushes you, you can feel the shuttle's weight.

that was like 6 years ago and i'm still yet to think i'll ever experience such a marvel.

/rose-glasses

holy shit. you are a lucky motherfucker.

Nearly 4am here, so glad I stayed up to watch that.

when it decides to break up in orbit and treat the residents of oklahoma to a fine red shower

In 12 days I think. Way to cut budgets Obama. I hate Dems even more now.

Last edited by Obiwan (2011-07-08 08:52:32)

i don't really know an excuse for an american to have not seen their own greatest achievement... you sure hype it enough. why not ever make the trip? shit you guys all seem to take pride in the fact that you rarely ever travel outside of your own borders... yet you pass up on sights like that? i keep a wry, european tourist's smile.

Last edited by Uzique (2011-07-08 08:58:21)

but don't you live in a liberal middle-class place on the north-east coast? that's basically as european as america will get.

Obiwan wrote:

In 12 days I think. Way to cut budgets Obama. I hate Dems even more now.

The Shuttle program was originally canceled under Bush. See his visible for future space exploration. Obama also canceled it when he replaced it. Its one of the few things both parties agree on.

Hurricane2k9 wrote:

I don't know either. We went to Disney World once, which was cool but it would have been much cooler to see a shuttle launch. I guess my family never wanted to spend the money (plane) or time (driving) to get to Florida for just one event. Not to knock Kmar's stomping grounds but I feel like there isn't much else to see in Orlando.

I'll definitely catch some other landmark launch, e.g. a mission to Mars or the Moon.

e: That's one segment of Americans by the way, a lot of people in this area for example do not take pride in not really traveling outside the US. In fact you might get seen as ignorant and narrow-minded if you were to tell someone here that you've never been outside the US.

There's plenty of things to do in central Florida. The Space Coast (NASA)… Disney, Universal studios, Islands of adventure,  Epcot, Chanel Side,  Bush Gardens, Spanish forts, some of the best beaches in the world. There's only a few other places in the US that compares. Come down for a Hurricane, Hurricane.

I don't think they'll ever be anything else like the shuttle. It gets up and goes like no other. The Astronauts describe it as entirely different from a Soyuz launch. Even the Saturn rockets from the Apollo mission seemed to fire and just hover over the pad for a few seconds. I've watched 12 or so launched at the cape, and about 40 from my back yard here in Tampa.

Here's Atlantis lifting off as seen from above through the window of a Shuttle Training Aircraft.



NASA images of the day... Reflections

The most expensive camera shooting the Shuttle launch. $500,000 3D super HD. They have six of these shooting.
wtf

I was completely soaked after laying in mosquito-invested waters for an uncomfortably long time. At one point, a concerned French news reporter came up to me and said, "Excuse me, but you're quite covered in bugs." It must have been pretty bad for him to come over and say that... I think perhaps he thought I was dead because I stayed in the same position for so long, trying to zen-focus on the shot.

I was in the Tweetup tent doing something terribly important but completely inscrutable when Stu Maschwitz came in and told me that the storm clouds were breaking upon our shores. So I got my little rig and went outside to see the matter.

We get these kind of huge powerful summer clouds in Texas too. The kind that roll in on a too-hot day and you have a feeling that something powerful is a-comin'. You tie down the cows and take the favorite sheep down to the basement because it's gonna be a long night...

The sun darted in and out of the clouds, and I grabbed it just as it peeked through a small hole it tore in the thunderhead.

- Trey Ratcliff

I don't think the N1 ever got off the ground .. successfully.