NASA will give away old Shuttles for free NASA has announced plans for disposal of the Space Shuttle fleet and spare main engines. The space agency intends to donate one orbiter to the Smithsonian museum, and give the others to "educational institutions, science museums, and other appropriate organizations". The proud new owners will need to stump up an estimated $ …
"It's a bit rich to tell people what they can do with them after they've bought them, isn't it?"
I know, what BS!
I WAS going to buy one and keep it on my lawn, then let the teenagers next door take it apart, but NOOOOoooooOOOooooo. I have to keep it out of the "rain"! Pffft!
I mean, it's not like there are only three flight-worthy Space Shuttles on Earth that need to be kept preserved for a very long time because they're soon to be un-replaceable historical artifacts.
Trying to control what I do with national history... Communist bastards.
Next thing you know they'll ban pissing on the Washington Monument. Freedom of Speech my ten inch dick.
Oooh yes, I'd love an orbiter please! Just thinking of all the fun my son and I could have with it, sitting at the controls making engine noises and pretending we're saving the world from a huge meteor strike. In the unlikely event we get bored of that, it's also the perfect BBQ tool ... I could fetch beers from the fridge with that robot arm thing, keep masses of burgers and buns in the payload area and toast marshmallows with the rocket engines.
You may be thinking of the old Soviet shuttle counterpart, the Buran, which, after a single unmanned test flight, was decommissioned and the program discontinued owing to budgetary issues; iirc, the one full-up flight-ready Buran was last seen sitting outside in its "safing area" at Baikonur. (Mark Wade's astronautix.com could tell you for sure).
It's also interesting to note that the Soviet Buran shuttle was almost an exact aerodynamic copy of the US STS orbiter, and what's really uncanny is how the Soviets managed to almost exactly duplicate the US Shuttle, right down to the late delivery date and astronomical cost overruns.
Also, the idea that NASA could recall the "retired" Shuttle craft for further use not only sounds like more of a pain in the ass than it's worth, but too depressingly like the premise of a Stephen Baxter story.
Years ago (1980 or so) I traded for an engine from the Apollo program. I believe it was the engine for the lunar lander. Might have been for the module that orbited the moon waiting for the boys to bounce back up and go home.
In any event it was just space junk. Expensive as hell to make but I bought it (traded for it actually) for less than $10,000. In turn I traded the engine for a old HP 3000 minicomputer. No idea where that engine is now.
Really neat stuff though. Lots of expensive and unique metals, tubes and other parts not to mention the bell housing. Would make a great paper weight. Hold down lots. Must have been about 300 pounds.
I did display it in the entry way to the time sharing facility I ran at the time. Systime was the company name. Not the same company as in UK. We had to sue those boys to keep them out of California, USA,
Mine is the one with the titanium and aluminum buttons.
The sad thing about Buran was that, yes, it was late, but it's use of slightly more modern technology gave it a number of nice features. Firstly, it could fly unmanned - which the shuttle couldn't. The Energia booster was far more powerful than the cobble together affair the shuttle uses - this meant that the shuttle didn't need to waste space with huge engines of its own, and Russia had a heavy lift rocket that could be used with/without the shuttle. Energia's story of being abandoned is similarly sad.
In the end, the yanks end up with Apollo-on-steroids to replace the space shuttle (should have been the aerospace plane), while the Ruskies stick to the antique Soyuz. Boldly going forward, in reverse....
Will they drop the $6m if I collect? I'm sure I can get it in the car if I drop the back seats.....
No, doesn't surprise me in the least. Bloody backward country.
I asked my stepdaughter (12) if she knew how big a millimetre was the other day. First she looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, then started doing a 'the fish that got away, it was *this* big' impression before finally settling on a distance of... About a foot.
The only two countries left in the world who haven't adopted the metric system are: the United States and.... Burma. I kid you not.
I'm glad NASA's learned from the Saturn V and Skylab and required them to not be left outside to rot.
It cost a mint and a lot of work to refurb things and get all the birdshit and everything out.
I'm glad KSC finally stumped up for a nice building for its Saturn V. The sight of a moon rocket left to rust was sad, but a pretty accurate reflection of America.
"One of those would go nicely with the nuclear sub at the science museum in Paris, me thinks....."
It's an Aréthuse class sub, which according to the webs most famous encyclopedia was running on diesel-électrique engines, put in service in '58 and a hunter sub.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_Ar%C3%A9thuse
"Am I the only person who visits Paris solely to go to its science museum, I wonder?"
Not sure =) But if that is the case with you, next time definitely go to the Musée des arts et métiers:
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/
Do a bit of research before you blow smoke out your ass, you ignorant boob.
"No, doesn't surprise me in the least. Bloody backward country.
I asked my stepdaughter (12) if she knew how big a millimetre was the other day. First she looked at me like I was speaking Swahili, then started doing a 'the fish that got away, it was *this* big' impression before finally settling on a distance of... About a foot.
The only two countries left in the world who haven't adopted the metric system are: the United States and.... Burma. I kid you not."
You may not be kidding, but you're still incorrect. Add Liberia to your list, and remember that the present military junta in "Burma" has christened (buddha'd?) the country Myanmar.
In the United States...
-Commercial food products must include metric measurements (and all nutritional information is offered in grams)
-U.S. beverage companies commonly sell 1L and 2L bottles.
-It is illegal to refuse to trade in metric measurements
-The ATF requires both liquor and wine to be sold in metric quantities (typically 1L bottles of wine, 750Ml, 1L, and 1.75L bottles of liquor)
-The US stock exchange finally caught up with the rest of the world in 2001, leaving behind the old fractional system (stock prices were rendered down to the eighth of the dollar) for the metric system
-All U.S. measurements are defined by the metric system
-Pharmaceutical dosages are measured in milligrams.
In the U.K...
-The U.K. is not by any means fully converted. Beer is sold by the pint and marijuana is often purchased by the ounce or fraction thereof
-The Register is located in the U.K., and has abandoned the metric system in favor of its own zany brand of measurement
-The U.K.'s currency is referred to as the Pound, rather than the Kilo
-It is rumored that the weight of many objects, such as people and horses, are measured in "stone"
-I don't live in the UK, nor have I ever been there, but I think it's fair to assume (seeing as you've already made an ass of yourself, it seems only fair to obey the proverb and follow suit) that Brits regularly measure distances in leagues and furlongs, land in acres, crops in bushels, human heights in feet and inches, and depths in fathoms
In Canada...
-In Canada, as well, weed is generally sold by the "half quarter" (1/8 ounce, 3.5g), ounce, and pound. Their somewhat more legally recognized measures (like speed limits, gasoline/petrol quantity, and food packages tend to be metric, but many products are precisely the same as their American equivalents but labelled only with metric measurements (for example the 12oz. beverage can, labelled "355Ml" in Canada.
-Even though the speed-limit signs are posted in Km/h, locals in many parts of the country will still reference road distances in miles.
It also occurs to me that everybody uses a non-decimal system of measuring even daily time. There are 34,560 seconds in a day, why not just make seconds last about three and a half times as long? That way we could have ten hours every day, each consisting of 100 minutes which in turn each contain 100 milliseconds.
It can be taken further yet; let's go ahead and standardise the year and month. Forget the orbit of the Earth, we need some form of standard, universal measurement that allows for useful time references between the Earth and any future space stations/lunar colonies/planetary colonies. For the sake of the diurnal cycle, we'll keep the rotation of the Earth as a measurement of the day; those very same ten metric hours should serve us well. I can't make up my mind as to whether 100 or 1000 days would be better for a year, but as a rough draft of sorts the coin flip will do in its selection of 100 days. That way, we can forgo months altogether and make each of the year's ten weeks ten days long.
Perhaps this will mean people's ages are usually referenced in decades. It would likely mean some clever fellows would get to create new names for the days of the week, and shuffle or rename the months. I rather like going the boring route of Greek and Latin numerical prefixes, akin to the last four months of the year (for the English version, of course. Translated versions would use whatever fit their style).
Unember (Uniember? Monoember?)
Duember (Diember? Biember?)
Triember (Trember? Terember?)
Quadrember (Tetrember?)
Quintember (Pentember?)
Sextember (Hexember?)
September
October
November
December
And for the days of the week, maybe
Oneday
Tuesday
Threesday
Fourday
Friday
Sexday (favorite)
Hepday (the day after sexday, obviously, when the test comes back positive)
Ashday (ran out of decent Greek/Latin, stole a little truncated Sanskrit)
Nonday
Ultday
I forgot where I was going with all that, so I'll leave both those of you who slogged through the whole comment, and those who rolled their eyes and skipped to the bottom to see if I ended up saying anything useful, with a quote from an online dictionary as it applies to this comment:
"tan·gent (tnjnt)
3. A sudden digression or change of course"
"Un-replaceable historical artifacts"? Come on! As a warning from history, I suppose - the classic "gazelle desigend by committee" that ends up looking not unlike a hippo.
I'm reminded of the recent debate about whether Morris Marinas are worth preserving before Top Gear destroys them all.
Ok it's quite obvious this is NASA's way to avoid the decommissioning costs. Maybe if they thought outside of the box a little bit more then decommissioning becomes easy and cheap...
Send the thing into space, point it in the direction of the Sun... give it a nudge in the general direction, gravity takes over and does the rest...all parts returned to their base elements and in a completely eco-friendly fashion!
Physics means that these elements will return to us an a few billion years, whats not to like?
Actually, your idea for "metric"-ish days of the week is nothing new - in Portuguese, the weekdays are -
segunda feira (Monday)
tertia feira
quarta feira
quinta feira
sexta feira
which (as you will have guessed) translates as "second day", "third day", etc. Only the weekend days have non-trivial names (sabado and domingo). Kind of spoils the geeky fun a bit ...
Sorry, the Buran orbiter was totally destroyed in 2002 when the roof of its hanger collapsed. The second orbiter was practically complete when the programme was cancelled and might still be intact somewhere at Baikonur.
Some of the non-spaceworthy analogues are still around; one is in Germany, another was (is?) in Gorki Park, Moscow and another is parked outside at Baikonur.
I could build myself a good replica Shuttle for under $1M so why on earth (or off it) would anyone pay $42M for the "real-thing"?
Ok, it's been in space but when it comes down to it, it's a bus, and not a very reliable one at that.
Think of it as the Bendy-Bus of space travel.
If it were a "Routemaster" of space travel then we'd all be clamouring for them.
I imagine they will all go to good homes in nice patriotic US museums and theme-parks.
As for the export restrictions, well, they can't have nasty Ay-rab types flying them can they?
Hmmmmm delivery by May 2012 ? I humbly suggest that if it could be negotiated to be delivered to the East London Stratford Spaceport in 2012 it might make a nice little opening 'splash' (or should that be 'bang!) to the London Olympics !
However that is providing that Jezza does not out bid the London Olympic Committee and London Tax Payers Consortium and place it outside his home alongside his British Jet Fighter plane !
Oh ! Seems like the BBC should try to decommission its space shuttle too if you ask Me !
http://www.topgear.com/us/the_show/more/season-9-ep-4-the-reliant-robin-space-shuttle/
Mine's the Out of this world one for obvious reasons !
Hey, if they can get an organization to cough up the decommissioning costs, why not do it? Makes accounting sense to me. Though don't want the highest bidder, its still fair game, they DO want to make sure they cover their losses. For people who work with programming numbers you all sure suck at balance sheet methodology. Why should we as tax payers pay for something when a willing org. will pick up the tab and give it a decent parking spot?
My 3 choices would be:
1. Smithsonian = Discovery
2. Chicago Museum of Science and Industry = Atlantis
3. Houston, TX = Endeavour
Runners up = San Fransisco, CA, Seattle WA. Denver, CO. But I think my top 3 are the best sites. Spreading them out should be a key factor, although my top 3 are shuning the weat coast.
Delivery in Chicago would be trickey, but I would probably land it in Gary, IN and then float it up on a barge VIA lake michigan.
All this is in vain anyway, as they will most certainly be extended by the new CAC. The gap between shuttle and Orion has grown to large, IMO, if something were to happen up @ ISS, we need a vehcile to get there and back. (No offense to Russia)
It's not as simple as one would assume to jettison junk into the Sun, due to orbital mechanics.
For an object in Earth's orbit to fall into the Sun, it needs to lose it's orbital velocity with regards to the Sun, which is a change in velocity of about 100,000 km/h, which is considerably more effort than it takes to put it in orbit in the first place.
Of course, we could always build a space elevator out of a carbon nanotube ribbon, and slingshot junk into the Sun, but I can't see it happening any time soon.
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