Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch Gordon Laing is the editor of CameraLabs.com, where an extended version of this story originally appeared. The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on its final mission was an awesome sight. I’ve seen many launches on TV – most with a tear in my eye – but this was my first in person, and it didn’t disappoint. Indeed, it was quite …
It was nice and quiet a week earlier. Of course, there was no launch planned, but the causeway was nice and quiet (and wet - we had some of those downpours) and we got some good pictures when it wasn't raining. Had they stuck to the original 28th June launch then it would have been a lot more crowded.
But then I am not the one paying for it. It always brings a tear to my eye when I see what we can accomplish when we work together. It allows me for a second to forget all the nasty things we can do and believe we can all as the song goes live as one. And throwing men into space on a big firework is one of those things.
Here's hoping for more investment in the future (either private or government).
Working together is what killed the shuttle. The shuttle program was predominately about spy satellites, and ideological pissing contests. If it wasn't for the ISS then I'm sure it would have been cancelled much sooner after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The shuttle never really worked as it was supposed to, and was obscenely expensive to operate. Sure it looks pretty, but there's better ways of doing its job and that's why its cancelled.
The Russians came to the table and opened the iron curtain after a shuttle snagged a satellite from orbit and brought it back for repair and relaunch. The upshot of that is that it made it possible for the US to go into orbit, snag someone else's satellite and bring it back.
Ah, the old 'still on timer' frustration. The number of shots I've missed... I am sorely tempted to physically disable the timer button on my Canon and only use a remote, so I don't accidently leave it on.
Looks like you got some great shots anyway - and it's more about the experience than the shots, as you're hardly the sole witness :)
watching a shuttle launch on the TV from up close, and then learning that because of the H/O fuel mix : NASA literally made it rain immediately following a launch.
You can argue about cost to create and run, and the practicality of it in the 2010s but I dont think you can argue that its been a positive force in science, and on the minds of kids. The space program was iconic of my view of the world when I was little : that if you worked hard enough, if you were smart enough, you could literally LEAVE THE PLANET AND STAND ON THE MOON.
for me, this feels like another door closing on that part of being a kid, and Im going to miss it.
Mission Specialist: "Sir, we'd prefer to stay with the ship during her refit..."
NASA boss: "That wont be necessary... there wont *be* a refit"
Mission Specialist: "Thats a shame sir..."
NASA boss: "Ain't it just..."
Goodbye and good riddance. The things were crippleware from the start, and even had they worked as they were originally designed to - they would have been of dubious real world use.
They were really just the last gasp of the 'bash the soviets' philosophy. Indeed its arguable that the cold war was a no score draw - the soviet empire fell apart (and no, the shuttle had bugger all to do with that) but the only way the US 'empire' survived was to cook the books and let all the economic brakes off and hope to hell that no-one noticed.
Someone did notice - but it took them until 2005-2008 to do it - and now the American dream is more like something from a Nightmare on Elm Street christmas special. The entire of the American economy is teetering on the edge of what is effectively bankrupcy - they need to find $4tn within a few weeks or its going to make the 2008 implosion look like lucy lost her pocket money.
I think people are starting to understand that value and money are one big mass hallucination. From both ends of the system. The fact that you can buy something like a car with nothing more than a case-full of peices of paper, or a building, merely on the fact that we decide to agree that this is a fair transaction makes no sense. It makes even less sense that the same building in 2007 is worth one amount, and 6 months later has lost 80% of its value... and we put people in mental homes ... and consider ourselvses sane!?!
The US could have changed the course before Gulf War I (Bush Senior), but just letting it rip with the military-industrial complex was, well, the easy way to go. Incessant Warfare-Welfare financed by Keynesian Policy did the rest.
"They need to find $4tn within a few weeks"
Well, that's really easy. Treasury sends IOU to 4 trillion to Federal Reserve, they print the money and keep a few percent to pay the janitor, amortize the building, then send the container back to Geithner. Instant riches!
"It makes even less sense that the same building in 2007 is worth one amount, and 6 months later has lost 80% of its value"
Of course it does. How much did you pay for the PC on which you are writing this. Not 20 million USD, right?
That would have worked previous to september 2008.
Lehmans was a viable business when it went down... it went down because of what people thought about it and chose to do about those opinions, not what was an actual financial fact. Yes it had toxic assets on its books - so did everyone else - some were lucky and some werent, and we are now reaping the 'benefits' of what was an effective 'best guess' by people who had just as many blind spots as anyone else, in fact, because they were 'experten' they probably had more. The more of an expert you are on something - the more your mind is locked into the 'this is the way its done' scenario - when that scenario is thrown out the window it often leaves people who are used to working in that framework utterly lost.
And goods like PC's have lifespans in months or years... so I wouldnt expect to pay the same for the same machine 12 months later (although to be fair netbooks dont quite fit this model, they're equally naff and pretty much the same price for the same thing 12 months later).
But buildings are different - they have a lifetime of decades or longer. Also, a building is a building is a building. Once the fabric is there in place, and assuming its been built properly (and there isnt the odd earthquake), its there and has a fundamental value, it is fundamentally the same thing for years. So why do we think its suddenly changed in value - was it originally built in solid silver and then taken down and rebuilt in red flettons..?
The difference between 2008 and 2011 is that the ratings agencies and the rest of them arent going to give banks and other organisations the benefit of the doubt. Then you have what will happen in some european countries like Greece & Spain and others - when they find out that theres one law for them and none for the US. There is much less space in the system available for 'made up money' - its much harder to slice things up and parcel them out - because more people are watching (which is the very reason several of the US broker-dealers didnt want bank status at the time because they didnt want to be watched more closely, they knew they were playing games, and still are). At least one bank is more leveraged higher than it was in 2008, but hey, life goes on right?
I will always maintain that these shuttles were a waste, and if they had been designed now, in their current form, they wouldnt have even flown. Its true that they did alot of good things, but at too much of a monetary cost and human cost.
The decisions made to run various programmes including the shuttles loaded the US economy, not to mention paying off Vietnam and the rest. In order to fund that and for other reasons the control acts on the American economy were systematically taken apart or neutered. We are now to misquote "reaping the whirlwind" of those decisions right at the time when the shuttles are being retired, one of the biggest programmes that started the whole ball rolling on the events of 2008.. If I remember in the entire time the US has been extant, the balance of payments & national debt has been positive for less than 5 years...
There is a direct provable link to the manufacture and use of the shuttles and the money and monetary tricks used to get the funding for those and other programmes - and the 30 year freewheel of the US economy that just imploded in the worlds collective face.
So yeah, there is a very good reason for a rant & to link the two together.
"A building is a building is a building. Once the fabric is there in place, and assuming its been built properly (and there isnt the odd earthquake), its there and has a fundamental value, it is fundamentally the same thing for years"
No.
The price of labor and the price of goods nothing to do with how much material, what type of material or how much time went into it. Start with the basics:
http://mises.org/daily/2255 - "The Source of Prices"
...you can drop that 'probably'; this isn't the kind of thing where they shoot one off at KSC's five-year reunion barbecue just as kind of a "those were the days".
Which is a shame, because if they did then I wouldn't have just lost my own last chance to see one in person, too.
I would like to add my own ten cents worth. The cause of the Challenger Shuttle disaster being the design of the solid fuel boosters, having to be made in sections as they had to be built in a State where NASA needed funding votes. The cause of the Columbia Shuttle disaster because they removed insulation from the external fuel tank to save on weight. This allowed ice to build up, which broke off and struck the leading edge of the Shuttles Wing. Hindsight is twenty-twenty ...
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook-fulltext.html
1. Challenger: When the original two seal boosters were being used - the supplier Morton Thiakol and engineers from the supplier REPEATEDLY warned NASA that, should the temperature have fallen below a certain level then the motors would not be safe, as the cold rubber would not act in the right way quickly enough to maintain a seal.
That information was ignored and the launch went ahead.
Add to that a substantially higher wind shear factor at about the point the shuttle runs its motors up to 104% - and the rest is a large fireball... the shear stresses were enough to split the molten metal seal that had formed... cause a lateral thrust component that shoved the top of the booster into the top of the fuel tank... and blammo...
The design wasnt inherantly faulty. The system was being used out of its operational boundaries. This isnt so much of a problem when its a second hand VW Passat, its not so good whens its a bloody great rocket ship with no escape pod.
2. Columbia: This could have been saved so many times in so many ways its almost ridiculous.
It was more than possible for nasa to have requested a scan of the orbiter while it was in space. They didnt.
Its a matter of record that there could have been a rescue mission launched without too much problem - and that the crew of the damaged orbiter had more than enough consumables to last out the timescale - either that or they could have docked for resupply... did it happen? no.
'The cause of the Columbia Shuttle disaster because they removed insulation from the external fuel tank to save on weight. This allowed ice to build up, which broke off and struck the leading edge of the Shuttles Wing. '
Not quite. The formulation of the foam was changed to reduce its toxicity to workers. This increased the amount of 'popcorning' as trapped gas expanded and blew off chunks of insulation.
The damage to Columbia's wing was done just by insulation, not ice.
I saw the first shuttle launch after Columbia from a golf course in Kissimmee. Boy that sucker was moving! Across the sky like greased lightning.
Penn Jillette tells in one of their book on how NASA has (or had) one of the best sight gags in history in he Space Shuttle. He says you have just enough time, when viewing from the VIP seats, to turn to the person next to you and say "I thought it would be louder". That's when the loudest, deepest, most organ-shaking noise you ever heard in your life hits you.
If it wasn't the SRB joint it would be (and was) something else.
The SRBs could never have been built at the Cape. Have you seen the video of the accident with a small store of the fuel being manufactured? Even Florida isn't that expendable
The main engine is insanely complex and could have been replaced with a larger booster. But then instead of being a reusable space plane that just needs a little help, it becomes a white elephant on the side of a proper rocket.
The tiles were necessary because of the wing shape. The wing was necessary for the cross range allowing it to take off from Edwards and to do a less than complete orbit flight to put/grab a spy sat for the air force. Needless to say no shuttle ever flew from Edwards and the addition of 1/2lb of C4, some ball bearings and a pressure switch to a spy sat meant that none were ever going to be kidnapped (which is pretty pointless anyway)
But the ultimate problem is having to put people on it so that you have enough heroes for congress to keep funding you. The last mission was to take supplies to the ISS - which needed 4 astronauts? Even the USPS doesn't have that sort of union job creation.
... Feb 2010. Had to argue with the school that it really was worth taking my kids out during term time for what was going to be the last ever night time launch, followed by the (daytime) launch of the SDO a few days later. This article brought it all back for the second time (the first was seeing the Aurora Borealis over the West Midlands as predicted by the SDO). Thank you so much for reminding me - especially of the sound which was simply unbelievable.
Thanks for an interesting article. I did the same thing at the visitor centre a couple of months ago, except that it was scrubbed at the last moment ! Can't really complain I suppose because it was scheduled to go before my holiday started, but it was certainly a big disappointment after a very early start, and I was back in the UK when it finally took off.
The launch that really took my breath away was a night launch at 4:07am. I've just looked it up and can't believe it was way back in 1997 ! I watched it from a memorial park just north of Titusville. As Gordon notes, you're totally unprepared for just how bright the flare is: TV and films don't do it justice at all, you have to see it with your own eyes.
But the thing that literally made everyone gasp was that a very dark night suddenly turned into daytime sunshine ! It was an instant sunrise and the whole area turned into Technicolor, just like a John Hinde postcard. It really was stunning, all the more so because it was so unexpected.
About 30 seconds later the eerily silent movie suddenly came alive with a thunderous roar. A few minutes afterwards Atlantis had become a bright star as it headed downrange, the sunshine was turning to twilight, Atlantis slowly faded away and then everything was in darkness again.
Absolutely awesome, and it's very sad that there won't be any more.
On another note, the KSC Visitor Centre used to be very good, everything being free except for the bus tour which was brilliant and inexpensive: many guides had worked there and their knowledge and enthusiasm was outstanding.
Sadly, they now charge about $48 for admission for what is now a small and somewhat mediocre theme park. And the food is very expensive and utterly awful...
Spends almost a tera-buck on "stimulus" and has VERY little to show for it. It spends such a little amount on NASA and we get things like good computers, and this silly thing called the internet (with a little help from ARPA).
I could probably throw money away more efficiently than they do it (and keep enough to live from). (*SIGH*)
That's what we people get when we (no, I didn't vote for him) elect a socialist president.
Now, I also know that the main engines burning Hydrogen and Oxygen, and the "smoke" is for the most part "steam"... but what is the carbon footprint of the space shuttle launch? My biggest question is about the SRBs... but I thought the majority of that fuel was Aluminium?
Just intrigued... sure Google could tell me.
Hey don't get me wrong, I appreciate the benefits of satelite technology but space exploration by man is pointless. It's a whole big lot of well, space! It's easy to forget that there are people on our planet who don't have enough to eat. Or people who have no home, and I don't mean the dude outside the shoe shop selling the big issue, I'm talking about families with children who really do live rough. I'm from Britain, we have it good, we moan and complain about things but our standard of living is very high. But I've been to places you wouldn't believe. I've had a woman come up to me in the street and beg me to take her baby because she couldn't look after it. I've seen huge neighbourhoods which have only the most basic dirt roads, where you can't go outside after dark in case you get shot for the few dollars you're carrying. It makes me so sad that one man can spend £20,000 on a car, while another man can't even afford the bus fare to send his kids to school. If there is any life out there other than that on Earth, I hope they don't ever find us because I think we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Now, are you going to yell me what you're muttering?
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