DailyTech - Quick Note: NASA's Remaining Space Shuttles Stripped, Prepared for Final Resting Places

Submit News

Science Quick Note: NASA's Remaining Space Shuttles Stripped, Prepared for Final Resting Places
Brandon Hill (Blog) - March 29, 2012 2:45 PM

27 comment(s) - last by saganhill.. on Apr 2 at 10:07 AM

America's mighty space fleet is sent into retirement

As a self-described space nut, it's with great sadness that I look upon these images of the remaining members of the Space Shuttle fleet being picked apart and readied for their new homes in museums. The Atlantic has posted 35 breathtaking pictures of Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

Discovery will find a new home in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum while Endeavour will make its way to the California Space Center. Atlantis will be sent to the Kennedy Space Center.

The first orbital mission of the Space Shuttle fleet kicked off with Columbia on April 12, 1981. Space Shuttle Atlantis made its final flight into space on July 8, 2011 and landed safely on July 21, 2011. In total, there were 135 missions and two tragic accidents (first with Challenger in 1986 resulting in the loss of its crew, and later with the Columbia and its crew in 2003).

For now, you can hop on over to The Atlantic to see the best that America had to offer in the modern era of space travel:

^{Shuttle Endeavour (L) and Shutte Discovery (R) [Source: The Atlantic]}

For those that still wish to reach beyond Earth's orbit, we can still look forward to NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) which will eventually take astronauts to Mars.

Source: The Atlantic

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

RE: NASA & SpaceX

By FaaR on 3/29/2012 8:25:01 PM , Rating: 2

Reclaimer, you really are a super loony.

Calling Clinton "radical left" is ludicrous enough in of itself (he's anything but, really - no mainstream US politicians are), but criticizing "the war" (lol wut?) on freon, which is a known and well documented environmental hazard of huge proportions... Jebus what have you been smoking, man?

Parent

RE: NASA & SpaceX

By Reclaimer77 on 3/30/2012 12:09:15 PM , Rating: 2

Huge proportions?

Let's have some common sense here please. You're talking about a rocket craft which puts millions of metric tons of pollutants directly into the atmosphere, and you're concerned about the aerosols used in the foam that seals the fuel tank for that rocket? Also weigh that against the human lives lost DIRECTLY from making that decision. And you ask what I'm smoking?

Parent

“So far we have not seen a single Android device that does not infringe on our patents." -- Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith