Posted on 05/09/2009 6:09:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – After months of delay, NASA cleared space shuttle Atlantis for a Monday launch to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mission managers concluded Saturday that Atlantis is ready to take off on the long-awaited Hubble repair mission, the fifth and final one. Shuttle Endeavour is also in good shape at the other launch pad; it's on standby in case Atlantis is damaged during the flight and its seven astronauts need to be rescued.
Weather forecasters gave good odds for launching Atlantis: 80 percent. What's more, things were looking more encouraging at the emergency landing site in Spain, where only a slight chance of rain is expected Monday. Liftoff time is just after 2 p.m.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The crew of the space shuttle Atlantis STS-125 (L to R) mission specialist's Megan McArthur, Michael Good, pilot Gregory Johnson, commander Scott Altman, mission specialist's John Grunsfeld, Michael Massimino and Andrew Feustel stand for a group photo after arriving at the shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, May 8, 2009. REUTERS/Scott Audette
Wouldn’t be surprised if the Idiot in Chief cancelled NASA manned missions in the near future. Gotta find a way to pay off the rest of his voters and all that NASA money would buy a lot of votes
The Discovery Channel will be doing ‘live’ programming of this mission in HD. I am looking forward to the shows.
Sweet. This is exactly what Discovery HD is made for.
The NASA budget is a pittance compared to what he is spending. But he will most likely try to sell National Pride off for a few votes.
After all the Iranians have a pretty good rocket program.
As great as watching a launch on HD is it still doesn’t come close to seeing one in person. It’s unbelievable.
Isn’t the wide screen (16x9) actually worse to see a launch? Worse than the old 4x3.
There needs to be a way to upright the wide dimension, just for launches!
Speaking from experience?
God speed and good luck, Atlantis. You have a hand full!
You can say that again. I watched the Challenger blow up at the Indian River.
Captain Hussein is seriously considering cancelling Airies, the next version of the shuttle. If it isn’t a “green” thing, or a payoff to a constituency, he’s not interested. He’s an uncommonly unserious man, IMO.
just my opinion, but,
taking care of the Hubble is the only useful thing
the shuttle program does.
nice, that they apparently have found astronauts
that are brave enough to fly into space.
not all that long ago, NASA thought that flying into
space was unsafe.
Last I heard the Science Channel show starts at 1:30, and will probably give some updates as well as explain the mission further.
Question, does anyone know if another Deep Space Field is planned? The last one was in 2003-004, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (a great photo of it on wikipedia, just click on the photo and it enlarges to “full size” if done right)
Factfile on the Hubble telescope and NASA's latest servicing mission.US astronauts have boarded the space shuttle Atlantis for Monday's launch of a high-risk mission to service for the last time the Hubble telescope, which has revolutionized humankind's understanding of the universe. (AFP Graphic)
My Grandma was watching the Challenger launch from her home in Merritt Island when it exploded.
She lived there for so long she just said “Well, they blew it again.”
She felt horrible when the neighbors told her it was a manned flight, she didn’t know it was the shuttle.
In “true” HD, as the launches have been on HDNet for some time, they look great. The distortion you describe doesn’t happen with true HD.
I should say true HD on a properly tuned and set monitor.
“taking care of the Hubble is the only useful thing
the shuttle program does.”
The only problem I have with that statement is about what exactly Hubble does.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Hubble+photos%22+hoax
My sister, nephew, and niece...plus grandnieces and grandnephews drove over this AM. They staked out their viewing spot at 9 AM and the only other word I’ve heard is that it’s “REALLY HOT.” We’re on the West Coast and can usually see the shuttle launches, but there looks like lots of low lying clouds, once it’s above the level of the clouds maybe we’ll catch a glimpse.
Live web-feed anyone?
Mission Status Center
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts125/status.html
—
Latest Space Shuttle News
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
Hubble: a time machine that revolutionized astronomy
AFP on Yahoo | 5/11/09 | Jean-Louis Santini
Posted on 05/10/2009 12:09:25 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2248124/posts
We're only about 20 miles as the crow flies...
I watch from my front yard.
Not enough common sense and dirty fingernail wrench turners allowed to make decisions.
I agree, took all those lives and billions of dollars to figure out rubber gets stiff and doesn’t seal well when it gets cold.
There must have been hundreds of people pointing fingers with one hand and covering their ass with the other behind closed doors that day.
No launch constraints.
10-minutes left in pre-launch hold.
Nah....
within 90 seconds, its moving downrange faster than it is climbing.... so the wide screen gets to be very advantageous for viewing as its trajectory flattens out even more...
By the time the SRBs separate, its flying along at roughly a 30 degree angle to the horizon...
..Tick tick tick...
and we have Lift-Off!!!
Go at Throttle Up..
Dummy Shuttle Explosion for ... dummies
http://illuminati-theater.blogspot.com/2007/06/shuttle-challenger-in-1986-versus.html
MECO Main engine cut-off
Booms (?) not required? Any idea of that one?
well they had it live on the Science Channel but did a crappy job with the video.....
they did a better video job on FoxNC.
check out NASA TV. Pretty good feed and audio.
>check out NASA TV. Pretty good feed and audio.
The NASA.gov website coverage trails the NASA TV coverage by about 30 seconds.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
the pictures I got were beautiful...then when the astronauts they had in the studio were talking they were minimizing the picture to put the astronauts picture in there.
when I switched to fox they showed the whole picture and did not cut into it or minimize it in any way...but of course they had insipid newsmen talking about what they knew not.
The should go back to the way when they faked the moonshots (ooooh, burn, . . . too soon?).
I have a 42” plasma tv and 100 high def channels...I'm not going to watch it on a 19” monitor on my computer.
Fox and Science Channel had the nice NASA feed and it was pretty much high def.....
Are you positive you don’t get NASA TV on your cable or satellite plan? You might have to dig around a bit to check.
they had it back when it was first available over 10 years ago...but band width is expensive and well, I suppose the kung fu channel is more important....
actually they dumped the kung fu channel too, thank goodness. They have so many channels but not that one. I am happy they have the science channel, discovery, learing channel, History channel and the various sports channels I watch...most of the other are paid movie channels like HBO and Showtime which I refuse to get.
The price of tin foil right now is far too high for any more conspiracy theory nuts of the alien kind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.