Why??!! Maybe it's just me, but you'd think they would hvae scrapped it after the Columbia debolce and built a better way. The shuttle, as it stands is just an antiquated peice of machinery that costs more and more to send up each time we do it.
IMO, it's as though NASA has their finger plugging their ears going, "Laa-la-la-la-lalala...I can't hear you...lalala..."
Well I think after this one tey are going to phase this style of shuttle out for a new generation of shuttle smaller and looking more like the stealth bomber.
The problem is it takes a while to develop something so complicated. What really excites me is all the private enterprise getting into the space travel business. If we truly want to get somewhere, it has to be driven by good old capitalism.
FYI- A good friend of my father's who was an engineer who did work on the engines for the F-22 told me the computers on the shuttle are very similar to the Commodore 64. If they upgrade the shuttle, they have to upgrade the systems in the control centers in Fla and Houston and it has been deemed too expensive. he also said the next generation of our fighter planes after the F22( in the next 20 years) are being designed as pilotless.
The guy I rented from in Maine was a BIG STS junkie, he gave me the Operations and Integrations Schedule for STS-4 "Final Space Transportation System research and development flight."
Lift off June 24 1982 and landed July 4th 1982.
It's the paper copy of the launch schedule that starts 30 days BEFORE the launch up to achieved orbit.
It's about 100 double sided pages of "At 13:03:50 DO this and turn that and check this" type document.
It's signed by the NASA launch commander B.H. Childers
Thomas K. Mattingly II (Rear Admiral, USN, Ret.) NASA Astronaut, (Shhuttle Commander)
Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr. NASA Astronaut (Pilot)
STS-4 was the first flying of the Columbia, that was lost during STS-107 in 2003 from the foam breaking off on lift off.
That's very cool.
I have a large model of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It's in the box, unassembled and complete. I've had it 20+ years now. I've debated selling it, but it's hard to put a price on something that holds sentimental value.