traveling tales from the exotic dinda

Discovery's final flight today - keep your bits crossed, weather looks awesome.

Each Shuttle has its own personality.  The names bestowed upon them only the start of each vehicle's story.  Endeavour and Atlantis the newest birds in the fleet with Discovery being the work horse of the stable.  Space Shuttles are the 18 wheelers of the NASA fleet; they do nothing more than haul stuff up in little circles around the earth then return and do it again.  They cannot be modified to go to the Moon, they cannot be modified to be floating hotels or any other celestial task.  Their time is long ago past.  By now they should all be in Museums with us having new vehicles for actual human spaceflight exploration but alas it was not to be.  So like the family van that had to continually fixed to keep it going just one more year, they've long since paid their dues and are ready for the scrap heap.

Yes, they are still the most technologically advanced machines ever designed by man, er humans, but in a way, that's not saying much.  They were built years ago and trying to match the old technology to the new was a greater challenge than just building new; like trying to rehab a 1920s bungalow into a modern office.  Oh well, keep your bits crossed for the crew and the vehicle that will do its job one more time.

GO DISCOVERY!!

In case ya hadn't noticed there is a Space Shuttle launch tonight at 9:36 EST. A night launch even - this may never happen again. I helped train this crew - so that's kind of a kewl feeling. (btw - Mark Curbeam, who's on this flight, is perhaps the hottest astronaut we have in the corps. But yeah, he's married, so only eye candy. )

Man, NASA TV sure is boring. Whoever thought it was a good idea to let engineers be play-by-play announcers? I just heard the word hypergolic - there's a word you don't hear everyday or reality TV. Okay, I know they're not "real engineers" talking, this our NASA white-washed PAO folks doing their engineer wanna be acts. They really should of turned the whole thing over to Mark Burnett or Discovery TV and then we'd get a nicely packaged, educational, informative and egads, perhaps even inspiring view of the thousands of folks who work their butts off to make this magic happen. Have I whinged enough?

Okay, everyone go watch the launch, keep your bits crossed, and "GO DISCOVERY!"

Again. You think maybe with a lightning strike, tropical storm and fuel cell problems that maybe Someone was trying to tell them something?

Atlantis launch scrubbed again. :(

ps: you know it costs millions of dollars in turn around to reschedule these things, eesh.