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Space Shuttle- Memories, Reminiscing

Started by aldousburbank, July 08, 2011, 01:02:51 PM

aldousburbank

Watching the launch of STS-135, Space Shuttle Atlantis this morning brought back some significant memories.  This is an invite for you to post your shuttle memories.

I never attended a shuttle launch or landing but always hoped to.  Living in the West, it never came about to run and see the few nearby landings at Edwards or White Sands.

An acquaintance of mine worked for a major Aerospace corp. and was in attendance when Columbia blew following liftoff.  He insisted that, according to his insider info., that Morton Thierkal's frozen O-rings were not to blame but that the company took the hit to deflect the larger criticism which would have ensued should the knowledge that basic launch software parameters were to blame.

At the exact moment of the Columbia explosion, I was a witness to a fatal car crash and provided police with the time and circumstances of the accident.  It was not until later that evening that I found out about the larger national tragedy.  It blew my mind when I saw that it happened at the very minute I had given to police as the time of the crash.

On one July 4th, President Reagan gave a speech at Edwards as one of the shuttles took off behind him, piggybacked on a 747, headed to Florida.  A little while later, while tubing down our desert river, we saw the 747 and shuttle in the sky overhead.

Once while camping in a VW van outside of Tucson, we were startled by a huge sound in the air.  We popped out just in time to see a 747 with shuttle on top flying very low overhead as it made a pit stop at the local Air Force base.  That was spectacular!

On a couple of occasions when, due to weather, the shuttle would land at White Sands New Mexico, we would first hear 3 sonic booms at our house, then moments later we would hear 2 sonic booms on live TV as they broadcast the touchdown.

My children and I regularly track the shuttle in the early evenings, just after sunset, when it's possible to see the sun reflecting off the ship.  A couple of years back we saw it as it was undocking from the Space Station and man- that was weird.  The next day at work one of my co-workers was telling me about a UFO he thought he had seen the night before and I had to explain to him that it was 2 IFO's.

It was fun!  Hopefully we'll be able to buy some shuttle 2.0 units from the Chinese in a few years.

Eddie Coyle


    Everybody(of a certain age) seems to remember the Challenger disaster vividly...but the Columbia,not so much.

    Maybe it was the shock of the first one. It happened on a Tuesday morning(11:38 am on Jan 28,1986) and was akin to the Kennedy assassination, a real "where were you" moment.

    The Columbia was at roughly 9am on a Saturday morning(Feb 1, 2003) and while a major event, it wasn't nearly as massive as the Challenger. Perhaps 9/11 made us desensitized somewhat...

     I do remember being galled/amused by the idiots who tried to pin the Columbia's breaking apart on Al Qaeda or Saddam, especially because of the odd occurence of the disaster taking place above Palestine,Texas and one of the astronauts was an Israeli who was part of the mission to destroy the nuke reactor being built in Iraq in June,1981.

JustOneFix

Living here in Central Florida I've watched most launches from either my front yard or in person if I happened to be over by the Cape.

I saw Challenger blow up in 1986 when I was out on the PE field in elementary school. 

This is a subject that I've researched at great lengths in addition to having some close friends who actually work(ed) on the Shuttle and in a couple cases Gemini & Apollo craft when those were flying.

NASA is headed down the wrong direction and without getting too politicial, you can blame it on those spineless sons of bitches Bolden and Garver and to a greater extent Obama. Bolden has failed miserably as did the previous administrator.

If NASA is to be an agency that gets things done instead of what they have become today, we need another James Webb(not the Congressman of present day) as Administrator, one who is not afraid to stand up for the agency and not go hide in a corner when the shit hits the fan.

aldousburbank

Right, it was Challenger that blew on the pad, not Columbia- that was over TX/LA on re-entry.

onan

This is only my opinion. I have done no research.


But I think NASA started going bad when they became a trucking agency for the telecommunications industry and the military.


When they were more specifically science and exploration there seemed to be more credibility and (perhaps this is naivety) pride.

Afixer

Stick a fork in NASA, it's done. Sure, it was timely and "hip" back-in-the-day. Pulled the country into the 21st century in fine style but now it's passe'. How many more "moon-rocks" do we need anyway? If we ever can find a real person again to run for president (like a Kennedy) who gave the nation a goal to reach, as the space program did, perhaps they can galvanize us again to find a way off of fossil fuels before the sky opens up completely and swallows us all.
http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/fossilfuels.htm

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