Last 'successful' Shuttle Mission

[spayss]

I was listening to a discussion on the Shuttle boondoggle and a guest brought up a fact I hadn't thought about. We keep hearing how long it is (or long will be) between the Columbia disaster and the net launch of the Shuttle. We think 2 and a half years is a long time. But what we should be asking is how long will it be between 2 'successful' Shuttle missions? Mission 112 and 114 (hopefully). Yipes.

 

[shuttle_rtf]

I know it's rhetorical, but we won't know till wheel stop on STS-114.<br /><br />If we have to wait till September, we have to wait till September. So long as it's done right.<br /><br />Every engineer I've spoken to have said the same thing "Once we get Discovery up, watch the rest of the missions fly out."<br /><br />Even if you can't stand the Shuttle, and I know there's a fair few on this site, we at the very least owe it to Commander Husband, Pilot McCool and their crew...and to Columbia as well.<br /><br />And yeah, I know that's more passion based than anything technical and financially evaluated, but that's the Space Shuttle. It's like what Apollo/Saturn 5 was to the last generation, it's hopefully what the CEV will be to the next generation.<br /><br />Manned Space Flight - it's a risky, expensive business, but you can bet there's some kid in some bedroom in the US that is getting more inspired to aim for a career in space flight from watching a Shuttle launch, more than watching say an Atlas-based mission - and who knows if he'll end up making it safer, faster, cheaper?<br /><br />If things go wrong, learn from it and come back stronger.

 

[paleo]

"you can bet there's some kid in some bedroom in the US that is getting more inspired to aim for a career in space flight from watching a Shuttle launch, more than watching say an Atlas-based mission "<br /><br /> I hope you don't mean the old Atlas launches. As a kid there was a hundred times more interest than any Shuttle launch. Every kid I knew wanted to be an astronaut. There were more astronauts out Trick-or Treatin on Hallowe'en than a whole bowl full of sea monkeys. <br /><br /> Yuri Gagarin was one of the most living famous men in the world. Identified by more humans than anyone but Mao. Although not as famous as Gagarin elsewhere, in the Western countries the American astronauts were up there with Elvis and Mickey Mouse.