Cameras mounted on the two solid rocket boosters that helped propel space shuttle Atlantis into orbit on July 8 provide unique angles of the launch from the Kennedy Space Center and their subsequent water landing downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Mike G
Very cool.
Alexandra
Beautiful.
Yutsano
It looks so…smooth.
Martin
I doubt I’ll get to, but I do hope my kids have a chance to go into space. How fucking cool is it that we can do that at all?
piratedan
isn’t that part of the problem, liberals and progressives look forward with hope and a thought of “what if” and “wouldn’t it be neat” and Conservatives are busy looking looking back and longing for yesterday and finding comfort “when things were simpler”.
Bnut
I really fucked up tonight. I talked one of my friends into smoking with me and he’s now puking his guts out in the bathroom. I feel so awful right now. He lives a clean lifestyle, drinks, no drugs whatsoever. He’s my second closest friend, and he always had talked about us smoking together, esp. after he came back from Iraq and got discharged. I feel like I pushed him into something he didn’t really want, and did it only to please me. I thought we would stay up all night swapping war stories and watching Sportscenter. I feel like such a tool right now. We both agreed not to tell his wife, and I made him swear because I have no doubt I would catch more heat for this debacle.
stuckinred
Holy shit, can you believe this story from the LA Times?
“Carmageddon: Tempers flare as 405 Freeway shuts down
The stoppage prompted honking from drivers in the few vehicles caught on the freeway between Skirball Center and Mulholland Drive. A couple of people exited their cars.”
I hope they have the national guard standing by, fucking people HONKING their horns!
stuckinred
Bnut
He hurled from sparkin up a blunt? Damn devil dog, they don’t make em like the used to!
Bnut
stuckinred
We were a bit drunk already, so….
hilts
Song for the Atlantis space shuttle
Across the Universe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj-4t9drUlM
stuckinred
Bnut
Got it, the twirlybirds. When the room gets to spinning you know what’s next!
kdaug
@Bnut: The 1-2 combo can be a bitch for the uninitiated.
Cermet
Nice images- simply amazing that these launches cost over 1.2 billion dollars each when a single use rocket (like a Saturn V) would have been one-third or even less in cost and put up the ENTIRE weight of the shuttle as useful payload! Talk about missing the boat – what you get when trained monkey’s … astronauts … I mean, have input on space vehicle design. Also, worse yet, the selection of the fuel propellant was wrong – should have been room temp kerosene with liquid oxygen but instead they miss-calculated and used liquid hydrogen – unbelievable that NASA and a team of smart people missed that simple fact: would have reduced lift mass by almost 5%!
MikeJ
While the shuttle has a design that’s a mish mosh, it’s really because they had to get funding from DoD, and they insisted on screwing it up. The original shuttle was much smaller, much simpler, and wasn’t meant to be used for 30 years.
There was nothing wrong with a research project for a shuttle, and could have been a great way to bring down the cost. Instead they had to build a completed system to get any funding at all. It’s as if somebody told the Wright brothers that they would get no funding unless the plane they built could carry 550 passengers 8,000 miles.
mr. whipple
Anyone know why the shuttle rotates just a few seconds into the launch?
Poopyman
@mr. whipple: See here.
I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. That took a whole half hour? Didn’t seem like it.
Also too, the intertank cam audio is awesome.
mr. whipple
Thanks, Poopyman!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Bnut: Here’s a little rhyme I used way back in the past:
Dope before beer, no fear.
Beer before dope, no hope.
Gregory
According to the onscreen timer, it too two minutes (!) for the shuttle to get to the altitude to jettison the boosters. It too considerably longer for them to fall back to Earth.