Monday - July 17, 2006

Home Again

They’re back and everything went well up there. It’s too bad things are deteriorating rather quickly down here. Personlly, I think it’s past time to retire the fleet of “freight train” shuttles and go ahead and deploy the newer Scramjet launch vehicles. The shuttle fleet served its purpose just as the Apollo vehicles before them.

Also, like the Apollo vehicles, their day is over. It’s time we took this to the next level and stopped playing around in space exploration. By my calculations we don’t have long before we’ll need to pack all the reasonable, intelligent people on a rocket and bug out of here.

This planet is going to the dogs. I say we get the heck out of Dodge and leave the Liberal Loons, Euro-Peons and Arabs to fight it out amongst themselves. We can watch the show from our new home in the Alpha Centauri system.

Anyway, congratulations to NASA for another good job. Onward and Upward ....

Space Shuttle Discovery
Lands Safely
_{CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)
July 17, 2006 09:20am EDT}

Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of six returned to Earth through thick clouds Monday, ending an impressive mission that put NASA’s space program back on a solid, safer course.

Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center at 9:14 a.m. in only the second shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

“Welcome back, Discovery, and congratulations on a great mission,” Mission Control told shuttle commander Steven Lindsey after Discovery rolled to a stop.

“It was a great mission, a really great mission, and enjoyed the entry and the landing,” Lindsey replied.

The smooth landing was sure to leave NASA officials jubilant, after conquering the chronic threat of foam chunks that break off the external fuel tank during launch — still a problem, but not a serious one in this mission.

The shuttle came in from the south, swooping over the Pacific, Yucatan Peninsula, Gulf of Mexico and across Florida to cap a 5.3 million-mile journey that began on the Fourth of July.

A last-minute buildup of clouds prompted NASA to switch the shuttle’s direction for landing. By the time Discovery approached, it was so cloudy, Lindsey couldn’t spot the runway until about a minute before landing.

At touchdown, hoots and whistles came from the few hundred astronauts’ relatives and space center workers at the runway. NASA officials had been certain going into Monday’s landing that Discovery’s heat shield was intact and capable of protecting the spaceship during the fiery re-entry.

- More on the story here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/17/2006 at 09:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
• Comments (7) • Trackbacks(1)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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