The DC region was treated to a historic flyover by the Space Shuttle Discovery riding atop a 747 earlier today, en route to its final home at the suburban Dulles annex of the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum. And, while I may not have impressive capital region views from my office, I conveniently (?) work across the street from the Dulles Airport and was able to take in Discovery’s curtain call (video above).
Like many of you, the Shuttle program captured my imagination as a child and I watched many a launch… either on television or by following the contrails across the Florida sky where I grew up. Sadly, I never actually made it to Cape Canaveral for a more first hand experience and the best opportunity I had was derailed by a weather delay. So it goes? Although, I did make it to Space Camp and celebrated whenever it was that I hit 5’4″ (or was it 5’2″?) – the minimum height requirement for astronauts at the time.
Surely this represents the end of an era. As a coworker asked on camera while losing the Shuttle between buildings, “Where’d it go?” Indeed. Where did America’s manned space exploration programs go? Guess other (costly) interests and obligations have taken national priority. And we currently find ourselves without a Shuttle replacement program and a contested NASA budget. Perhaps the private sector will pick up the torch or maybe we’ll one day find ourselves in an era of peace and budget surpluses. In the interim, we’ll continue to hitch rides to and from the International Space Station via Russian rockets. Pack that caviar and vodka!
Below are a few fun pics shot by pals today near (or at) Dulles. Far left, my wife took in the flyovers and landing from the Sully Historic Site. Center, Joel Ward captured the landing from the top of his office – just down the road from mine. And, far right, Tom snapped this beauty from the tarmac.
So that we’re somewhat on topic… As the crowd grew at the Sully site, my wife lost the ability to check Gmail and Facebook or to send texts from her iPhone on the overloaded AT&T network. Her calls also started dropping out. Whereas my Verizon iPhone remained STRONG at my location a few miles up the road. Wish I had more battery to have captured the landing and the hovering helicopters. I didn’t really plan ahead. Ah well, maybe next time. ;)
I’ve watched as many of the launches as I could on TV. I still have the final launch on my TiVo. The closest I’ve come to watching it live was on a trip to Disney World. We could easily see it on the shuttle bus from the airport. Unfortunately that space shuttle never landed again (Columbia).
While I’m saddened by the shuttles not flying again, I’m excited by the advances the private sector has made. SpaceX has been moving along very quickly.
John
I’ll miss them as well. Many strong milestones in my life related to US Manned Space Flight.
Such a beautiful Rube Goldberg piece of technology. Space trucks are surprisingly complicated.
(And even the losses were within spec. They expected to lose about 1% from the outset.)
“Perhaps the private sector will pick up the torch”
I think we ought to privatize the military and the fire departments too. Obviously, the public sector has no useful role to play in our lives. I mean, if Twitter and Facebook can invent something like the internet, what’s the use of a public sector?
I really love all of the photos that have been posted online, especially the ones that include people, roads, cars, and other objects that show humanity and scale. I was truly in awe of the shuttle but also in awe of the number of people who came together to view this rare event.
Robots are cheaper and don’t need expensive, complicated life-support systems.
I’m not sure if we even have a life-support system that would work for a six month (one-way) trip to Mars.
the Shuttle program captured my imagination as a child
Such a young whipper-snapper. It was the Mercury program and Apollo programs that captured my imagination. I grew up about 5 miles from NASA and many of the engineers, command staff, and astronauts were parents of my friends in the 60s and 70s. They are all normal people, but yet amazing in their abilities to reason, argue, and find solutions. Many of those pre-Shuttle folks are retired now and many have passed away.
The space programs helped create many things in day to day life that we don’t even think about. One good example is the portable drill. NASA needed one to drill moon core samples.
What do you need for a portable drill? Let’s invent some great battery technology.
What else do you need for a space program? How about thousands of engineers and college programs?
Thousands of ZNF readers probably owe their livelihood to the US Space Program and don’t even realize it.
They were saying on the news that people stopped their cars in the middle of the road to watch. Are people crazy?
Yeah, the road in my video and Joel’s pic (RT 28) had a lot of parked cars on it as the shuttle flew by. You can see a few in the median or shoulder in my videos but in some of Joel’s other pics you can really see the road backed up. People parked on the overpass (McLearan) south of my location (north of Joel’s) for an hour or so to watch it all too. The office building across the way from mine put up yellow tape across their parking lot to keep random passerbys out. Crazy.
Mrs. Zechman got to see it in person, too. Her office just moved out to a new location just south of where you were.
Talk about an exciting first day at a new place!
BTW, Tom’s picture is fantastic! It should be included in the exhibit.
–Dwayne
Thanks! I impressed with the job my 4S camera did. Did you know this thing also makes phone calls?