Space Shuttle

[Ian Warren]

My good Friend Don Harris of Michigan USA sent me this link

Mindblowing time-lapse video created from thousands of individual frames, photographers condense 6 weeks of painstaking work into 3 mins, 52 secs, as action starts in the Orbiter Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center , where Discovery has been outfitted for its STS-131 mission. Then onto the Vehicle Assembly Building, then the Mobile Launcher Platform, and finally the launch.

http://www.airspacemag.com/multimedia/vide...For-Launch.html

[creator2003]

Very cool Ian thanks to your mate and the guys who made this vid ,really shows a different side to things ,love the hoisting of the ship ..

[Ian Warren]

Its picked up like a toy ... the 'VAB' known to be the only build in the world were cloud form in it

[Naki]

Great stuff ..thanks for the link

[Ian Warren]

All the sorta off stuff you see out off the puppet TV series THUNDERBIRDS .. that yellow transporter i have no details about but the crawler , the large tracked 'Tank' , max speed 2 mph , 1 with the shuttle on top ... from the VAB to the pad 7 miles .. fuel consumption 26 gallons per foot .. huweee no wonder the Space program is so draining and expensive .

[Charl]

Great post, Ian.

I can remember the X-24B proving the concept in 1973...
Some of us have lived through this entire epoch in space flight, a mind boggling programme, USD170 billion.
"The most complicated machine ever built...", and when it does go wrong, it's a simple thermal tile.
I'll never forget the feeling when Challenger rose and exploded in those twin smoke plumes, a real reminder that this was not really like catching a bus downtown.
Sobering too, that a third of the fleet did not survive.

But a gigantic feat of engineering and project management.
I hope we get a glimpse of the last two Shuttle/ISS dockings - you can see the two vehicles quite easily on a clear night, motoring across the sky.