scanzen:

Jan. 31, 1977: A horse and rider watch as the space shuttle Enterprise is towed from Rockwell International’s facility in Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base for a year of flight tests. Photo: Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

“I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor - even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut.

But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero—that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice.

And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun.”

-Bill Hicks

n-a-s-a:

Space Shuttle and Space Station Photographed Together

Credit: NASA 

crookedindifference:

R.I.P Space Shuttle

I took very detailed notes while listening to a pair of astronaut describe the shuttle launch sequence. I should scan them and you guys can look at them and have no idea what they say because I have terrible penmanship.

reuters:

The space shuttle Discovery is shown attached to a modified NASA 747 aircraft at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida April 16, 2012. Discovery is expected to be flown to its final home at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia on April 17. [REUTERS/Joe Skipper]

They handle like a brick, the OMS can’t burn for more than twenty minutes without falling apart and they can’t travel to another planet without serious modifications, but the space shuttle is a beautiful ship.

I realize that NASA is focusing on the Orion program, but the remaining shuttles (Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour) all have dozens of flights left in them. I hate that for at least another five years, there will not be any manned American spaceflight. The Soyuz will take people to the ISS, sure, but it’s not the same.

Sometimes I ramble about space because it is important to me.

phoning-it-in:

Long exposure picture of the southern lights taken from the International Space Station on July 16th. 

Damn.

Please don’t let Atlantis’ launch be delayed.

The mission patch for STS-135, the final space shuttle flight.

Since I’ll be attending the NASA Tweetup, I am thinking maybe it could be my next tattoo.

Thoughts?

kateoplis:

NASA has released unprecedented views of the International Space Station linked up with the shuttle Endeavour, as seen from a departing Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured the images during just a few minutes on May 23, but it took more than two weeks for the views to follow a tortuous route to the Web.

laughingsquid:

The Space Shuttle Is Waiting

I’m going to miss these birds.