Space Shuttle to fly again tomorrow

[Winston]

A little over 4 hours to go for the launch of STS-114.

From www.nasa.gov:

Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114, NASA's Return to Flight mission, is set for today at 10:39 a.m. EDT.

The launch pad's Rotating Service Structure (RSS) was rolled away from Discovery at 3:38 p.m. on Monday. When in place, the giant enveloping appendage is used to install payloads into an orbiter's cargo bay and provide protection from inclement weather. With the RSS now out of the way, propellant loading is set to begin after midnight Tuesday morning with the pumping of more than 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen into the vehicle's orange External Tank.

The chance of Kennedy weather cooperating for the launch has increased to 80 percent.

First Lady Laura Bush will join other dignitaries and VIPs at Kennedy for the Return to Flight liftoff, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan announced earlier today.

[Winston]

You can watch launch preparations live at NASA TV, which was linked to earlier. At this time, the crew has entered the orbiter and is being fitted by the support team.

[Winston]

The crew members are now seated and fitted inside the shuttle, and the crew module hatch is about to be closed.

The launch time has been confirmed as 10:39:00 EDT, in just over 1 hour 40 minutes from now. There is a launch window of 9 minutes today.

[Eli]

Ignore this post. I'm stupid.

[Japher]

I hope they jiggled all the right wires this time.

[Winston]

Countdown has resumed at T - 9 minutes, after a built-in hold of 45 minutes.

Very best wishes for the mission.

[Tattila the Hun]

Boy, won't they feel stupid when they are told that the USAF has a big-ass hyperdrive capable spacecraft?

[Winston]

Twin solid rocket boosters separated, everything looking good.

[Winston]

T + 9 minutes, main engines cutoff, external fuel tank separated. Altitude is 68 miles.

[Tattila the Hun]

They said that about the Columbia, too....

[Ming]

CNN has video of the launch...

[Mr. Harley]

If you really want to do it right - send out a mission, catch a very small asteroid or comet, say several hundred yards accross (one or two miles would be cool, but that's alot of energy) and put it into orbit, if you can a La Grange point. I'd prefer a comet, the gases if harvestable would be worth decades of earth launches. Now that would bootstrap humans back into space.

[chequita guevara]

It was cool watching the launch from the fuel tank.

edit: spell fix

[DanS]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
If you really want to do it right - send out a mission, catch a very small asteroid or comet, say several hundred yards accross (one or two miles would be cool, but that's alot of energy) and put it into orbit, if you can a La Grange point. I'd prefer a comet, the gases if harvestable would be worth decades of earth launches. Now that would bootstrap humans back into space.

The amount of energy required to do this would be phenomenal. Might as well send the cargo from Earth or harvest the moon.

[JohnT]

There's video of something falling off the shuttle, hitting another part of it and creating a hole.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/26/space.shuttle/index.html

If you subscribe to CNN (free) you can see the video. Since I have no perspective as to what's being shown it's impossible to tell if the hole is 10mm or 10cm or even 10m across.