Space Shuttle lands safe and sound

[70charginglizard]

Well thats a relief.
Glad to hear the boys and girls made it back safely this morning.
Congradulations NASA and time to get to work on making that thing safe for travel up and down again. 

[SirNik73]

I was glad to hear that everything went ok. My uncle is a family friend of the Collins family. Eileen Collins was the commander of the mission. good to hear that everything went ok for her.

[Charger_Fan]

I bet everyone involved in NASA was holding their breaths the whole time during re-entry.

What's strange IMO is that this trip is the first time they've actually sent a guy out to examine the heat tiles...you'd think that it would be a good practice to do each time.   

I'm glad they made it back safely.

[Old Moparz]

I bet everyone involved in NASA was holding their breaths the whole time during re-entry.

What's strange IMO is that this trip is the first time they've actually sent a guy out to examine the heat tiles...you'd think that it would be a good practice to do each time.   

I'm glad they made it back safely.

I haven't watched any of the shuttle missions in ages, they got pretty common after a while. I did see the landing this morning on TV by accident. I was trying to get some baseball scores having my coffee & heard the announcer mention they'd be showing the landing in 20 minutes. So what I was late for work? I was more interested in seeing them land because of all the talk of problems with it going up. Good to see them okay & I actually felt relieved when all the tires touched down & the chutes opened.

Hey Charger Fan, if I was in that thing & heard the insulation was falling off, you bet your ass I'd outside fixing it. It would probably remind me of all those $100 clunkers I used to fix at the side of the road in the rain.

[69_se_ron]

I watched anxiously, too.   I was lucky to have the opportunity to watch STS-93 launch back in July of 1999, Eileen Collins' first mission as commander.   I thought I wanted to ride that machine until it took off...we were in the NASA v.i.p. viewing area and saw the night launch from only 3.25 miles away..helluva lot closer than it sounds.   Hardly a day goes by I don't think about it.

Here was our vantage point and a zoom pic of the launch:

[Charger_Fan]

Hey Charger Fan, if I was in that thing & heard the insulation was falling off, you bet your ass I'd outside fixing it.  

Me too! They have had plenty of tile problems in the past, even before this last accident...I'd be checking out the situation for my own peace of mind.
Hopefully they took up some spare tiles & a glue kit to stash in the space station for future fixes.


Those are some cool pics, 69_se_ron.
I can only imagine the feeling witnessing a launch.

[SirNik73]

ron, my uncle was at that launch too. i remember because he brought me a bunch of cool stuff back from the launch, i had an STS-93 mission patch. i bet my uncle was in the v.i.p. viewing area with you. Ed Henton is my uncel. he was in shool with Eileen's husband.

[ChargerRob]

I was here at Edwards AFB when the shuttle landed. Here are a couple of pics of it being towed to the hanger.

[RD]

back in 1992 at ft. bliss, texas in air defense artillery school, i got to see the shuttle on the back of a 747 on the tarmac getting refitted to go to florida. 

[Charger_Fan]

I don't remember exactly which year...around 1997, the shuttle flew piggybacked into our Salt Lake City airport. I was driving along the freeway & suddenly cars in front of me started acting all wierd, some were pulling over.
I slowed down so I wouldn't hit anyone & suddenly there it was, just to the left of me flying alongside the freeway! It looked low enough that I could hit it with a spitwad or something. It was flying much lower than planes usually fly for some reason.

That was cool!

[MoparYoungGun]

That's really good to hear, congratulations NASA on a successful mission !

[Brock Samson]

yeah, the ruskie sub boys were saved too,.. great news..

[Ghoste]

I missed the Ruskie sub boys story.  What is that one about?  Obviously one was in trouble somewhere.

[Brock Samson]

   With their Budgets these days it's not a good time to be a Russian Submariner... 

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4128614.stm