I think I woke up to late, did it happen?

or not?

If so, its about time..

It's orbiting earth right now.

Really, thats awsome..

If my political career doesn't take off like I expect I would try to go into NASA.. my aunt works with them

NASA as second choice. Wow.

i saw it out my window
you can see it from like 30 miles away

I got dreams and goals my friend, hopefully you all won't be dead by the time I make it on the TV

I would actually like to see further military development in space, eheh lil sci-fi here but I wouldn't mind being a test pilot for an experimental fighter spacecraft

You and about 100million other people. Best of luck though!
Hey, if I ask nicley will you write my name with space exhaust?

If you keep the smart comments to yourself..

Sure.. it might cost my career but hey! What do I got to loose?

Sorry to burst your bubble but military organization in sapce is illegal by UN stand-point. They have the Space-Command, but the existence of the Space-Command is breaking UN law. The less military stuff, the better. me, I'd like to see space get furthered by finding new ways to facilitate life. You know, NASA invented hydroponics. Hell, we've only got 5 billion years before the sun turns us into vapor and hopefully by that time if we don't kill ourselves (or something else doesn't go wrong) we'll already have populated many different areas in the Galaxy

Well see I don't believe the UN is going to exist in its form for much longer... and in 60 years a lot o' change can happen.

We will see, oh btw, about the launch. The rocket pods, are they filled with "gas" (like the stuff we use) or do they use some more enviro freindly stuff?

something fell of during the launch and nasa is now grounding all the shuttles from taking off. it is spectated that this may delay the next launch due in spetember was it?

oh and something interesting i learned watching the nasa channel: they use old cpu's. and they don't want to upgrade them because they know the ins and outs of all the systems and stuff. but they plan to upgrade at the end of the program which is in 5 years. then we get new shuttles (yay). and to channler i know (or think) that the shuttle uses liquid oxygen. i think the rockets that propel it into the atmosphere uses it too.

They have liquid oxygen on board, but from what I gathered from Apollo 13 they weren't used for fuel tanks, they were used because if you store oxygen in liquid form you can hold a lot more of it in a smaller volume.

i don't know about the fuel; but apparently some potentially damaging material came off of the rocket fuel tank during lift off and now NASA is all worried thinking it damaged the orbiter.

OMG they had 2 1/2 years to fix this and look whats going on! They got MORE foam coming off the shuttle.. O_o

I was watching something about this guy in the USA that is really pushing for a privatized space.. experienced?

I think space needs to be completely socialized, but of course it isn't, but there should at least be stricter laws around private owneership in space.

Im just wondering though, what exactly says that I cannot go into space and put up my own space station?

I know its really difficult thing to do, but who decides that?

Who ever has the biggest space-guns...?

Anyways. I doubt it was insulating foam that brought Columbia down. The foam thing is probably just something that happens every time but we just now noticed. I've seen rather convincing evidence that Columbia was brought down by upper-atmospheric lightning, it does exist and it's nearly imposable to predict as it needs no rain clouds to produce. (Look up "lightning sprites," not quite the same but similar. Both are related to the Earth's magnetic field.) NASA doesn't like the Idea of lightning of that kind bring down a shuttle because it would be imposable to protect against, and thus every ship ever put up there would be at risk. If they play the martyr and blame "insulating foam" then they can convince themselves that this is something that can be prevented.

Well they could take a few steps to prevent upper-atmosphere lightning as well. I mean, they can't stop it from hitting the shuttle by they can keep working with the tiles to stop them from cracking and stuff. You can't ignore a possible problem just because it's harder to resolve.

i know that a VW jetta can get struck by lightning and still run...

but i bring more info on the launch (yay!)
ok, apparently there is this stuff that is between the space shuttle body and the heat tiles and it's starting to come out from under the tiles or something (?) Anyway NASA is worried that this may create drag on the landing but they're still trying to figure that out... they may delay the shuttles landing a day. and also i have heard no news on the foam coming off of the fuel tank other than that it is unlikely that it played a role in the tile seperater thingy's problem...

it's seems like luck isn't on there side on this mission........

also (a neat fact) the space station creates it's own oxygen
and spacewalk scheduled for in a few hours (i think)

Thats cool, anyone know how it creates its own oxygen? O_o

not certain but through electrolosis maybe?
but then you would need water.....