Former astronaut Tom Jones on NASA's plan for used space shuttles

Space Shuttle Discovery Gets a Trekkie Wake-Up !!!

The crew of Space Shuttle Discovery received what could be the best wake-up call ever. A personalized mission statement from the James T. Kirk, William Shatner. It’s a Star Trek’s geek’s best dream, if they were already spending their nights on a space shuttle. The famous opening narration to the Star Trek series was altered to accommodate the Discovery’s current missions and was recorded by Shatner. Pair that up with the show’s adventurous theme song and you’ve got yourself one hell of an alarm.

Its final ever flight.

A specially recorded message from the actor replaced the music traditionally played to wake up the shuttle's crew on their last day at the International Space Station.

It came ahead of Discovery's departure following a nine-day visit to the space station, where it had delivered a new storage room, a prototype robot and tons of supplies.

The shuttle is now on its way back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will arrive on Wednesday after its 39th and final space flight.

"Space ... the final frontier," Mr Shatner said in the recorded message, to the backing of the cult show's theme tune.

These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission; to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before.

William Shatner's wake-up message

"These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery.

"Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before."

Discovery pilot Eric Boe later gently pulsed the ship's steering jets to back away from the International Space Station.

Station commander Scott Kelly told the shuttle's crew during a farewell ceremony: "We're going to miss you but most of all, we're going to miss Discovery."

The final flights of Discovery's sister ships, Endeavour and Atlantis, are planned for April and June.

Nasa is retiring the fleet after 30 years of service due to high operating expenses and to develop new spacecraft that can fly beyond the station's 220-mile-high orbit.

A stunning aerial view of a shuttle launch AND free drinks :



Watching one shuttle after another launch from the same angle, or angles, decade in and out on TV gets a bit meh. Yeah, yeah, another space shuttle flight, let me know if it explodes.

It takes a view like this to remind you how far the human race has come since early experiments in powered flight only one century ago.

That, in the above video, that is a vehicle built by humans carrying other humans & cargo into space, to a fucking space station, peopled by men and women from an alliance of nations.

That's pretty damn awesome. don't you think?

Anyway, as you were.

For fans of industrial decay, here's an amazing series of photos from the abandoned Russian 'Space Shuttle Factory' at Baikonur :



The Russian Buran space shuttle program only managed to lob one shuttle into brief orbit around the Earth in 1988. The cosmodrome was abandoned in 1992.

Go Here For Many More Photos


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