Shuttle launched in the wee hours of the morning

Today's 2:28am shuttle launch was a rare night launch that was probably spectacular to view. I am sorry that I missed it. While we were in Florida in February our Valentine's Day was spent at the Kennedy Space Center (just call me an incorrigible romantic). We intended to watch a Shuttle launch that day but Endeavor was delayed until today because Atlantis, the previous shuttle launch, had been delayed until Feb 7th.

Nevertheless, our Valentine's day included the bus tour that went closer to the Launch Pads and past the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Inside they were assembling Endeavor for this mornings flight and I got some good pictures of the bottom of the Shuttle Stack as it was being assembled. They were expecting to move the Shuttle to the pads one evening that week. It turns out that they actually pack the Shuttle bay while it is on the launch pad by means of a huge movable building that can be sealed to the Shuttle so they can open the bay doors and out in payloads. Unfortunately there were no tours of that.

Here is Endeavor peeking through the VAB doors.


Here is Launch Pad 39A sans shuttle.



We did see pieces of the Japanese built Kibo lab that Endeavor took into space on this mission. The lab was being assembled in the Space Station assembly building where each piece of the Space Station is shipped before being prepared for flight.

For all of its quirks, imagine what the Space Shuttle represents in terms of mankind's technological development. What wonderful hubris as many nations combine their efforts to build a station in space. How can this effort not count as one of the pinnacles of humanities achievements? Pardon me, as I always speak expansively and supremely positively and even get a bit overcome when I talk about the space program. I am sure there are some of you out there that are the same way. Leave a comment to express your opinion.

Are there plans to land the Space Shuttle on Easter Island?

I just finished reading the book Shuttle Down by Lee Correy. This 1981 story of an emergency landing of the Space Shuttle on Easter Island definitely has many of my favorite things all wrapped up into one.

It has the Space Shuttle, an exciting emergency landing, Easter Island (or Isla de Pascua or Rapa Nui or Te Pito O Te Henua), heroes that are engineers and finally a little Cold War intrigue.

When we were on Easter Island we learned that the Mataveri International airport runway had been widened and the airport modernized by the United States for NASA as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. This was in November of last year and there wasn't a Shuttle mission until December. How cool would it have been to see the Shuttle land on Easter island? While there are emergency landing sites all over the world, one is in Dover, Delaware. If that ever happened I would be in my car driving south to see it as soon as I could.

The book takes place long before the airport on Easter Island was prepared to take a Space Shuttle landing and the story revolves around getting the airport upgraded to allow NASA to get the Shuttle off of the island and one of the true heroes of the book is Red Richardson the NASA engineer who is in charge of getting it done. The book is credited with getting the NASA emergency procedures changed to take into account these situations and may be responsible for getting Easter Island its long runway, which allowed us to honeymoon there in the first place. Thank you, Lee Correy.

In great Cold War tradition the Russians even try to make a grab for the Space Shuttle. Do you remember the Cold War, when there was a right side and a wrong side? Even the CIA's release of the "family jewels", the embarrassing illegal activities from the height of the Cold War 50's, 60's and 70's, makes some folks think that the Cold War was the good old days compared to today's international situation. Those parts of the book were a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

While the book seemed to portray Easter Island fairly authentically the one critical mistake is that it repeatedly described the Moai as pointing out to sea and watching over the part of the world towards which they faced. Any Moai standing on Easter Island that are not in the quarry are restored, since every statue was knocked down during the wars on the island and when they were standing or when they were restored they faced inland, not out to sea. Our guide on the island pointed out that the Rapa Nui people believed the Moai concentrated the mana of their ancestors and watched over the part of the island they faced.