Fantastic Shuttle prep time lapse video

[FourWheelDrift]

http://www.airspacemag.com/video/Go-For-Launch.htm...

In this unique time-lapse video created from thousands of individual frames, photographers Scott Andrews, Stan Jirman and Philip Scott Andrews condense six weeks of painstaking work into three minutes, 52 seconds (read here how they did it). The action starts in the hangar-like Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where Discovery has been outfitted for its STS-131 mission. The vehicle is then towed to the 525-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building, hoisted into a vertical position and lowered onto its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters. Then it's off to the pad on the giant Mobile Launcher Platform, where the shuttle is encased in its protective Rotating Service Structure until just before launch on April 5, 2010. The film ends with a glimpse of Discovery and the STS-131 astronauts coming in for a landing 15 days later, back in Florida where it all started.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 27th May 15:49

[Thurbs]

Awesome... it did look slightly convoluted how they put the shuttle on to the solid rocket boosters etc.. I mean why not rock up next to it and then just pull it up that way rather than almost winch the whole thing in to orbit and then back down again!?

[M-J-B]

Great little vid - thanks

[scarebus]

What a great find, thank you.... Such a shame its all coming to an end

[Wheelrepairit]

What a awesome video, even better due to the fact I was right there, at Nasa, only last week.

Driven right past all those buildings, great to see inside them.

Its terrible to think all this will close, mankind, going backwards.

[Simpo Two]

Wheelrepairit said:

Its terrible to think all this will close, mankind, going backwards.

I heard Obama wants them to go to Mars next. But I'll believe it when I see it. Roughly every 10 years the incumbent US President says he wants to go to Mars, then six months later they find out it will cost too much and scrap it. So yes, I think Man has gone as far as will go.

Not bad for an ape really, when the rest of the family are still eating bananas in a tree.

[FourWheelDrift]

The Shuttle program has cost the US $174 Billion by the time it ends this year.

Puts UK debt of £890 billion (April 2010) or $1.3 trillion into perspective. We could have had a lovely space program instead of feeding banks and teenager's sprogs, funding Labour quangos and racial minority lesbian drop in centres.