Adios Discovery

NPR had a great story by Nell Greenfield Boyce the other day about the retirement of the space shuttle Discovery. It landed on March 9, which was yesterday as of this writing. Discovery was considered something of the mascot of the shuttle program. It was the most flown craft not only in the program, but in space history. It was the first shuttle to return to flight after the Columbia and Challenger disasters. It's the oldest shuttle still running in the fleet. There have been stories about all of the museums vying for the retired shuttles. Discovery is going to Smithsonian which is fitting. The Guardian also has a story about it and a podcast I've yet to listen to.It will take a while to drain all of the dangerous fuels and other things that make it suitable for sitting in a museum rather than a NASA hangar.

Discovery is also the shuttle famously attacked by woodpeckers.


Endeavour's final flight is in April and Atlantis, in June, will be the final space shuttle flight. With the future of NASA uncertain and the Constellation program scrapped, it's bittersweet really. Even though experts point out that it's the most expensive and dangerous method of transportation devised by mankind. I can't find a link to that quote precisely but here's a story about man's 10 most expensive accidents. And the reason the shuttle is being scrapped is that its expense is part of the reason we have been stuck in low Earth orbit for the last 30 years. Obama wants us to go to asteroids and Mars.

(Where is the geographical context? Chernobyl was in the Ukraine. I've never even heard of the oil rig.)

Nova had a typically fantastic show about the repair mission for the Hubble. That shuttle was Atlantis, the year 2006 (it was delayed by the 2003 Columbia disaster.)

So, BBC 4 has a new series starring David Attenborough which I subscribed to without knowing much about it, but it's the Beeb and Attenborough so you know it's good.  Last week's episode was on the kiwi bird. They are flightless of course but also interesting because of some non-bird like behaviors, like shitting to mark their territory.  He says in some ways they are more like badgers. Attenborough explained that the separation of New Zealand's land mass from Australia negated the need to evolve flight and its concomitant energy costs.

Discovery Channel aired that show Life last year which I only watched part of (although I did buy the book.) In the US, Oprah narrated it but the UK got Attenborough. Uhm, ripoff?