Ascent

Love the music. Nothing beats blasting off into space to an Irish jig... except blasting off to Steppenwolf's Magic Carpet Ride. ;-)

The space program needs more of this. I had always hoped they would put more than one shuttle up at once and do a photo of 2 or 3 of them in formation.

NASA needs to get it together. With this much cool factor, budget requests should be easy!

The shuttle is arguably the high point for manned spaceflight, even given that the actual technology is a bit dated. The most complicated vehicle ever to take a human into space could have been but a first step into a new generation of reusable craft that neither splashed, crashed or parachuted back to Earth.

Instead, it is destined for the Smithsonian, alongside other ingenuities that were not so neglected.

As a kid, I watched the Mercury program whilst living in Florida. You cannot help but become personally involved in this endeavour when it is that close.

I mourn less the loss of the shuttle program as I do the general malaise of our foresight and drive to ensure the enduring exploration of space, and from a point of overcoming the unknown rather than succumbing to the bean counters.

the Russians are planning to resurrect their own shuttles not too long ago?

Shame NASA had a 15 year vision blackout. Although I watch every single lift off of those huge white elephants with rockets up their arses, I still can't believe we're dealing with 70's technology (yes I know it's been upgraded many times over...) and we can't come up with anything better, derived from the flying brick. Oh well! Let's pump some more steroids in the Orion flying turkey, shall we?

....so cool. To get that thing to go straight up like that is a feat of remarkable engineering. We are so lucky to have technology in the video and camera industry to take something like that. Absolutly riviting!

Thanks for posting this, Greg. The NASA folks have really spruced up their act, film-wise. I watched this shuttle go up from a few miles down the beach, but this is a whole different thing.

A crazy idea just popped in my head:

What would have happened if space technology had been handled with an open-source approach, the same way many developments we enjoy today on the web were? (instead of seeing the tech as a matter of national security).

Would that approach have granted us an era in which space travel would be as common-place as riding a bus? Instead of the all-too-few attempts performed by a handful of nations?

What if we recognized that space technology is essential to the survival of any human being in the planet, instead of seeing it as leverage to maintain the status quo of superpowers? What's the use of keeping space tech so jealously locked, if tomotrrow a giant pebble from space could wipe everything on the surface of the Earth except for the most resillient of bacteria?

Should that be the approach followed by commercial space travel, instead of following the tired cold-waresque methods favored by national space agencies?