Discovery to return home, tomorrow...

[GT2000]

Apparently there are a lot of Americans who are more frightened about the Discovery coming back through the atmosphere than they are excited. This is understandable with what happened to the Challenger in 1986, and the Columbia in 2003.

I watched the Columbia's re-entry...and then watched while they started to track remains of the shuttle through multiple states. I was only 3 years old when the Challenger suffered the same fate, so I do not remember that at all.

I know if given the opportunity I would still love to go see a shuttle take off from Cape Canaveral, but until that happens, I'll still watch them on television, as I will be tomorrow when the Discovery returns.

It is known that there is a little damage (http://www.thekcrachannel.com/technology/4791159/detail.html) to the Discovery which occured during lift-off, however, they have decided it would be more risky to try repairing in orbit than it would be to ignore it. Hopefully they made the right decision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/science/space/07react.html?ex=1281067200&en=3a5dbda436b5fe1b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[thecreeper]

ah man, i remember actually watching the Columbia dismantle on live television. that was really some sad, disheartening stuff thinking about all the people that instantly died just then.

[GT2000]

Yeah, sucks even more that a good lot of us watched that 2nd plane smash into the WTC live only 2 years prior.

[thecreeper]

yeah, senior year, spanish 4. i remember that well.

[GT2000]

Yep, woke up to Mancow, my morning class was an online class, so I didn't need to wake up until 9, and be to school for the 2nd class until 10:30, then Mancow freaked out, I turned the TV on and saw the live footage followed by the replay of the first crash, and then right after I got back to my room from running down and turning the tv on for mom to see, the 2nd plane hit live, for a bit of irony, my speech class was left quite speechless that day, one girl had a relative working in the building, so she was pretty freaked out, but I think she got word from them later in the day, that they were ok.

Fucked up stuff.

[Mr Biglesworth]

I was high on oil

[sharkz]

I feel like an idiot for it now, but when the Columbia thing happened, I was watching cartoons and going UGHHH WHY DOES ABC HAVE TO INTERRUPT MY FAVORITE SHOW or whatever.

9/11... I was being driven to school when we hear the jocks on Q102/Philly talking about planes and the world trade center. My mom and I honestly thought they were fucking around. being that this was still the 5th grade, they didn't even tell us at school until after lunch time.

[GT2000]

Yeah, they'll do that...

And the Discovery return is actually set for 3-5am Monday morning, and, from what my mom had mentioned, they did do the repairs, but, I haven't seen anything on that.

[thecreeper]

delayed till tuesday here i guess due to bad weather...

[GT2000]

Safe landing, 8:12am EST this morning, word up.

(They changed it to Edwards Air Force Base in Cali due to Florida weather).

[johnny]

sharkz are you in high school yet? lolz

also, good to hear that they landed safely. is that space shuttle now going to be grounded..? i doubt they'd want to risk using it again any time soon.

[sharkz]

yus