APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

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APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by APOD Robot » Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:06 am

Image Discovery Departs

Explanation: Climbing into cloudy skies, the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery (OV-103) took off from Kennedy Space Center Tuesday at 7 am local time. This time, its final departure from KSC, it rode atop a modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Following a farewell flyover of the Space Coast, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Washington DC, Discovery headed for Dulles International Airport in Virginia, destined to reside at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. Discovery retires as NASA's most traveled shuttle orbiter, covering more than 148 million miles in 39 missions that included the delivery of the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit. Operational from 1984 through 2011, Discovery spent a total of one year in space.

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Beyond » Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:24 am

AMAZING!! Perhaps for a while, one day a week could be allocated just to Space Shuttle pictures, like a Saturday or perhaps a wednesday?? There just doesn't seem to be anything that is uninteresting about it, from the Bob switch, to the expensive space toilet.
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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Confused » Thu Apr 19, 2012 5:04 am

The news has shown it being flown over or near the Washington Monument.

That reminds me of the time I was at the Washington Monument for our nation's bicentenial. The only thing that got applause then was the Concorde when it flew by. The Dicovery deserves all the applause it is getting and all the applause the Concorde got.

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by ro_star » Thu Apr 19, 2012 5:55 am

wow, it flew 238 million kilometers? is that just relative to the earth I take it, not including the 30 kilometers/second the earth travels around the sun, or the sun traveling around the galactic center, or the galaxy through the universe, right? so that would be about 1.6 AU or 12.7 light minutes; so if it took a year to travel that, it was 41414 times slower than the speed of light; so it traveled at 0.000024 c

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Flase » Thu Apr 19, 2012 8:28 am

Phew mate, you're never going to get any buyers with an odometer reading of 238 million kilometres.

F**# mate, if you want to shift it, my mate might be able to do you a deal, you know, a bit of the old odo windback...

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by eltodesukane » Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:43 am

ro_star wrote:wow, it flew 238 million kilometers? ...
Yea, but the wheels were not always turning!

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Indigo_Sunrise » Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:45 am

Beautiful image, Ben Cooper!

:thumb_up: :clap:


ETA: Definitely check out this link! I wonder if Mr. Cooper hitched a ride in the T-38 (chase plane) to get those images?!

8-)
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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Lordcat Darkstar » Thu Apr 19, 2012 12:21 pm

Farewell Discovery. :cry: I tip my wings to you old girl and hope you enjoy a little quiet time. :ssmile:

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by orin stepanek » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:04 pm

I love today's picture! :thumb_up: :clap: 8-)
What happens to the SCA's; they get retired also? :?: Or reconverted for commercial use? :?
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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by eaglekepr » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:05 pm

A double congrats to Ben Cooper with back-to-back APODs! Just wish I could have been there myself to see and photograph the event.

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by bystander » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:29 pm


Space Shuttle Discovery Readied for Demate
NASA Image of the Day | 2012 Apr 19
NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft with the space shuttle Discovery mated on top rolls into position for demating at Washington Dulles International Airport, Wednesday, April 18, 2012, in Sterling, VA. Discovery, the first orbiter retired from NASA’s shuttle fleet, completed 39 missions, spent 365 days in space, orbited the Earth 5,830 times, and traveled 148,221,675 miles. NASA will transfer Discovery to the National Air and Space Museum to begin its new mission to commemorate past achievements in space and to educate and inspire future generations of explorers.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by BPCooper » Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:57 pm

I am thrilled to have back-to-back APODs, that really made my day. Thank you guys.

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by BMAONE23 » Thu Apr 19, 2012 7:05 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by neufer » Thu Apr 19, 2012 7:26 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_%28horse%29 wrote: <<Trigger (originally named Golden Cloud, 1932–3 July 1965) was a 15.3 hands (160 cm) palomino horse, made famous in American Western films with his owner/rider, cowboy star Roy Rogers.

Though often mistaken for a Tennessee Walking Horse, his sire was a Thoroughbred and his dam a grade (unregistered) mare who, like Trigger, was a palomino. Movie director William Witney, who directed Roy and Trigger in many of their movies, claimed a slightly different lineage, that his sire was a "registered" Palomino stallion (though neither Palomino registry existed at the time of Trigger's birth), and his dam was by a Thoroughbred and out of a "cold-blood" mare. Though Trigger remained a stallion his entire life, he was never bred and has no descendants.

Golden Cloud made his movie debut as the mount of Maid Marian, played by Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). A short while later, when Roy was preparing to make his first movie in a starring role, he was offered a choice of five rented "movie" horses to ride and chose Golden Cloud. Roy bought him that same year, 1938, and renamed him Trigger for his quickness, not only of foot but of mind. Trigger had 150 trick cues and could walk 50 feet on his hind legs (according to sources close to Roy Rogers). They were said to have run out of places to cue Trigger.

Trigger was ridden by Rogers in many of his motion pictures, becoming much loved by the youthful audience that saw him on film and in Rogers' 1950s television series with his wife Dale Evans, who rode her trusty buckskin Quarter Horse Buttermilk.
Image
After Trigger died in 1965, his hide was stretched over a plaster likeness and put on display at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California which was relocated to Branson, Missouri in 2003, and closed in late 2009. The taxidermy work was performed by Adolph Robert (Bud) Stasche of A. R. Stasche Taxidermy, Feasterville, Pennsylvania. A 24-foot replica of Trigger was produced to sit atop the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville. The 1,300 lb. replica could be seen from the freeway and served as a landmark until the museum closed and moved to Branson. When the fiberglass replica of Trigger was being made, Rogers was approached by the owners of the Denver Broncos. Rogers allowed another statue to be made and then broke the mold. "Bucky the Bronco," Trigger's twin, stands above the south scoreboard of the Denver Broncos stadium.

After the closing of the museum in 2009, its contents were placed at public auction on July 14–15, 2010, at Christie's auction house in New York City. Trigger's hide sold for $266,500 to television channel RFD-TV, which plans to start a Western museum. Bob Tinsley, a Victorville developer who had built Roy Rogers' home in nearby Apple Valley, bought the fiberglass replica in April 2010. Tinsley's plan is to make the statue a part of historic Apple Valley Village. He explained, "I just couldn't see letting him go anywhere else.">>
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by DavidLeodis » Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:11 pm

With the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet and Spirit Rover presumed dead on Mars I have felt like I have lost a friend. The International Space Station will go on for some years yet but when that, Opportunity Rover and the Hubble Space Telescope are finally gone I will feel a further sense of loss of all these remarkable achievements. :(

Mind you, it was in an episode of 'Futurama' that on enquiring what he had just blown up Zap Brannigan was told (dejectedly by Kiff) that it was the Hubble Space Telescope. :shock:, though it still made me :)

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by neufer » Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:42 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fighting_Temeraire wrote:

<<The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil painting executed in 1839 by the English artist J. M. W. Turner. It depicts one of the last second-rate ships of the line which played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire, being towed towards its final berth in Rotherhithe south east London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap. The painting hangs in the National Gallery, London, having been bequeathed to the nation by the artist in 1851. In 2005, The Fighting Temeraire was voted the greatest painting in a British art gallery. The painting, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, won 31,892 votes, more than a quarter of the 118,111 cast in a poll organised by the BBC Today radio programme.

Sir Henry Newbolt wrote a ballad titled The Fighting Temeraire, referencing the scenario depicted: "And she's fading down the river, But in England's song for ever, She's the Fighting Téméraire." Turner himself presented the painting for display in 1839 accompanied by an altered excerpt from Thomas Campbell's poem Ye Mariners of England, reading:
"The flag which braved the battle and the breeze,
"No longer owns her.
"
The composition of this painting is unusual in that the most significant object, the old warship, is positioned well to the left of the painting, where it rises in stately splendour and almost ghostlike colours against a triangle of blue sky and rising mist that throws it into relief. The beauty of the old ship is in stark contrast to the dirty blackened tugboat with its tall smokestack, which scurries across the still surface of the river "like a water beetle". Turner has used the triangle of blue to frame a second triangle of masted ships, which progressively decrease in size as they become more distant. Temeraire and tugboat have passed a small river craft with its gaff rigged sail barely catching a breeze. Beyond this a square-rigger drifts, with every bit of sail extended. Another small craft shows as a patch of white farther down the river. In the far distance, beyond the second tugboat which makes its way towards them, a three-masted ship rides at anchor. The becalmed sailing vessels show the obsolescence of sail.

On the opposite side of the painting to Temeraire, and exactly the same distance from the frame as the ship's main mast, the sun sets above the estuary, its rays extending into the clouds above it, and across the surface of the water. The flaming red of the clouds is reflected in the river. It exactly repeats the colour of the smoke which pours from the funnel of the tugboat. The sun setting symbolises the end of an epoch in British Naval history. Behind 'Temeraire', a gleaming sliver of the waxing moon casts a silvery beam across the river, symbolising the commencement of the new, industrial era.

The demise of heroic strength is the subject of the painting, and it has been suggested that the ship stands for the artist himself, with an accomplished and glorious past but now contemplating his mortality. Turner called the work his "darling", which may have been due to its beauty, or his identification with the subject.

Some inaccuracies have been pointed out:
  • The ship was known to her crew as "Saucy", rather than ""Fighting" Temeraire".

    Before being broken up, the ship had been lying at Sheerness Dockyard. Her masts and rigging were removed before her sale and journey to the breaker's yard. All of her cannon, anchors and assorted hardware had been removed and salvaged for the navy to use as spare parts.

    There were two steamboats towing the hull, rather than just the one in the painting. In the painting, a second paddle-wheel tug can be seen making its way up the river.

    The relative placement of the sun and crescent moon identify the scene as a sunset rather than a sunrise. However, the ship was being towed up the River Thames (westbound), and so the sunset could not have been behind her.>>
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: Discovery Departs (2012 Apr 19)

Post by Beyond » Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:48 am

neufer wrote:Image
Oh good. Dead meat for my pet crab. He was getting hungry looking at all these space pictures.
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