Space shuttle Discovery makes graceful landing for 39th and final time

By Scott Powers, Orlando Sentinel

1:45 p.m. EST, March 9, 2011



CAPE CANAVERAL — Commander Steve Lindsey brought space shuttle Discovery in for a graceful landing at Kennedy Space Center just before noon today, ending a 13-day mission as well as the orbiter's 27-year career. It was also the first step in the end of the U.S. space shuttle program.

"The end of a historic journey. To a ship that has led the way, time and time again, we bid farewell to Discovery," said NASA commentator Charles Hobaugh as the orbiter rolled down the runway.

Discovery's return leaves just two more shuttle launches — Endeavour in April, and Atlantis in June — before the program is retired. With it will go an estimated 7,000 jobs at KSC.

And for the first time in 50 years, NASA is uncertain what is next for the U.S. space flight program. Congress wants the agency to build a new heavy-lift rocket, but the agency says it can't do it with the funding Congress has provided in the time by the Dec. 31, 2016 deadline it's been given.

After Atlantis' last flight, astronauts will be taken to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz rockets, while cargo will ride aboard a new generation of commercial rockets.

As soon as Discovery rolled to a halt, NASA's oldest and most-traveled orbiter — it began service in 1984 —- was back in the hands of Stephanie Stilson and her team. They will spend weeks inspecting the spaceship, then several months decomissioning it to make what one historian called "the champion of the fleet" into a museum piece.

Most likely, Discovery will wind up in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum in Washington. NASA has offered Discovery to that museum, and the Smithsonian wants it but has yet to figure out how to pay the $28.8 million cost of decommissioning and delivery. A final decision will be announced in mid-April.

Stilson, who is NASA flow director for Discovery, was prepared for an emotional moment for her and her team. Today's landing ended a storied career of 39 missions that ferried into space satellites, space probes, experiments and secret Defense Department items, not to mention astronauts and sections and supplies for the International Space Station.

Discovery has also carried two U.S. senators into space, launched the Hubble Space Telescope and returned the shuttle program to flight after both the Challenger and Columbia disasters of 1986 and 2003.

"I did actually shed some tears on launch day. I was wondering if that would happen, because I don't do that very often. I think it'll be the same for landing," Stilson said earlier.

Though she's worked on all the shuttles, Discovery is where Stilson's heart has been since she first began working on it in 2000.

"Though I'll be very happy to see the conclusion of the mission, and to show that we were successful in what we set out to accomplish," she said, "it's also going to be the last time we see Discovery land on the runway. So that's a little bittersweet to me."

By all accounts, Discovery's latest mission has been a complete success. Lindsey, Pilot Eric Boe and four other crew members took the craft into orbit Feb. 24. They delivered and installed a permanent multipurpose module called Leonardo — a new, 2,472-cubic-foot room full of equipment and supplies — as well as a carrier full of supplies.

The equipment included a humanoid-like robot called Robonaut 2, which could one day perform maintenance and science at the space station.

Mission specialists Steve Bowen and Al Drew conducted two spacewalks to install, change and fix equipment outside the station. Mission specialists Nicole Stott and Mike Barratt round out the crew.

So far, aside from occasional tears, NASA's shuttle mission teams have been too busy to express much emotion about the end of the program.

"We all just have to remain positive," Stilson said. "We're going through change. Change isn't always a bad thing.

"Right now we all hear, and I'm sure across the nation [people say] 'We wish we could continue to fly the shuttle.' But that's not in the cards right now. I would tell anybody who enjoys the space shuttle program as much as I do: there will always be exploration. We'll just continue to look forward to that."




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Fast Five 2011 Trailer

Fast Five is the upcoming 2011 film directed by Justin Lin. It is the fifth film in The Fast and the Furious film series and the fourth installment in terms of chronology preceding The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). The film is also the first in the series to be released in IMAX and is set to be released on April 29, 2011.^[1]


Cast

• Paul Walker as Brian O'Conner, Mia's love interest; an ex-LAPD police officer and an ex-FBI agent; Dominic's ally, a talented street racer and auto mechanic.
• Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto, Mia's older brother; Brian's ally, an elite street racer, auto mechanic and ex-convict.
• Jordana Brewster as Mia Toretto, Dominic's younger sister and Brian's love interest; also a street racer.
• Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs, an elite FBI agent assigned to track down Dominic, Brian and their team.
• Matt Schulze as Vince, Dominic's childhood friend, fellow street racer and member of his crew.
• Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce, Brian's childhood friend, fellow street racer, recruited to Dom's crew.
• Sung Kang as Han Lue, street racer, member of Dominic's crew.
• Ludacris as Tej Parker, an old friend of Brian and Roman's; ex-street racer, ex-race host, and auto mechanic; recruited to Dominic's crew.
• Tego Calderon as Tego Leo, street racer and member of Dominic's crew.
• Don Omar as Rico Santos, street racer member of Dominic's crew.
• Gal Gadot as Gisele Harabo, street racer, former driver for drug-lord Arturo Braga, recruited to Dominic's crew.
• Joaquim de Almeida as Hernan Reyes, a corrupt Brazilian businessman who wants Dominic, Brian and their team dead.
• Brian Tester as Hernan's henchman.
• TJ Hassan
• Michael Irby as Zizi
• Alimi Ballard as Fusco
• Elsa Pataky as Elena Neves, an elite FBI agent.
• F. Valentino Morales as Malo, Dominic's friend.
• Geoff Meed as Macroy
• Yorgo Constantine as Chato
• Luis Da Silva Jr. as Diego
• Fernando Chien as Wilkes
• Troy Brenna as Zizi's henchman
• Joseph Melendez as Col. Joao Alameida

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Apollo 18 Trailer (2011)

Officially, Apollo 17, launched December 17th, 1972 was the last manned mission to the moon. But a year later, in December of 1973, two American astronauts were sent on a secret mission to the moon funded by the US Department of Defense. What you are about to see is the actual footage which the astronauts captured on that mission. While NASA denies its authenticity, others say it’s the real reason we’ve never gone back to the moon.



Release Date:April 22nd, 2011
Director:Gonzalo López-Gallego
Studio:The Weinstein Company
Genre:Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller


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Laser Tag Graffiti

Laser Tag is using lasers and projectors to tag buildings with light! This is a joint project between Graffiti Research Lab and Make Magazine's Bre Pettis. Tag with lights. It's reversible and non-destructive.

What's the fastest car in the world?

The SSC UItimate Aero TT

The current record for fastest car in the world is held by the Ultimate Aero TT from Shelby SuperCars. The record was set on Oct. 9, 2007, not on a testing track, which is where most high-speed records are established, but on a closed-off section of Highway 221 in Washington state. The speed was monitored using the DEWE-VGPS-200C speed sensor from Dewetron, a company that specializes in, among other things, data acquisition systems for spacecraft, which should give you an idea of how fast the Ultimate Aero TT was traveling.

So, how fast is it? In accordance with Guinness rules for automotive speed records, the Ultimate Aero TT was driven down the track twice -- in opposite directions -- with the top speed on each run being averaged to produce the record speed. (This helps minimize the effect of fluke road and weather conditions.) On the first pass it was clocked at 257.44 miles per hour (414.3 kilometers per hour), on the second at 254.91 miles per hour (410.2 kilometers per hour), for an average speed of 256.18 miles per hour (412.3 kilometers per hour). This beat the previous record of 250.7 miles per hour (403.5 kilometers per hour), set in February 2005 by the Koenigsegg CCR, as well as the unofficial record of 253.81 miles per hour (408.5 kilometers per hour), set in April 2005 by the Bugatti Veyron.

This is the first time since the Ford GT40 set the record in 1967 that the title of fastest car in the world has been held by an American-made car. And it wasn't set on the perfect road surface of a testing track the way that most European speed records have been set. Jerod Shelby, the owner of Shelby SuperCars, believes that the Ultimate Aero TT can beat its own record when and if it gets tested on a closed European track. NASA wind tunnel tests have shown that the Ultimate Aero can remain aerodynamically stable up to 273 miles per hour (439.4 kilometers per hour), though its redline speed -- the velocity at which the engine starts to self destruct -- is around 260 miles per hour (418.4 kilometers per hour). So clearly there's room for this vehicle to improve on its own record.

Now you know. The SSC Ultimate Aero TT is the fastest car in the world. Or is it? Some people believe that this record is a bit of a cheat. 

The record held by the Ultimate Aero TT is for fastest production car in the world. That means that this is a car you can buy and keep in your own garage -- assuming, of course, you can cough up the more-than-$600,000 base price. Some people argue, however, that the Ultimate Aero TT isn't truly a production car at all, but rather constructed for the sole purpose of setting records and drawing attention to SSC's other vehicles. Jerod Shelby openly admits that the Ultimate Aero was designed for the purpose of putting Shelby SuperCars on the high-end automobile buyer's radar, but also says that he fully intends to sell the 50 Ultimate Aero TTs that his company plans to produce. The car has also been certified as street legal by the United States Department of Transportation.

But what if the Ultimate Aero TT wasn't the fastest car in the world? What car would reign supreme? The previous official world record was held by the Koenigsegg CCR, which set the record on Feb. 28, 2005, on the Nardo Prototipo track in Italy. (Before that, the record had been held for 12 years by the McLaren F1.) Oddly, the Nardo track is circular, a configuration that usually isn't conducive to setting speed records since the physics of automobile motion requires acceleration just so that the car can take the curves.

The Koenigsegg CCR's record was actually broken less than two months later, on April 19, 2005, by the Bugatti Veyron 16.4. However, the Veyron's top speed wasn't verified by the Guinness Book of World Records and is therefore considered unofficial, which left the CCR in top place until the Ultimate Aero TT clocked its even faster record speed in 2007.

But all of these record-setting cars are sluggards compared to the Thrust SSC jet-propelled car. SSC stands for "supersonic car" and, yes, it can go faster than the speed of sound. It set a record for land vehicles when it was timed at 763 miles per hour (1,228 kilometers per hour) across Nevada's Black Rock Desert in 1997. The Thrust SSC isn't a production car and it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to own one unless they do a lot of travel across flat, open spaces. But it does demonstrate that production cars have a long way to go before they achieve the maximum speed that it's possible for a vehicle to go on land.

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