July 20th, 2011
04:30 PM ET
Father-son team helps capture shuttle history
We've all seen them: photos of the latest NASA shuttle lifting off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Many of those images have come from the same group of professional press photographers, including Scott Andrews with Canon. Andrews, who has a background in engineering, created a specialized trigger to capture close-up images of the shuttle liftoff.
Recently, Andrews' son Philip, a college graduate, joined his father capturing the final shuttle launches. As the shuttle program’s end comes with Thursday’s scheduled landing of Atlantis, CNN's John Couwels followed the photographers that captured American history.
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People in Orbit
Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov
Expedition 36 Commander
Expedition 36 Commander
Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Cosmonaut Chris Cassidy
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Contributors
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Elizabeth Landau
Writer/Producer -
Sophia Dengo
Senior Designer
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Frank,
I hope that you never need a pacemaker, any of the medicines developed out of the space program, drive your car on a highway in the rain or use any of the 85,000 other products that have been developed as a result of the space program.
Grant
I don't mean to take away from the refinements that the Andrews' have obviously made to the technique, but using VOX switches to fire remote tripod mounted cameras in wilderness areas at Cape Canaveral started about 40 years ago during the Apollo program. My Dad and his friends used Radio Shack "Science Fair" VOX kits wired into their motor drives with toilet paper tubes gaffer taped to the carbon mics for directional sensitivity. Such set ups captured a number of widely used photos, including a memorable one of a fortuitous flock of birds (spooled by the Saturn V-5's) that flew into the foreground of the image as the rocket left the tower.
Cool story, though.
So when he says stealth I believe he means the conspiracy theories about the the B2 Spirit using "Electrogravic" propulsion, the sience is wonky and it is certainly not anti-gravity the little hexagon lifters dont work in vacuum so its more of directed air flow thing using high differentail voltages that push the air over the wing surface. And when its a giant wing, you might just be able to turn off conventional jet engines and have very little heat signiature its some interesting reading either way. The fact that the Spirit costs 2.1 billion dollars is one of the things that really sets the conspiracists on fire and I do have to agree with that, its a pretty ungodly sum for one craft. What the hell systems does it have on board that could cost so much. Look up electrogravics, decide for yerself, Should be called something like forced ionic airflow I duno =D
Whoopse supposed to be a reply to Burbank
I was at the first launch and the last... Sorry to see it end, but its time to move forward. Low earth orbit is so 20th century. Handing some of the future to private industry is the best way to efficiently make the future get here faster and cheaper. NASA is not going anywhere, They will always be part of our countries prized programs. They are fully in the process of working on the next vehicle. Sadly, it just wont have wings. My only wish was to keep flying the shuttle until we had its replacement.
It's a pity that so few people realize how many of the items we use in our daily routine are a result of the space program. They take no interest in the technological accomplishments, but they'll spend hours around the watre cooler talking about Simon Cowell's latest insults. What a warped set of values!
I say the people complaining about spending money on science should get off the internet, stop using my bandwith, throw their computers out along with their GPS and cell phones and go back to the stone age where they and the other luddites belong.
You know, it's a damn good thing most of the people here were not around when the new world was waiting to be discovered. It never would have happened.
with very few exceptions, the entire shuttle program has been a colossal waste of lives, money and energy. beyond the repair of hubble, it has been a disaster costing billions, money much better spent on education and infrastructure repair. the impaired culture of nasa needs to be torn down and flushed down the toilet (or, the international space station...just a different, higher altitude toilet.).
Nasa IS infrastructure, and it IS education. Fill all the potholes and repair all the bridges you want and you still won't know what's on Mars or what's going on in the earth's atmospere that's causing global warming, or whether a solar flare is on it's way to destroy billions of dollars of communications and weather satellites.
II'm with Frank on this one.
That's just ignorant. Do you know how many students have been motivated in math and science because of NASA. Do you know how the leftist rants caused the downfall of inspirational ventures such as NASA. You did not have to create special before and after school programs to motivate kids inspired by the works of NASA. You did not have to give them lunch programs. You just had to show them the possibilities. What does this country have now that is even equivalent?
Yes, students are so motivated that the US of A is ranked 35 in math and 25 in science! Wow!
Finally, someone I can agree with.
I agree with Frank, the shuttle has been demonstrated to be an innefficient platform for it's primary mission (getting materials and manpower into orbit). The NASA space program in general has been incredibly expensive for dubious gains. It all boils down to the enormous cost of getting things into space with conventional rockets. Until a more efficient, safe and relaible means of getting men and materials beyond the pull of Earth's gravity, the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Ending the shuttle program is a BAD moment in history.
It's sad but it's time. We are going down the wrong path, it's not fuel efficient by a long shot and we need to put the money resources into anti-gravity technology. There's black budget projects in the works already, have been for a long time. Actually the Stealth has a bit of anti-gravity technology on the leading edge of it's wings which is what helps make it go so fast. It's being both pushed and pulled.
Anti-gravity technology? I think you are SMOKING something anti-gravity . No such technology currently exists. As for fuel efficiency, it takes a big bang to escape gravity and get into orbit–take THAT as anti-gravity....
Anti-gravity experiments have been conducted, but none have created enough thrust to move the "engine" or propulsor or even the energy source, much less the entire craft. On top of that, if you are referring to aerodynamic structures like lengthened leading edges to help increase angle of attack of the wing and increase lift, those are not anti-gravity devices. The saddest fact, however, is that you have pinned your declarations on black programs. What programs are these? Where is the proof of their existence? Sonic booms over the California/Nevada/Arizona desert are very likely to be aircraft making high-speed flight experiments and the closest thing to anti-grav today are just giant fans put into light vehicles.
Let's leave speculation of unknown or undiscovered programs and technologies to other forums and focus on the article at hand.
Laws of thermodynamics prove that it can't work on the macro scale.