Oolite Bulletins

Sadly, it seems to have ended up on a Moscow scrap-heap! There is a very depressing slideshow of pictures here, (with text in Russian I'm afraid).

Whatever happened to the American Shuttle?

I find it ironic that the Shuttle was supposed to be the answer to some of the cost-prohibitive arguments against going up into Space. Now, the US is scrapping it because it's too expensive.. huh? Perhaps the Russians figured it wasn't the way to go either.

It's fascinating to see technological evolution over the past couple of decades. I wonder if Space travel/exploration will make a similar kind of leap sometime this century. It would be cool to think that I might get to see a (semi) permanent Moon-base, or Mission to Mars in my life time but it all comes back to money.

Smivs wrote:

(with text in Russian I'm afraid).

Just paste a unique part of the link in google and google will find that page and asks to translate it. At least I can read it in Dutch without a problem.
All the other linked texts are than also translated.

Eric Walch wrote:

Just paste a unique part of the link in google and google will find that page and asks to translate it. At least I can read it in Dutch without a problem.
All the other linked texts are than also translated.

I knew you could do that, just never knew how. Thanks.

The only Russian shuttle that successfully flew, was in fact damaged due to a rather rough landing. That shuttle flew unmanned, BTW. It would've been very expensive to make it flight worthy again, and by that time the USSR was already virtually bankrupt.

Some commentators actually state Ronald Reagan built the shuttle and started star wars, so that the USSR was 'forced' to follow suit, while they really couldn't afford to. A lose-lose situation.

Rxke wrote:

Some commentators actually state Ronald Reagan built the shuttle and started star wars, so that the USSR was 'forced' to follow suit, while they really couldn't afford to. A lose-lose situation.

Man, that Ronald Reagan! Flying back in time to the early 1970s just to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

They had one of the Buran shuttles at an exhibition in Sydney quite a few years back and I saw it 'in the flesh'. Impressive.

fronclynne wrote:

Rxke wrote:

Some commentators actually state Ronald Reagan built the shuttle and started star wars, so that the USSR was 'forced' to follow suit, while they really couldn't afford to. A lose-lose situation.

Man, that Ronald Reagan! Flying back in time to the early 1970s just to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

Yeah, They give a bad actor waaaay too much credit.
Seriously: that is really what a lot of American space enthousiasts think.

Rxke wrote:

fronclynne wrote:

Rxke wrote:

Some commentators actually state Ronald Reagan built the shuttle and started star wars, so that the USSR was 'forced' to follow suit, while they really couldn't afford to. A lose-lose situation.

Man, that Ronald Reagan! Flying back in time to the early 1970s just to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

Yeah, They give a bad actor waaaay too much credit.
Seriously: that is really what a lot of American space enthousiasts think.

Oh, and here I was under the impression that that is what Walloons thought.

Maybe they do, i dunno, I'm Flemish...

(And no, let's not go into that '(is) Belgium (is) breaking up' stuff, yesterday evening at the bar a discussion about that went sour rather quickly, I don't want to be reminded of that just yet

lol, you still/ again have that ? I have been to Brussels several times in the early 80's. (nice place)
I get lost extremely easily in foreign cities anyways, and with the road name signs always having been like this Abbey Road, this forced more contact with the natives.
Me being a foreigner, the Flaams never took it bad that I was speaking French only (and German).

Re Reagan - there once was a genius extra edition of Spitting Image for his 80's birthday; alas I never found it again, not even by *unspeakable ways*.
Man, that was such a nice piece of evilishly mean mockery fun.
Before I never knew that he was in the talks for playing Rhett Butler or Rick Blaine.
As Michael Rapaport put it (about some other president) : "You may not like him, but he sure did one thing . revive the belief that anyone, really anyone, can become president."


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the Russian Shuttle :

Some years ago I have seen a documentary about a shuttle being transported to some kind of tiny space exhibition somewhere up the Rhine (to permanently stay there) and I thought to remember it was a Russian shuttle.
Transport was quite spectacular and it was greated a lot on its trip on the Rhine.