Our marvelous Space Shuttles will be relegated to the ignominious status of dormant hanger queens.
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So we'll once again see two Space Shuttles staged for liftoff for the last time.
We've seen a lot of strange and wonderful things -- robots and space shuttles and ghost hunts.
Only those launching space shuttles or maybe performing brain surgery need that sort of precision, especially when waking up.
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America knowingly signed on for the spaceflight "gap, " which opened after space shuttles flew their final missions this year.
The airport is used by the American space agency Nasa as a contingency landing place for its space shuttles.
It means that we can build airplanes and fetal monitoring systems and space shuttles to tolerances and levels of reliability heretofore thought impossible.
Meanwhile, our venerable Space Shuttles have been relegated to the ignoble status of tourist attractions, and our astronauts hitch rides on Russian rockets.
Safety is essential to any transportation system whether on land, sea or air, and space shuttles are a vivid example of that axiom.
And while the early suits were custom-tailored for each astronaut, NASA knew that lots of different people would be riding on the space shuttles.
Since the retirement of its space shuttles, NASA has hired out supply missions to the International Space Station to the private rocket company SpaceX.
The space agency has retired its fleet of space shuttles and plans to turn much of its focus toward exploring deep into the solar system.
They worked for Morton Thiokol (now ATK Thiokol), the Utah-based NASA contractor which produced the solid rocket motors that lifted space shuttles from their launch pads.
The US space agency is scheduled to retire its space shuttles next year, and has begun the development of a new human space launch "architecture" called Constellation.
Nasa is due to retire its space shuttles next year and replace them with the Orion spacecraft, an Apollo-like capsule that would launch on a new rocket called Ares 1.
With its space shuttles now museum pieces, NASA is paying Russia to launch U.S. astronauts until SpaceX or another American company comes up with spaceships than can safely fly crews.
The agency has handed off rocket-building to private companies, retired it space shuttles in 2011 and now relies on Russian spaceships to transport American astronauts to and from the space station.
The report said that Nasa's space shuttles, designed in the 1970s, were not built to withstand bombardment by orbital debris because such objects were not then recognised as a substantial threat.
In 135 flights, as the five space shuttles collectively circled the Earth more than 20, 000 times, we learned about the physiology of humans in space and about the behavior of substances in near-weightless conditions.
SpaceX was quick to make the point that the ability to carry on despite an engine failure demonstrates a big advantage of multi-engined rockets like the Falcon (Space Shuttles and Saturn V moon rockets could both do something similar).
Ultimately, the aim is to spur human space flight, though the officials acknowledged work on a capsule that potentially could carry astronauts or, less likely, a spaceplane with wings vaguely resembling NASA's retired space shuttles, remains at an early stage.
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And they will not be able to receive surprise presents, like special cookies or favorite movies, which are often brought to the space station on supply shuttles when someone starts feeling homesick or maybe a little blue.
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The three surviving shuttles returned to space starting in 2005.
The US space agency is due to retire its shuttles next year and is working on a new crew transportation system, to be introduced in about 2014-15.
Their idea is being submitted to the US space agency (Nasa), which is seeking commercial solutions to take astronauts to and from the space station following the retirement of the shuttles later this year.
President Obama declined to keep the shuttles going, canceled the planned replacement platform for manned space flight and thereby condemned this country for the foreseeable future to reliance on Russian and perhaps, in due course, Chinese rockets to deliver our astronauts to the space station.
Two shuttles are on the launch pads being prepared for trips to the international space station.
The air lock installation is the primary objective of the Atlantis mission, with the two-room chamber allowing space station crews to venture from the station in NASA spacesuits without the assistance of visiting shuttles.
Since the shuttles were retired last year, America has no means currently of launching its own astronauts into space - seats must be bought for them on Russian Soyuz rockets.
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