The launch of Discovery is planned for 10:39 EDT today. When I last looked on the NASA site there were just under three hours till launch with no problems so far.

I've been watching it live on t'interweb here on and off all morning.

It's also live on CNN at 3.30pm

 

Heard this morning that they're going to launch regardless of whether the fuel level switch fails again.

 

Am on NASA TV at the moment, crew being buttoned into the orbitor right now. T minus 1:44:46 until launch

 

I was meant to have been there for the original launch in May.

Will be watching from sunny Welwyn this afternoon...

 

arghhhh

how do get it.... all i get is a downloads page and nothing

post link please !!!!!


M

 

its on 501 sky news too, split screen

 

Awesome, thanks for the link.

 

kick ***

 

New Scientist are covering it pretty well too:


http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn7727

 

From the NASA site: "The Space Shuttle goes from standing still on the launch pad to more than 17,000 miles per hour in just over eight minutes" We were wondering what that makes it's 0 - 60 time?

"That means the astronauts go 2,000 miles per hour faster every minute."

 

Got the countdown clock running now. Will see if I can get to the live feed nearer launchtime.

 

lol assuming acceleration is constant thats an extra 34 mph every second, so 0-60 in 1.7

 

never, have u seen these rockets take off? they take forever crawl into they sky dont they?

 

1.7 secs huh? Quite impressive. Thanks for doing the sums

 

From what I remember, the acceleration increases as the Shuttle rises - thrust (force) is pretty constant so as the mass decreases (it burns a LOT of fuel) acceleration increases, until the throttling back around Max Q, mainly to stop it shaking itself to bits.

 

9:24 - T-20 Min Hold, should last 10 mins, countdown to resume at 9:34am (3 mins)

 

Yeah, I know, also the atmos gets thinner so that helps etc

Anyway a top fuel dragster gets to 100mph in 0.9s, impressive, but not as impressive as 17000mph in 500s or so!

 

out of hold. Countdown resume. T-20 and counting.

 

Next hold at T-9

 

T-9 and holding (will hold for aprox 40 mins)

 

One would hope so!

TAL (Transatlantic Abort Landing) sites are green for weather.

A little chuckle as one of the sites is a place called Moron (in Spain)

 

Can I ask why they incorporate built-in holds to the countdown?

If the abort sites were clear would it just carry on into t-minus 8:59 ??

Ta

 

have a look here, might explain things.

It's not just the TAL's that are checked over at T-9.

 

Thx for that.

Was lucky enough to see STS-113 Endeavour go up in Nov. 2002 (night launch)

Awesome - it was like the sun had come out!!

 

Grrr.... bl00dy firewall - means I can't view the launch live

 

Running through Go/No Go at the moment

If all go, then countdown will resume

 

All go for launch