I'm totally jazzed when I flip to a channel and see those NASA dudes space walkin' to fix stuff out there in orbit.

I watched that one Hubble mission years back when they changed all those parts inside the box - took like hours - and they used those improvised tools. It was awesome.

Now I want to watch them try to geek out that older solar panel so they can store it away as a potential backup for the new panels should they fail.

I only get to watch it on this University TV station thing - we don't get a dedicated NASA or SPACE channel where I live, at least not on my tier.

Anyone else dig this space stuff?

Yes, I do. Always have, always will.

SVT broadcasts alot from the ISS. It's space fever here

But you can watch NASA-TV online too.

Nasa TV online? I had not thought of that. Hrm...

I'm watching the spacewalk to unstick the jammed solar panel array live right now on NASA-TV online.

I am watching it on that University TV channel - I may try online next - wonder if the camera angles are different.

I remember when Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5,1961. Kewl stuff

I just started up Nasa TV on my other machine - its playing the same video that my television is playing in the other room - all live it seems. That is Wicked Spiffy!

4 Real!!!

I am continually amazed at how tedious their tasks are, yet they are patient and working through the steps one at a time.

It is so cool to watch them work the issue. Something that would seem so simple to handle ends up being so complex due to the environment they are working in.

On earth you could WD-40 the rails and hit the thing with a mallet or just flat out pull hard on the thing to get it to slide down, but up there it becomes a Multi-Million dollar, multi-hour operation.

Woah!

Hey, do they really need to save that solar array for stowing? Or if they replaced it with a new one, could they just totally disconnect the thing and throw it into the cargo bay and take it back down to Earth?

It's cheaper to send up a few parts, tools & people for maintenance, than it is to send a few blokes up to disconnect it, and then bring it back down, fix it & send it back, or just straight out replace it.

1) Those parts are expesnive.
2) The fuel required to drop & then relaunch those parts is exhorbitant

*Sigh* if the rest of the world would just wake up to themselves

Hey, they just did the final retract. Nice...

Job well done.

Along those lines, I just got back from Florida and the Bahamas. I got to see the night launch of the space shuttle from about 2 miles away (recorded it on my dv camera). That was way cool. Then the next day, toured Kennedy Space Center. At first I thought that $31.00 to tour the center was kinda high. I was a little peaved that they didn't have a military discount (being that they are supported by the government/military). And I thought it was really cool that they actually let me take photo's in the space lab clean room, where they were constructing the add-on's for the space lab. The tour took about 4 hours, but I would highly recommend it.

Wow. That sounds mega cool! I wish I could head that way and do that.

What gets me is when we went to the moon we got Calculators and other electronic devices from it and got to see what it was like up there. . When we send probes to Mars we get to see what it is like up there. But, what do we get from this space station except for a place for the really rich to go and look at us poor people down here. I sent NASA and email asking them this, since it is our money we are spending, but they did not even answer me. You would think they would spend time telling us they ran experiment such and such and we on earth will benefit form this.

really good to know