Republican Party, Teabag Party and the Libertarian Party absolutely SUCK!

[me]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/05/us-space-shuttle-history-idUSTRE7645ZJ20110705


Timeline: Key dates in U.S. space shuttle program

Factbox

    Factbox: U.S. Space shuttle program by the numbers
    Tue, Jul 5 2011



    Countdown starts for NASA's last shuttle launch


(Reuters) - Space shuttles have played a pivotal role in the U.S. space program. They debuted in 1981 and enabled NASA to learn how to live and work in orbit. But the workhorse spacecraft proved more expensive and risky to fly than originally hoped.

Here is a timeline on the shuttle program:

January 5, 1972 - President Richard Nixon signs a bill authorizing $5.5 billion to develop a reusable winged space transportation system called the space shuttle. The spacecraft were to be designed to carry seven astronauts and up to 50,000 pounds (22,680 kg) of cargo into orbits a few hundred miles from Earth.

September 17, 1976 - The prototype shuttle Enterprise is unveiled, named after the spaceship in the popular TV show Star Trek. Without engines and a heat shield, Enterprise was never intended to fly in space. Instead, it was used for atmospheric flight, vibration and launch configuration tests.

April 12, 1981 - Space shuttle Columbia lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the program's debut flight. Apollo veteran John Young and rookie Bob Crippen are aboard for the 54.5-hour trial run. It was the first U.S. manned spaceflight since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking.

November 11 1982 - After four test flights, NASA deems the shuttle an operational vehicle and doubles the crew size to four, including the first non-pilot astronaut, physicist Joe Allen. On its fifth flight, Columbia carries two satellites into orbit.

April 7, 1983 - Astronauts Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson conduct the shuttle program's first spacewalk. Since then, shuttle astronauts have ventured out into open space another 161 times.

June 18, 1983 - Challenger launches on NASA's seventh shuttle mission with a five-person crew that includes Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. The next flight in August includes the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford.

January 25, 1984 - President Reagan's State of the Union address directs NASA to start working on a space station. The project, named Freedom, would fulfill the original post-Apollo U.S. goal to have a space transportation system and a space station in orbit.

April 11, 1984 - Spacewalking astronauts repair the Solar Maximum Mission satellite, the first in-orbit satellite servicing.

April 12, 1985 - Convinced the shuttle is safe enough for non-professional astronauts to fly, NASA launches shuttle Discovery on the program's 16th flight with Republican Senator Jake Garn embedded with the crew. A Saudi prince flies in June, and then-U.S. Representative Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who later became a senator, flew in January 1986.

January 28, 1986 - Six astronauts and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe are killed after a seal ruptures on one of the booster rockets carrying shuttle Challenger off the launch pad. Investigators cited poor management as a contributing cause of the accident.

September 29, 1988 - A sobered and more safety-conscious NASA returns the shuttle fleet to flight. Commercial satellites are booted off the manifest. The military, concerned about climbing program costs and flight delays even before the accident, ramps up expendable launch vehicle production lines.

May 4, 1989 - The backlog of satellites awaiting launch after the Challenger accident includes science probes headed beyond Earth. Magellan, a Venus radar mapper, is the first shuttle-launched planetary spacecraft.

April 24, 1990 - After years of delay, the Hubble Space Telescope is carried into orbit aboard shuttle Discovery. Two months later, NASA finds out it has a flawed primary mirror. The telescope is repaired by spacewalking astronauts in December 1993, the first of five service calls.

May 7, 1992 - Endeavour, the replacement shuttle for Challenger, lifts off on mission to retrieve and relaunch a stranded communications satellite. The tools fail to work and the astronauts hatch a new plan for an unprecedented three-man spacewalk to grab the spacecraft with their gloved hands that ultimately proves successful.

September 12, 1992 - The first married couple, Jan Davis and Mark Lee, fly together in space, along with the first Japanese astronaut and the first African-American woman. NASA has a rule about couples flying together, but Davis and Lee married after they were assigned to the crew.

December 2, 1992 - Discovery launches on the 10th and final mission for the U.S. military, a premature and ironic parting since the shuttle's design was dictated by Air Force cargo requirements.

February 3, 1994 - The fall of the Soviet Union reverberates in the space program. The United States and Russia begin an astronaut-cosmonaut exchange program with the launch of Sergei Krikalev on the shuttle.

March 14, 1995 - NASA astronaut Norm Thagard becomes the first American to fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket. Thagard joins the Russian Mir space station crew for a four-month mission.

June 29, 1995 - For the first time, the space shuttle docks at a space station, though not the one originally expected. Atlantis parks at Mir for the first U.S.-Russian joint space mission, a harbinger of the International Space Station partnership to come.

July 13, 1995 - Shuttle Discovery launches on the 70th shuttle flight after a lengthy delay for fuel tank repairs. Nesting woodpeckers had drilled about 200 holes into the fuel tank's foam insulation over the Memorial Day weekend.

October 29, 1998 - Mercury astronaut John Glenn, the first American in orbit, successfully lobbies for a second spaceflight. The former senator was 77 when he returned to space, the oldest person to ever fly.

December 4, 1998 - The shuttle finally begins work on its original mission of building a space station. Endeavour launches with the Unity connecting node, which is attached to the Russian base module already in orbit.

October 31, 2000 - NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko launch aboard a Soyuz capsule to the fledging space station, becoming the first resident crew.

February 1, 2003 - Shuttle Columbia breaks apart as it glides through the atmosphere for landing, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The shuttle was returning from a 16-day research mission. The crew included Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon. The shuttle's heat shield failed due to damage from a debris impact during launch.

January 14, 2004 - President George W. Bush releases his vision for space exploration, which redirects the human space program to the moon and destinations beyond Earth. It calls for the shuttle's retirement upon completion of the space station.

May 10, 2004 - NASA announces its new class of astronauts, which, for the first time, includes teachers.

August 8, 2007 - Barbara Morgan, who originally trained as backup Teacher-in-Space to Challenger's Christa McAuliffe, launches with the shuttle Endeavour crew on a space station assembly mission. Morgan was admitted into the astronaut corps in 1998. She left the agency a year later.

February 24, 2011 - Shuttle Discovery launches on its 39th and final flight with the last U.S. module for the space station. The shuttle is promised to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.

May 16, 2011 - Shuttle Endeavour launches on its 25th and final flight with the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector. The shuttle is promised to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

July 8, 2011 - Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch on the 135th and final flight in the 30-year-old program, a 12-day cargo run to the space station. The shuttle will be staying at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, becoming a permanent exhibit at the Visitors Center.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Tom Brown and Eric Walsh)

[The Troll]

  My little red headed kumquat you were wrong.  You got to be careful when you contradict the Troll on science and space.  But I do wish you were a little smarter.   

[me]

  My little red headed kumquat you were wrong.  You got to be careful when you contradict the Troll on science and space.  But I do wish you were a little smarter.   

Bush didn't entirely abandon it he redirected it Obama just completely abandoned it. 

[The Troll]

Bush didn't entirely abandon it he redirected it Obama just completely abandoned it.

  Give it a break, Sugar Plum.   

[The Troll]

  Do the Tea/Republican Party have another cowboy.        

  Old Mormon Mitt Romney says, speaking of Iran says, "If they don't have an atom bomb.  They sure aren't going to get one when I'm president".

  What's he going to do?  A little Shock and Awe!  Is he going to bomb them and start another war in the Middle East.     The party of WAR!

[Palehorse]

Washington (CNN) -- As expected, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of the sweeping health care reform law championed by President Barack Obama.
The justices made their announcement in a brief order issued Monday.. . .

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/14/politics/health-care/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Anyone doubt the way the SCOTUS is going to rule on this question? I don't.

The bastards have already proven they are in the hip pocket of major corporate Amerika! 
Bar the doors. The Repugnicans are going to roll out the propaganda machine full boar, and are busy trying to invoke biblical acts in order to resurrect this rotting dead corpse of an issue! 

[The Troll]

  As I see it, the court rules 5 to 4 in favor of the Republicans.   

[damfast]

Why would anyone agree with forcing citizens to buy health care?  I know a person who has had health insurance for years and years. Last year she lost her job, she went to work making a third of her former salary, her husband has insurance through medicare (he truly is very ill).  She has to use EVERY dime she gets to just keep ahead of the wolves.  If she had to pay insurance, she would have to decide to not pay something else, like his copay for meds, or her electric.  She cant be the only person in that situation.  She cant get state funded insurance because she isnt old enough and she has no children at home.  She has 15 years paying on her house, they have one car, and no credit cards now.  There have to be others like them. What would they do? And she is a worker worker worker girl, but had to take what she could get as far as employment.  Would people like her get help? If she gets sick, she is in real trouble.

[Exterminator]

Old Mormon Mitt Romney says, speaking of Iran says, "If they don't have an atom bomb.  They sure aren't going to get one when I'm president".

What's he going to do?  A little Shock and Awe!  Is he going to bomb them and start another war in the Middle East.

Probably; the Republican response is always costly and rarely effective. There are better, smarter ways to prevent countries like Iran form developing nuclear weapons.

[Henry Hawk]

Probably; the Republican response is always costly and rarely effective. There are better, smarter ways to prevent countries like Iran form developing nuclear weapons.

you mean the program that was initiated by the Bush administration?  at least that is according to YOUR source.

[The Troll]

Why would anyone agree with forcing citizens to buy health care?  I know a person who has had health insurance for years and years. Last year she lost her job, she went to work making a third of her former salary, her husband has insurance through medicare (he truly is very ill).  She has to use EVERY dime she gets to just keep ahead of the wolves.  If she had to pay insurance, she would have to decide to not pay something else, like his copay for meds, or her electric.  She cant be the only person in that situation.  She cant get state funded insurance because she isnt old enough and she has no children at home.  She has 15 years paying on her house, they have one car, and no credit cards now.  There have to be others like them. What would they do? And she is a worker worker worker girl, but had to take what she could get as far as employment.  Would people like her get help? If she gets sick, she is in real trouble.

  I myself would like to see a health plan like medicare.  But like all insurance the larger the pool the cheaper the insurance cost would be.  What would be nice is make the health a nonprofit program.  One dollar paid in profit is one dollar less in health care.

  I think if you read the ObamaCare as the Republican like to call it.  Which is really RomneyCare.  I think you will see that she wouldn't have to pay it if she didn't have enough income to pay it.

  It's a start to health care for everyone, but we will see how the Republicans screw it up.  Don't pull a Hawk on us, you like me don't have to worry about yet.  Nothing is printed in stone on it yet. 

[Bo D]

The health care mandate was a Republican idea. But when Democrats embraced it, suddenly the Republicans were against it.

[Exterminator]

you mean the program that was initiated by the Bush administration?  at least that is according to YOUR source.

Yes, "and accelerated by the Obama administration," and actually put into use.  Sort of like that whole Osama Bin Laden thing: Bush started the hunt; Obama brought it to fruition.

[Exterminator]

The health care mandate was a Republican idea. But when Democrats embraced it, suddenly the Republicans were against it.

According to a poll released yesterday, the majority of Americans now support it as well.

If the Supreme Court rules as unconstitutional forcing people to have health insurance, does tha mean they can't force us to buy car insurance either?

[me]

According to a poll released yesterday, the majority of Americans now support it as well.

If the Supreme Court rules as unconstitutional forcing people to have health insurance, does tha mean they can't force us to buy car insurance either?

Apples to oranges dude.