NZFF

My good Friend Don Harris of Michigan USA sent me this link

Mindblowing time-lapse video created from thousands of individual frames, photographers condense 6 weeks of painstaking work into 3 mins, 52 secs, as action starts in the Orbiter Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center , where Discovery has been outfitted for its STS-131 mission. Then onto the Vehicle Assembly Building, then the Mobile Launcher Platform, and finally the launch.

http://www.airspacemag.com/multimedia/vide...For-Launch.html

Very cool Ian thanks to your mate and the guys who made this vid ,really shows a different side to things ,love the hoisting of the ship ..

Its picked up like a toy ... the 'VAB' known to be the only build in the world were cloud form in it

Great stuff ..thanks for the link

All the sorta off stuff you see out off the puppet TV series THUNDERBIRDS .. that yellow transporter i have no details about but the crawler , the large tracked 'Tank' , max speed 2 mph , 1 with the shuttle on top ... from the VAB to the pad 7 miles .. fuel consumption 26 gallons per foot .. huweee no wonder the Space program is so draining and expensive .

Great post, Ian.

I can remember the X-24B proving the concept in 1973...
Some of us have lived through this entire epoch in space flight, a mind boggling programme, USD170 billion.
"The most complicated machine ever built...", and when it does go wrong, it's a simple thermal tile.
I'll never forget the feeling when Challenger rose and exploded in those twin smoke plumes, a real reminder that this was not really like catching a bus downtown.
Sobering too, that a third of the fleet did not survive.

But a gigantic feat of engineering and project management.
I hope we get a glimpse of the last two Shuttle/ISS dockings - you can see the two vehicles quite easily on a clear night, motoring across the sky.