Shuttle launch...

[Beanz]

Will it all go wrong again?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5146866.stm

Shuttle Discovery races skyward

The Discovery orbiter has blasted away from the Kennedy Space Center - on a hot and sunny US Independence Day.

The shuttle left its Florida launch pad right on schedule at 1438 EDT (1838 GMT) and roared skywards to the cheers of spectators.

The vehicle's mission will take it to the International Space Station (ISS).

The shuttle flight is the first of 2006 and only the second since the catastrophic loss of the Columbia orbiter three years ago.

Tuesday's successful lift-off followed a frustrating weekend when stormy weather over Kennedy had scrubbed two attempted getaways.

When a small breakage was then found in the insulating foam of the shuttle's external fuel tank on Monday, there was concern that a further delay would be ordered.

But US space agency (Nasa) officials said the defect posed no risk to the vehicle and cleared Discovery to go for launch.

[Platinum]

Lets hope not, the sooner theres regular flights into space the better imo

[Horus00]

Watched it on Nasa TV live, absolutley fantastic! would love to watch a launch at Kennedy someday! Perfect launch apart from a small instrument glich about 7 mins into the flight, nothing major they said

[Bobster]

wooosh!

[Horus00]

Hello new desktop

[Cannon Gray]

NASA closed the shuttle program in the summer of 2011. Ultimately, the legendary ships were deemed too expensive and dangerous to operate. One shuttle mission cost the US budget $ 450 million, while astronaut flights on Russian Soyuz missions cost $ 56 million per seat. So after all those disasters, it took them almost 10 years to realize that the shuttles were dangerous?