Space Shuttle Discovery

I was so looking forward to seeing this. I live not far from Dayton, OH, and EVERYONE around here thought the USAF Museum would get one of the shuttles. I told my Boss when I found out that NASA was going donate the shuttles that when the shuttle flew into the Wright-Pat that I was taking that day off.

Guess that's one more vacation day I'll have now.
(sigh)
 
Those NASA guys have some interesting instructions:

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I'm just curious. How many people will panic when it flies by? How many 911 calls will there be?
If you're in the area, grab your camera. I'd love to be there personally but I'll live vicariously through your pictures.
 
The transporter is up but neither N number (I suspect they're using 911NA but neither that nor 905NA show up in Flight Aware).
 
Woo-hoo - just saw the shuttle out my office window flying around DC. Didn't get my iphone camera working in time, so sharing some friends pix (if you are in the DC area your facebook wall is about two pages of shuttle pix)

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That is a KICK ASS closeup.

We are roughly 7 miles from Dulles, so mine are not even remotely that good. We had a good view though, being on the top floor.
 
So sad. She flew only 39 times in space before the plug was pulled. (Each shuttle was designed to fly 100 times.)

The end of an era...
 
Yeah, but that was under the pre-Challenger 12 missions a year schedule and before the ninth month post-Challenger and 2 1/2 year post-Columbia stand downs.
 
The owner of our company got an invite from the Udvar-Hazy Center so I got to fly him and some family and freinds up to DC in the Pilatus. We arrived in the parking lot 5 minutes before the first low pass. After it flew around the city for a while they came back for another low pass and then the landing. By this time, we had wrangled some additional VIP passes and were up in the observation tower. What and awesome sight!

We walked around the museum for a few hours, (my third time, but always impressive), had some lunch, and then piled back into the PC12 for the trip home.

Not a bad day at work.:D:D:D

Here's is one from my phone, Ill put a couple others up later.
 

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Collections will clean it up. Enterprise was pretty filthy after they took it out of he hangar it had been stored in for nearly twenty years prior to the museum opening.
 
flyingron said:
The transporter is up but neither N number (I suspect they're using 911NA but neither that nor 905NA show up in Flight Aware).
Click to expand...

All of the orbiter ferry flights will be with NASA905 now; 911 was retired a month or two ago. 905 doesn't have much life left in her, either, unfortunately...
 
flyingron said:
Collections will clean it up. Enterprise was pretty filthy after they took it out of he hangar it had been stored in for nearly twenty years prior to the museum opening.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about that. With Enterprise, you're talking about dust and grime; Discovery's grunge comes from hurtling through the atmosphere 39 times. The scars we're seeing are carbonized tiles and charred insulating blankets, not dirt. Even if they wanted to, how much could NASM do to repair that?

I still think of Discovery as the standard-bearer of the program... to the point I was actually angry when NASA shuffled the schedule and it wasn't the last orbiter to fly. Discovery did the most, and served as the proverbial Phoenix following the Challenger and Columbia losses. I strongly feel she's earned the right to wear her "battle scars" with pride.
 
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When I was there yesterday I heard someone say that they wanted it space flown condition and it is going immediatly into the spot where Enterprise was so it will be on display Friday morning.
 
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