Former Shuttle Astronaut Woody Spring spoke of his admiration for the \u201cliving\u201d Space Shuttle \u2013 but noted the 2010 retirement is the right course of action for NASA to take. <\/p>\n
Before travelling on STS-61B, Spring remembered stepping on to the launch pad, only to be greeted by a hissing and squealing Atlantis \u2013 fuelled up and ready for launch. \u201cYou go out to the pad,\u201d Spring said to The Providence Journal<\/em>, \u201cand you think, \u2018Wow, this is a live vehicle.\u2019 She\u2019s hissing and belching. It\u2019s got liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, minus 320 and minus 340. She\u2019s squealing and making noises. <\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat vehicle is alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Involved in the early days of the Space Shuttle program, Spring \u2013 a distinguished former Colonel \u2013 finally got his chance to fly into space with Atlantis, an experience he\u2019s not likely to forget. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like lions growling in the room behind you,\u201d recalled Spring, as the three Space Shuttle Main Engines fired up to full thrust. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of rumble, man. It\u2019s wonderful. It\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Then the two Solid Rocket Booster fire into life at T-0. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018bam\u2019. Like someone hit the back of your head with a sledgehammer. It almost sounds like it\u2019s a pick-up truck full of sheet metal going over railroad tracks. A lot of pieces being shook pretty hard.\u201d<\/p>\n His first time in space took a while to get used to, adding: \u201cYour stomach and inner ear are telling the brain, \u2018I\u2019m confused, what\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n Still, despite the wonders of flying with what NASA head Mike Griffin recently described as \u201cthe most amazing machine humans have ever built,\u201d Spring believes it\u2019s time for the Orbiters to be retired.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about time. Long past due,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a workhorse for a while, but we\u2019re finding out it\u2019s a lot more fragile than we thought.\u201d <\/p>\n However, Spring believes it\u2019s human destiny to go back to the Moon and on to Mars.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember talking to the astronauts who went to the Moon,\u201d said Spring, \u201cand asking if they ever gaze up and think, \u2018I was there.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cAlmost to a man they said \u2018No. Because it was more about the trip. It\u2019s about exploring new things. Doing something new.<\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s a hundred years from now or 500 years from now,\u201d he added, \u201cI think there will be colonies on the Moon and Mars.\u201d <\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Shuttle Astronaut Woody Spring spoke of his admiration for the \u201cliving\u201d Space Shuttle \u2013 but noted the 2010 retirement is the right course of action for NASA to take. Before travelling on STS-61B, Spring remembered stepping on to the launch pad, only to be greeted by a hissing and squealing Atlantis \u2013 fuelled up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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