The final landing of Space Shuttle Discovery at the Kennedy Space Center. OV-103 has flown over 365 days in space in total. This final landing took place on March 9th, 2011 concluding the success mission of STS-133.
"Discovery now dropping 212 feet per second." Thats a descent rate of 12,720 feet per minute. I'm an airline pilot. To put that rate in perspective if I had to do an emergency descent with the thrust levers at idle, the speed brakes at full, and the gear down I could MAYBE do 4,000 feet per minute. Flying brick indeed!
And only the USA was able to pull it off. Not Russia, Japan, India or China. The USA had a lot of might back then. Now we are a nation of beta male simps.
Ever been there? I went yesterday and and it was incredible. These space shuttles are incredibly large. They also had the Enola Gay and a Concord there. Tons of ww2 aircraft that saw service and they even had FedEx's first rapid-delivery aircraft lol
I think that one was of the best landing any Space Shuttle have ever had ... so smooth and perfect, very experienced pilot! A Perfect Final Landing .... :(
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@@_S.H_ Well, for a spaceship with no prop, high approach speed, and a thing not really designed to fly pretty well in atmoshpere...i guess it's a smooth landing.
@@Mr-Patate87 better than any Ryanair landing. Not peeeerfect technically because two main wheels have to touche the ground simultaneously. So I give a 9.8.
@@_S.H_ all pilots make the back wheels of the gear land first, landing on one side first may have been cross wind. 10/10 for pilot 9/10 for weather, 10/10 pilot handling, 10/10 pilot control so i guess almost perfect
That landing was amazing if you understand what's involved. I loved the Shuttle program and followed many, many flights on NASA TV, from launch to recovery. To see a huge, extremely capable spacecraft land like an airplane was always a thrill. I'll miss that.
The Space Shuttle Discovery will be remember forever at Cape Canaveral Kennedy Space Center and as we say goodbye to the Space Shuttle Discovery for the final time Thank you very much for sharing this video with me and my family. And most of all thank you very much for your support to the Space Shuttle Discovery at Cape Canaveral Kennedy Space Center in Florida, congratulations .😀🚀🇺🇸🇺🇸
ssaulsserrato1, The space shuttle program has been cancelled, and each orbiter remaining in the fleet (Endeavour, Atlantis, and Discovery) each made one final flight. This was the last landing of Discovery before she was shipped off to a museum. STS-135 was the final shuttle mission. Hope that helps. :) Robert
Dino Studios bruh because it is look it up. They use computers to land airplanes now as well. Why do you think the landings are so smooth and precise. Computers
Trombone Kid No they don’t. The shuttle had autoland capabilities but it was only used once to test it and resulted in many problems and the commander took over.
Dino Studios That was the case in the early stages of shuttles, but it became way safer for a computer to land it. Even on airplanes today, the pilots have little control of the landing, they can override, but it’s very rare
@Astrobrant2 The announcer is inside, the camera tracking the orbiter is outside. The orbiter is a few miles away when it's supersonic. It slows to subsonic before getting close, but the pressure wave carries on until it's dissipated beyond the landing site.
@karjens41 A lot of manufacturers for components of the orbiters were no longer in business a short time after Endeavour was built, and she was built from a lot of spare parts, simply to replace Challenger. It costs 2 billion dollars to make an orbiter. There are some components, like the Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessels whose manufacturer no longer exists, thereby making the warranty expire after 10 years. Atlantis is literally a ticking time bomb on the pad the last 4 days before a flight.
@delorien06 This was only the last flight for Discovery. There are still two more shuttle flights. One on April 19, one on June 28. That's the last one, STS-135.
@aimhigh59 The avionics and computers are from the VERY early 80's. Pretty much every cell phone in the US has more computing capability than the shuttle does. Biggest reason; heat is hard to dissipate in space. That's why the shuttle orbiter's radiator panels are so massive (they line the inside of the payload bay doors)
Same here. I love Discovery. My friend is going to the Smithsonian Museum in a couple days and I asked her to take a picture of Discovery for me if she goes to the Air and Space part of it.
@theuserofmynameisme The commander is the one who actually flies the landing. While the shuttle is in the HAC (Heading Allignment Cone) the pilot takes over for a bit to get a little stick time flying the orbiter. This is customary on every shuttle mission. Then the Commander will take back over to actually fly the final approach and landing.
@Unstung They aren't certified for that 100 flights. They were EXPECTED to be certified for 100 flights when they were originally planned. They were also expected to have a turn-around time of a maximum two weeks too. 1986 had 14 flights planned for that year and everyone from the engineers and technicians knew that was impossible due to the lack of funding (and manpower). Challenger was the second of those 14 expected. It was a matter of time in 1986 before something catastrophic happened.
@GlenStorageCenter Spelling isn't your strong suit and you can't "send" a space shuttle orbiter to Libya as it would be completely useless there (the OMS doesn't work below 70,000 ft and the main engines need the external tank to operate because that's the only tank used for the SSME propellant), and it's also incredibly expensive to bring back to the states.
@oomblikkies I was talking about from the ground. I think I know why now. I think the announcer was where the camera was since you could tell he was outside, and that appeared to be over 30 miles before the cape. I wondered why he said "about to go sub-sonic" when the speed was already down to 654 mph. I suspect it was because he hadn't heard the sonic booms yet, but it probably took two minutes or more for the shock wave to get there.
They had a fighter flying combat air patrol after 9/11 for awhile and that went away. They really never had fighter escort during landing. Those planes were for video and observation. A weather plane has been there for every landing though.
If the Shuttle vehicles had to replaced, it should've been by something better, faster, higher, more reliable, cheaper. If they're people willing to risk spaceflight, I want a vehicle waiting for them to man it.......
@spacevidcast but we should keep in mind that President Obama cancelled the Project Constellation, which was supposed to continue the space exploration after shuttles' retirement.
at 7:31 check out the left hand side of screen i thought it might be birds i zoomed in on my mac, are they birds? or have i seen my first ufo i'm sure there is a simple explanation
My big problem with Constellation is the approach using Shuttle parts. It seems to more about jobs that progress. We use to feel we had to do everything in one or two launch's like Skylab. But, later we found we can assemble something better with several launches like ISS. We can go to the moon the same by assembling parts using Falcon9. If it takes 10 Falcon9 launches to assemble a moon / mars system it would still be safer and cost less than a single Ares1 rocket.
A bit nitpicking... STS-133 ist the name of the mission. Each mission has only one landing. Using the word last does not make much sense. But, STS-133 ist the last mission of Discovery. An appropriate title would have been: "Discovery lands for the last time at KSC at the end of STS-133"
+ech4949 the orbiter has no fuel left for the main engines when it comes from space. These are the only ones with (theoretically) enough power for a go-around. All other engines are just for maneuvering. Even if there was fuel left, the wings will probably not provide enough lift to much more than a controlled decent from space.
ech4949 The Shuttles on re-entry, as a wise man once said, "flew like a brick and fell like a rock". Those wings gave it balance and such, but precious little in the way of lift. Basically, from the moment of the de-orbit burn, the shuttle was absolutely *committed* to landing at KSC. (Or Edwards, although that required a de-orbit burn at a different place in orbit.) There were no do-overs, go-arounds, or anything else. Launch had a few options - the RTLS abort, the trans-atlantic abort, even an abort-to-orbit - all dependent on the problem and when in the launch it occurred. Re-entry was done by unpowered glide, with jets for control, and it got *one* shot at the runway. Either the Shuttle would land - or it would crashland. (Or, if it had been damaged by a foam strike at launch, disintegrate on the way down.)
Burt Rutan is a respected engineer who has made significant contribution to the science of aeronautics, he certainly is not an engineer wannabe that publish crappy comments about fellow members of the aeronautical community.
Actually, you're wrong. STS-135 was originally a LON mission that was converted into a regular mission after it was no longer needed. And the replacement program was Project Constellation that was going to use the Orion spacecraft as its backbone whose booster, the Ares I, had its only test flight in 2009 before Obama killed Project Constellation. The Orion Spacecraft will still be developed but just for LEO operations. Trust me, I know my spaceflight history and I've done my research.
Oh I think you misunderstood my intent. Sorry if you did. All I am saying is that Burt Rutan or those like him are the way this will continue. I would guess that the person you were first debating with has no idea of this. Peace.
@Beergut222 Well, lets be fair. The Space Shuttle Program was cancelled by President George W Bush back in 2005, which would be Republicans. Obama and the Democrats opted to not reverse that decision. So both parties canceled the shuttle, not just one. Also note that the shuttles were built in the 80's, and in my opinion it is time to move past LEO which the shuttles can't do. This isn't the end, this is just the beginning of something new!
@karjens41 Some of the Spacevidcasters don't feel the administrator is capable of making the right decisions to get us back to the moon without help from others. The engineers are certainly capable of making it happen if they got the funding Apollo did.
