The pictures you can see now, I think, shows the human race at the top of its knowledge and intelligence, even though we’re less than nothing compared to the universe as a whole. As a human being (no I’m not a pigeon), I feel pretty impressed when I view these space shuttle pics, and you feel that the Earth is fragile. Think about it. What would happen if the Earth was no longer suitable for us to live on. Where would we go? What would we do? The answer is we would die . Nice… That’s why it’s important for all of us, as human beings, to work together to allow the human race to contine its existence by protecting our frail little planet. Come on. You can’t be that selfish. Think about your kids, and your kids’ kids.

Enough Philosophy, and on with the subject! Here’s a first Space Shuttle picture:

Pretty cool huh! What I like the most is the reflection of our planet Earth in the shuttle’s cockpit. I don’t know if you imagine the size of the Space Shuttle, but I’ve seen a real scale replica of Endeavour at the European Space Center in Belgium. It is pretty big, and there was a flight simulator inside the cockpit. The arm, which carries the Astronaut to the location you see on the picture was built by Canada for the Shuttle.

What’s weird about shuttle, rockets, and pretty much any vehicle in space exploration is that they always carry the flag or name of the country who built the spacecraft in the first place. Why for? the Aliens. Of course not. Even though space agencies are forced to cooperate between themselves because of the price of space missions (It costs 25 000 $ to send 1kg of matter into geostationary orbit), they’re all really forced to compete. For instance, on the Nasa page for the Hubble Space Telescope, it says Nasa Hubble Space Telescope. On the Esa page, which contributed about 10% of the price of the project, it says Nasa/Esa Hubble Space Telescope. We Europeans are weirdos.

As for whatever the shuttle is holding to in the picture, I have no idea, but I guess it’s the International Space Station (ISS), to which most, if not all missions are dedicated today after the Columbia Crash.

Ok, now here’s the second picture:

When I was younger I always wondered what those little holes you can see pretty much anywhere on the shuttle are (on the picture, you see them on the nose). They’re actually engines to make the Shuttle move and adjust its position. They have one for nealy every direction. But they’re special engines, and they propulse gas out of one of the holes to make the shuttle move in the opposite direction. Kind of like for jets. But when they want to stop moving, they have to light the engine opposite of that one for exactly the same period of time, to counterbalance exactly the first one’s propulsion. When you apply a force on an object, it’ll continue moving in the direction that you acted on it until another force deviates the object. When you jump for example, you continue going up, but on Earth the force of gravity stops you from doing that.

These pics are wonderful.
Clement