The ISS, Tristan. The International Space Station. A lot of building, a lot of maintenance, but not a lot of excitement. 'Round and around and around and around and around. Some folks might say there's good science in what science that does get done, but I guess if you aren't planting a flag, it's hard to notice. Then again, just being able to build an enormous structure like that is instructive, as is maintaining it's systems. It might not be going anywhere exciting, but if it does nothing else, it teaches us how to build systems reliable enough to survive the years long missions it will take to get to any of the planets using current propulsion technology. The politics and cost of the thing...whoa, subject for a long, aggravating debate. 8)

Ah okay thank you!

You can get the data to make good orbit predictions. An easy place to get it is Heavens-Above Home Page They don't update often enough to make a shot like this one, but that site is plenty good for you to go outside and find ten or more satellites most every night. It is always right on in my experience.

That is really an amazing shot. I'm sure there was a good proportion of luck in getting it. Now I want to see the same with the moon.

That would look pretty doggone cool too!!

The shuttle never really lived up to the program's goals, and as a result, NASA lost a lot of funding... just look at the success of the Apollo program, and compare what we've done in the last 40 years... not much.

Yeah, we sorta just dipped our big toe into the ocean, felt that the water was cold, then decided to take a shower instead. (It's a really bad analogy I know! :P)

The real problem is the cost. The shuttle was supposed to be less expensive than the expendable rockets that it replaced. It was not the case. The incremental cost is about 60 million, but if you take the total cost and divide by the number of missions it's about 1.3 billion per launch. Way too much.

Now we are parking the shuttles and we were going to replace it with a supposedly cheaper expendable system. Ya right. That system was canceled because it's projected costs were way higher than the shuttle. Hopefully some private company can save us from the expense insanity. Hey SpaceX should be launching the Falcon 9 in just a few days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I remember some smart bloke had the idea of a "sky lift", basically a very, very long lift into space. Despite the monumental costs of building it, in the long-term it could prove to be cheap method of getting into orbit quickly, plus it makes commercial space travel a lot eaier.

Yep, they've been around in fiction for a long time. The main problem is at the moment, we don't have advanced enough materials to build one. Carbon nanotubes are the answer, but they're not practical yet.

Ah, the Space Elevator. Basically a 22,000 mile long lift to geosynchronous orbit. A long set of cables and way stations with a counterweight at the end that balances the mass right at orbital height - the height at which one revolution around Earth is equal to 24 hours, and so the whole enchilada basically stays in place. If you can overcome the stresses, the cost, the stability issues, and the environmental concerns, it might work. But in my opinion it's as likely as Star Trek's warp drive and transporter. And if you really want to be afraid, very afraid, Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" is a great read. There's a space elevator in that work of fiction too....and his depiction of what would happen if one of those babies came down is glorious in it's grand level of catastrophe.

Just found another pic like Taw Makto's one in the first post. This time it's the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/static.../potw1005a.jpg