Warbird Information Exchange

Yup, the nozzles are salvaged from older engines, refurbished and attached to specially made mounts. The general public won't be able to tell that they are fakes...

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/ ... l-journey/

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

great, once again thanks for the info. any was to find out the history of the nozzles?

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You can't see me!!

Excellent links guys! I have a quetion though, why were the Oms pods gutted before refitting??

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Cheers,
Peter

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Probably reactant hazmat. The shuttles have been called "Mach 25 Capable SuperFund Sites" for good reason. The processes necessary to "clean" the internals would make reconstruction cost-ineffective.

There was an article posted on an earlier thread where Valerie Neal (NASM's Space Curator) expressed extreme displeasure at what NASM is getting. They wanted a complete orbiter, not a shell outfitted with a bunch of replica equipment.

I'm sure they are tracked by serial number but I don't have that info...yet.

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

Discovery will be the most "complete" Orbiter. Atlantis and Endeavour will have a lot of internal components removed for "study", and to lighten the Shuttles because they will be displayed in "extreme" angles. There's been a lot of discussion about doing this to these historical vehicles. Would you "gut" The Spirit of St. Louis...? I'd like to see them all preserved as they last flew, cleaned of hazmat...main engines and all...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

This is really interesting. There was a last ditch, behind the scenes effort to keep operating Endeavor and Atlantis privately as Commercial vehicles. This was to be completely separate from any Gov funding, and they already secured $2B in funding. Unfortunately the deal fell through but the group is looking to develop a Shuttle 2.0 that will duplicate the originals capabilities. (Unfortunately years away). Too bad it didn't go through. Then the shuttle would have been truly a "Warbird". That would have been funny.....you cut a deal behind the scenes with NASA to sell you and allow you to operate 2 SHUTTLES, but the Gov won't let you operate an F-4/F-105/A-4 without an act of Congress.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/ ... ters-ends/

"For the past several months, a plan to restart shuttle operations – funded by billions of dollars of secured non-government investment – was under evaluation with NASA and shuttle contractors prior to the secret effort ending last week. However, the group behind the effort have now switched their focus to a “Next Generation, Shuttle Capable” vehicle – with details to be announced next year.

By way of removing one of the major barriers to previous commercial proposals – government funding – members of the new team allied with potential investors both in the United States and in Europe, which proved to be the breakthrough for the new proposal to approach NASA.

“A number of potential investors were contacted, and one of those was Kevin Holleran – a businessman and investor from London, England. Kevin was sufficiently interested to enter into a process of due diligence and eventually decided he would invest in the concept. He then set about identifying individuals and organizations that would be critical to the success of the venture and the building of a credible plan."

Unfortunately, NASA got busy distributing and scrapping Shuttle support equipment as fast as they could. If they Ok'd flying Atlantis and Endeavour today...it's virtually too late.

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

"NASA Pulls Power on Shuttle Discovery For Final Time"

-will I dream, Dave?

Civilianizing the shuttles wasn't going to happen, under any circumstances. I'm sure with the players and the cash involved NASA had to give "due consideration" tho before abruptly saying "no way".

Just like other recent examples, such as Richard Branson offering to keep the Concorde flying, or Snort Snodgrass trying to keep a couple/few Tomcats in the air. IIRC the Navy even offered to take over the SR-71 program (most of the SR missions in the last couple/few years were to Navy tasking requests) - but there was no way that the USAF was going to allow the squiddies to paint "NAVY" on the side and then take it up to bust a bunch of Air Force speed records.

In fact, the military (and, by extension, NASA with the shuttles) seems to have learned the lessons of the F-14 (kept in production over Administration protests, finally killed by Dick Cheney and the tooling being quickly and completely destroyed) and the SR-71 (retired. Then brought back by Congressional mandate. Then retired again via the short-lived line item veto. Following which the flyable reserve airframes had their wing spars severed) pretty well. When you want to end a program you've got to kill it dead-dead-dead in ways that will never allow it to be resurrected.

are any of these politicians relatives of the late Canadian prime minister john Diefenbaker?? lol