Save the Shuttle

Now one does have to wonder, "what if?" Seeing this article makes me think. I am a bit puzzled here. The idea is to scrub an entire fleet of operational Space Shuttles to replace them with one operational unit known as Ares. Now mind you the Ares will be returned to Earth with all life depending on an operational parachute. I am quite surprised it never happened on an Apollo mission, fortunate I would say. Parachutes being man made objects, you will have failures from time to time. Novel idea here, launch the space craft and upon return to earth, have a shuttle waiting astronauts board the shuttle and land on earth, leaving the old spacecraft, Ares, to orbit and be used on the next mission already in orbit. Use the shuttle again to have the ship serviced in orbit loaded and off she goes, why doesn't NASA think about these things? Seems it would save money too. 

STS 125 almost ready to head home

Finishing up the repair on Hubble

How cool is this?

How cool is this? Just floating out in space, weight problem? what do you mean? I don't weigh anything out here.

Hubble

I always did wonder what the Hubble Telescope looked like. "My Minds eye" was sorta this, but I needed concrete fact. Well here it is. Pretty awesome stuff, a telescope that can see nebula and galaxies with in a hands reach. Atlantis is there now to re place and repair gyroscopes and other devices worn out and not working to plan.