Space Shuttle Discovery – Final Days at NASA

9 responses to “Space Shuttle Discovery – Final Days at NASA”

1. 

   Steffe

   Apr 13, 2012 at 3:48 pm

   That’s a story in itself, about the biggest door in the world.

   Reply
2. 

   Minnesota’s Ryan

   Apr 13, 2012 at 5:03 pm

   So then, please tell us, how did you get access? I tried and there is "no public access" for viewing.

   Reply
3. 

   ukweli

   Apr 13, 2012 at 5:23 pm

   Whoa. I didn’t know that was how they moved it.

   

   Reply
4. 

   jurvetson

   Apr 13, 2012 at 6:12 pm

   Yes. and the rear fairing is already mounted on Discovery at KSC:

   

   In your photo, you see NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). They are loading Discovery atop it, and then they will fly approximately 1,500 feet above the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area on this coming Tuesday, April 17th.

   [http://www.flickr.com/photos/rleephotos2010] – for a limited time, there are public tours of the VAB, but you won’t be able to walk up to the shuttle like we did, and certainly not crawl throughout the flight deck and payload bay of Endeavour. We got this amazing access thanks to a friend, David Knight, who has been doing 3D video filming of the Shuttle for a documentary. He could only bring two people with him, Haley Jackson (a 3D videographer from James Cameron’s posse, and a cool science adventurer) and little old me. My job was to take 360° HDR panoramas of each of the areas of the Shuttle. I took over 1000 shots! They are now being stitched together into an immersive VR experience by EveryScape. I will be giving all this to the California Science Center in Los Angeles (and I hop stop have it hosted somewhere online as well for all to see). Nobody else had captured this perspective of Endeavour while it was powered up, and it won’t be possible for any of the shuttles when they leave KSC. The infrastructure to bring it up will be lost forever.

   I just posted some more photos of Discovery.

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5. 

   solerena

   Apr 13, 2012 at 9:29 pm

   Wow!

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6. 

   msamaclean ©

   Apr 14, 2012 at 1:16 am

   Whoa…I’d like to be in D.C. when this baby flies over! (and I thought the Pres’s helicopter was loud!).
   Great video of the Assembly Bldg.

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7. 

   BillS49

   Apr 14, 2012 at 5:30 am

   What a wonderful once in a lifetime opportunity to tour the shuttles.

   Reply
8. 

   emperley3

   Apr 18, 2012 at 2:12 pm

   Great photos, thanks for sharing. Found these gigapans of Discovery cockpit here:

   news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120416-nasa-spac…

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9. 

   jurvetson

   Apr 28, 2012 at 12:52 am

   Nice. EveryScape has finished the stitching of my fisheye shots into a virtual tour. Before you start, remember to click the full screen button in the bottom right corner of the main image. Then you can click on the image and drag to look up down and all around. OK here is the VR version of this room.

   And here’s a flickr post showing what the input images looked like for the flight deck and links to the other areas.

   Reply