PhotoBlog - shuttle

Jul

2011

5:48pm, EDT

Courtesy of Chris Bray

At left, 13-year-old Chris Bray scans the crowd witnessing the first space shuttle launch on April 12, 1981, while his 39-year-old father, Kenneth, looks through binoculars. At right, Chris and Kenneth strike a similar pose at the last shuttle launch on July 8, 2011.

Father and son at shuttle's start and end

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

They’re just a father and his son, out taking pictures at a shuttle launch. But these pictures reflect 30 years of history. On the left, Chris Bray and his father, Kenneth, stand out in the crowd that gathered to watch the first space shuttle lift off on April 12, 1981. Thirty years later, Chris and Kenneth commemorated the last shuttle launch by striking the same pose. The then-and-now photos have become an Internet sensation.

As of today, the pictures have been viewed almost 700,000 times on Chris Bray's Flickr photo gallery — and that doesn't count the additional traffic to Yahoo and The Washington Post (or, ahem, to this posting).

The Brays went to Kennedy Space Center in 1981 because Kenneth, then a 39-year-old jewelry designer, was commissioned to create a series of pins for the first shuttle mission. He brought 13-year-old Chris along to share the experience. Chris' mother, Ginny, took the father-and-son picture.

When the Brays heard about the final shuttle launch, they saw it as a golden opportunity to mark 30 years for the NASA space program as well as their own lives. Chris is now 43, and works for an interactive marketing agency in New York. Kenneth, 69, is still working as well. They put their names in for a lottery to purchase tickets to view the July 8 launch from the Astronaut Hall of Fame's grounds near the space center. The Brays won a place at the party, and despite flight delays and a rental-car snafu, they made it to the spot in plenty of time to re-create the 1981 pose. This time the photographer was Chris' girlfriend, Chelsea.

Chris calls it "the picture we waited 30 years to complete."

I asked Chris a couple of questions about then and now via email:

Q: It sounds as if you have shared space experiences. Any other special memories? How many launches have you seen?

A: These were the only two launches we attended. Other "space memories" involve building model rockets together, and astronomy ... watching solar eclipses with a pinhole box, getting up at 2 a.m. to go look at Saturn and Jupiter. Those types of things.

Q: Can you cast your mind back to what you were thinking when the 1981 picture was taken, and what you were thinking last week?

A: I remember being excited and anxious at the first launch. I had never seen an actual launch, and I had some memories of watching the later Apollo flights on TV, so this was a thrill. The most vivid memory of the first launch was the sound. Last week, I remember turning to my girlfriend and saying, "I feel like I'm 13 again."

If you're 40-something or older, these pictures are likely to spark reflections about how times have changed over the past three decades, for the space program, for society and for your own lives. Please feel free to share your reflections — even if you weren't around when the first shuttle flew.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Update: Watch the Bray's interview with Ann Curry on TODAY, July 21, 2011.

Shuttle fueled up for last launch amid iffy weather

msnbc.com's Alan Boyle reports from CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.:

Despite the looming threat of stormy weather, NASA fueled up Atlantis on Friday for the final launch of the 30-year space shuttle program.

The three-hour process of filling the shuttle's external fuel tank was completed just before 5 a.m. ET, marking the day's first step toward the last liftoff at 11:26 a.m. ET. After this resupply flight to the International Space Station, NASA is due to prepare Atlantis for museum display, as it is already doing with the fleet's other two spaceships, Discovery and Endeavour.

No technical issues stood in the way of Friday's scheduled liftoff, but it was by no means a sure thing. Forecasters put the chances of acceptable weather for launch at 30 percent, after a day that saw lightning and torrents of rain. Continue reading.

See the ultimate space shot in 3-D

Roberto Beltramini / Space 3D

A 3-D view created from NASA imagery shows the space shuttle Endeavour docked to the International Space Station during that shuttle's last mission in May.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

How can you possibly improve upon the ultimate pictures of the space shuttle and the International Space Station together in orbit? By turning them into 3-D photos, of course.

That's what Italian amateur astronomer Roberto Beltramini did with the imagery captured in May by his countryman, astronaut Paolo Nespoli. The "ultimate" opportunity presented itself when Nespoli and two other spacefliers were leaving the space station to come back home during the shuttle Endeavour's final orbital tour. Nespoli shot high-definition stills and video from the departing Soyuz spacecraft, and the fruits of his labors were made public last month.

Beltramini took pairs of slightly offset images and tweaked them to produce these stereo views, displayed on his Space 3D gallery and republished with permission.

Roberto Beltramini / Space 3D

In this view, you can make out Endeavour's robotic arm curling around the shuttle. Red-blue glasses are required for the 3-D effect.

Roberto Beltramini / Space 3D

A different perspective shows Endeavour's rear end, head-on.

These are perspectives we'll never see again — not even during Atlantis' program-ending visit to the space station this month. It was a scheduling fluke that a Soyuz craft happened to be leaving the station while Endeavour was docked, and the circumstance is virtually certain not to be repeated.

We just might see Atlantis and the station linked together from a different perspective, however. Photographers such as France's Thierry Legault are getting better and better at snapping amazing pictures of the station-shuttle complex from Earth, and during Atlantis' mission, you'll want to check Legault's website as well as Patrick Vantuyne's 3-D photo gallery.

Update for 9:40 p.m. ET: You'll need red-blue glasses to get the full 3-D effect from the pictures offered by Beltramini and Vantuyne. I'm in the process of sending out 3-D specs to at least a dozen (and probably more) members of the Cosmic Log Facebook community as part of our occasional "3-D Giveaway" program. To join the community, all you have to do is click the "Like" button on the Facebook page. The glasses are being provided courtesy of Microsoft Research. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.) If you're one of today's winners, congrats: I'll start sending out the glasses after Atlantis lifts off.

More 3-D views from space:

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.