Gabrielle Giffords Arrives For Endeavour Launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- With wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on hand to watch, the space shuttle Endeavour is poised to give the work week a roaring and historic start Monday morning, overcoming wiring problems that grounded it last month.

Giffords' arrival Sunday afternoon included a quick fly-by of Endeavour on the launch pad, ready to go.

"Gabrielle is excited for tomorrow's launch. Do you plan to see history in the making?" her staff tweeted:

NASA officials said conditions - from weather to technical issues - couldn't look much better for the scheduled 8:56 a.m. launch Monday.

Giffords, traveling on a NASA jet with the family of pilot Gregory Johnson, arrived shortly after the protective structure that surrounds Endeavour was moved out of the way - a milestone in launch preparations that allows fueling to begin late Sunday night.

NASA was so ready to get the flight off the ground that they moved the protective scaffolding 15 minutes earlier than planned.

There was only a 30 percent chance of a weather delay, mostly because of crosswinds.

The conditions were far different from last month's futile launch attempt. The protective cover wasn't removed for five hours because of storms, and the launch was scrubbed because of an electrical problem.

NASA is expecting slightly smaller crowds - 400,000 people instead of 750,000 people - for the second attempt. The media horde is also slightly thinned - even though the April attempt was on the same day as the royal wedding - but includes television anchors such as Katie Couric of CBS, said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs.

With the story of Giffords remarkable recovery from the January shooting having been the focus of media attention in April, now more people are paying attention to the other parts of Endeavour's planned 16-day mission. The shuttle's main goal is to haul a $2 billion astronomy and physics experiment to the international space station.

This is also the next to last flight for the 30-year-old space shuttle fleet. And it is the final flight of the shuttle Endeavour, NASA's youngest orbiter, which has flown 116.4 million miles in 24 previous flights.

Giffords was wounded in the head in mass shooting in January that killed six people. Doctors have cleared her to travel to see the launch. She came for the April attempt, flew back to Houston to resume her rehabilitation work and even had dinner out with her husband.

Comments

[M Cubed]

03:23 PM on 05/16/2011

BogusPotus 18 Fans Become a fan 3 minutes ago (3:16 PM) Shameful how the DNC keeps this lady in congress and parades her around when she's still recuperati­ng from severe damage. They know she should step down and heal but won't let her. 
jbalkas 0 Fans Become a fan 2 hours ago (1:28 PM) when will it be known if she will make a full recovery and leave the hospital?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Will you tr_oIIs work together and get your stories straight. Ya look like a bunch of amateurs.

[LazloTu]

04:51 PM on 05/16/2011

Yes! And.....f&f to you.

[M Cubed]

10:39 PM on 05/16/2011

Thanks, and I am returning the favor. I enjoyed your posts this morning.

[BogusPotus]

03:16 PM on 05/16/2011

Shameful how the DNC keeps this lady in congress and parades her around when she's still recuperating from severe damage. They know she should step down and heal but won't let her.

[Dore]

03:26 PM on 05/16/2011

Can you provide a link or proof of some kind to show that the DNC has paraded her around?

[Gramiam]

03:37 PM on 05/16/2011

Oh, dry up! You trolls just give me a giant pain!

[jbalkas]

01:28 PM on 05/16/2011

when will it be known if she will make a full recovery and leave the hospital?

[rggirt]

12:43 PM on 05/16/2011

While Rep. Giffords went through alot with the unbelievable shooting, who is paying for these trips to Cape Canaveral via private plane?? I sure hope it's not the unfortunate tax payer again, since that would be disgusting. If she and her husband are paying out of their own funds, then it's fine.

[shediac]

02:03 PM on 05/16/2011

Hate much?

[IsotelusMaximus]

02:04 PM on 05/16/2011

It's a military plane so obviously the taxpayers are on the hook. Could she had flown first-class commercial with her medical assistant and save $200,000? Who knows... You're not allowed to ask those questions around here....

[melobster78]

12:27 PM on 05/16/2011

I'm glad that the shuttle was finally able to lift off this time. I'm also glad that Rep. Giffords was able to be there to watch the launch with her husband at the controls. The news reports say that she has Mark's wedding ring and Mark has her wedding ring on the shuttle. I think that is so sweet! :)

[leftybass]

12:25 PM on 05/16/2011

Normally I scroll right by all the ads, but something about those jeans caught my eye.

[ReckingBall]

11:48 AM on 05/16/2011

Her tweet made me teary eyed. Then, all shuttle launches do.

[sammi 56]

12:19 PM on 05/16/2011

Me too!

[DEMO]

10:32 AM on 05/16/2011

My heart goes out to Gabby and especially to those who lost their lives, their families, and also to those who helped to subdue the violent and unfortunate perp who did it. Maybe a little attention to the unwarrented divisions in this political climate would be more useful than space travel. Violence is never an answer to anything.

[DEMO]

10:25 AM on 05/16/2011

Other than entertainment I don't see why these manned space trips are necessary. Huge amounts of tax payer money is being spent for what? We nave needs in this country, like infrastructure, useful education, reasonal medical costs, elimination of graft and corruption - but manned space travel? What is the point? I think we need a reasonable answer to that question.

[jsarets]

10:30 AM on 05/16/2011

Well, this mission is deploying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, by far the most ambitious science experiment in the history of spaceflight. It could make discoveries about antimatter, dark matter, and the nature of the universe which may rewrite the textbooks that our children will study.

[justin7122]

10:40 AM on 05/16/2011

yes, but will it rewrite the Bible? That would be real entertainment.......

[sammi 56]

12:21 PM on 05/16/2011

Well I would say THAT was a reasonable answer.

[maslin]

11:53 AM on 05/16/2011

Do you have any idea what we have learned from the Hubble, to give one example?

[Michael Ludin]

01:10 PM on 05/16/2011

not to mention the gazillions of us who can cook eggs now without a mess, thanks to teflon! Cops that love thanks to kevlar, TANG!

[Gramiam]

03:44 PM on 05/16/2011

The following website gives specifics as well as an overview of what Hubble has discovered and recorded.

http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/Exhibits/AirAndSpace/StarsAndTelescopes/Hubble/Hubble.php

[Aesthete]

10:24 AM on 05/16/2011

Hang in there, Gabby!

[Er hatden 71er genommen]

10:15 AM on 05/16/2011

Some of the first reports said that she was dead- I had written her off...
I so proud of her! How brave, inspiring...sad.

[jerry bear]

09:59 AM on 05/16/2011

God bless this woman and her family.

[mamadeus]

09:55 AM on 05/16/2011

Sweet Gabby, you are going to make it!

[Telly Savalas]

09:43 AM on 05/16/2011

The next launch will presage a new discussion of what "manned space exploration" means.
This system was a disappointment and a failure from the start. When the vehicle and the support technology could not produce the promised results, the program was progressively redefined until it now means very little in terms of real science. The value of the shuttle program was always questionable. When the history is written 50 years from now, it will not be kind to those who planned the program. As a feel-good, whiz bang, WOW! "look at that" moment, it works. Any other meaningful use? Not so much. The future is robotics.....

[jsarets]

10:27 AM on 05/16/2011

There's no question that Shuttle missed the mark in terms of its concept of operations. The problem is that we went full scale on our first reusable space vehicle and then pretended it was an operational system like an airliner when it was plainly obvious that it was no such thing.

By biting off more than be could chew, we choked off our ability to develop incrementally and got stuck for 30 years with first-generation hardware with serious operational problems. And in the relatively short timeline of human spaceflight, being stuck for 30 years creates the impression that there is no future in human spaceflight.

It's a logical fallacy to judge the future of human spaceflight based on some misconceptions that technologists had in the early 1970s when the Shuttle system was designed.

If there's anything we've learned from Shuttle about the future of human spaceflight, it's that robotics will play a very important role. The combination of humans and robots working together is much greater than either alone.

Especially where communications latency is high, such as the 20-minute lag in each direction to and from Mars, the things we can do with robots on the surface is vastly increased if we also have humans on the surface which can control them in real time. For all the successes of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the large majority of their time on Mars has been spent playing radio tag with controllers who had to be extremely cautious because they couldn't steer the rovers in real time.

We will master human spaceflight at some point, and until then, we should keep at it even though it's still a difficult problem. We can do this. We've proven we can do this. And it will only get easier with time as long as we leave ourselves a path for incremental development.

[Tea for me]

09:25 AM on 05/16/2011

There are 4 "little mind" paid tr0//s on this thread. Why do so many respond to them?? Dialogue is so sad & mean from them. Why respond to individual comments? The kind, thoughtful and knowledgeable people on this thread have my appreciation and thanks.

Gabby and Mark have become inspirations to many of us. Service to others, sense of duty, resilience, steadfastness, devotion to/from friends/family, courage in careers, in life, in marriage to each other. The best to them and their families and my thanks for their inspiration.