Worlds Biggest Alternative Fuel Vehicle - STS-121

In a little over an hour the largest alternative fuel burning vehicle on the planet will lift off. Space Shuttle STS-121.

Let's all take a moment around two-thirty-eight Eastern Time to pray, cross your fingers, light incense or whatever for seven brave people as they blast off for the International Space Station.

Via con dios STS-121

Amazing that after all these years they still glue foam to the outside and pray!

Wouldn't you have thought we'd be doing better by now? It is really apparent now how amazing it was to send men to the moon in the late 1960's!

Pretty much the risk every aviator takes every time they take off. As an instructor told me in Chinook training "You can't pull this SOB over on the shoulder when something goes wrong.".

Ya just gotta wanna fly!

Pales compared to the yearly climbers of the Matterhorn and Everest, etc.

I suppose even if the chances were 75% against them, you'd still find people ready to go. The Bell Curve assures us that someone will always take a shot.

Up until quite recently, lives didn't mean much.....at least a couple hundred, thousand or so here and there. Ships regularly were lost at sea - sort of like going to the moon!

Of course, it didn't cost the taxpayers billions when this happenend.

ME? No way! I'm a lover and a writer - that's dangerous enough.