NASA did do a full duration "Flight Readiness Firing" before each Shuttle lifted off for its first mission. Videos of them can even be found on Youtube.

Like Columbia's.

I suspect the chances of all 12,000 people using their internet bandwidth at the same time was pretty likely. Especially since they asked people to try and max it out at a specific time to set a utilization record.

http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw11/2011/11/22/120-gigabit-at-dhw11/

Sorry to tell you this, but it is. Newer LCDs have LED backlights which don't require that pesky inverter.

The Russians had a Proton M/Briz M fail less than a week before the Soyuz/Progress (M-12M) failure. Both failures, IIRC, were for similar reasons.

Yes, there is a "viable" design for a spaceplane with large cargo capacity in the works. Its still a significant amount of development away from production, but its past a concept. Its called the Skylon

Atlantis isn't flying again, but all of the SSMEs are being kept in a ready state to be attached to the "next" vehicle to use as prototype engines. At least until a cheaper, disposable version is designed.

Then its a good thing that 4 of those craft I named are planning on being flown with or without NASA's help. (NASA funding would just accelerate the process.)

While the Shuttle program has ended (and its been a spectacular run), I guess the only things to look forward to are the MPCV, CTS-100, Dragon, DreamChaser, and the New Sheppard.

I think the future is looking pretty bright.

Well, they'd work as a classic lifeboat for about two weeks. Then the batteries would die and you wouldn't have any control surfaces on landing. Or life support. Plus, the shuttles leak atmosphere. Not a significant amount for a 2 week mission, but if it was much longer it would be an issue.

It was called the Space Transportation System, and has been circling around in LEO for nearly the past thirty years.

They have manual control available for once the Progress gets to the parking orbit. The issue is Progress 38 didn't go to the parking orbit, it just went straight on past.

Oh, so kinda like what BOTH had to do to win the Lunar Lander Challenge?

Fly up to a predetermined altitude (varied depending on competition level), translate horizontally a specific distance (again, how far depended on the competition level), stay airborne for a certain amount of time (length depended, again, on competition level) land on a simulated lunar surface complete with boulders, then fly back with the same flight altitude, time and distance requirements within the allotted time.

Oh, and bring enough fuel to make each flight without running out. One of the teams (neither Masten nor Armadillo), did run out of fuel a few feet off the pad and crashed.

While yes, you do have to link you Android phone to a Google account, you don't have to download apps from the Google app store. You can download and install apps from anywhere. All it takes is checking one box in the settings.

The Falcon 1 uses one engine.
The Falcon 9 uses nine engines.
I'll let you figure out how many engines the canceled Falcon 5 had.