[X] My Assistant

[Exploitcorporati...]

Not sure where to place this (Historical or Manned). I've got a keen and unsightly interest in photography and history regarding the shuttle missions that deployed planetary science and astronomy spacecraft (Earth science missions included). Absolutely wish to avoid crewed/uncrewed debates, but any background or stories related to these missions would be vastly appreciated. As for the photography, high-resolution digital images of the processing, launches, and deployments of these spacecraft that are currently unavailable...post em' here if you can.
I consider photos of Galileo and Ulysses in the stowed positions to be the Unholy Grails of this peculiar fixation. ( a gentleman who ran a site devoted to obscure payload bay imagery stated that he thought Ulysses pics were in short supply because of that prominent jet-black RTG sticking up like a certain colloquial social gesture).
I've found the STS-93 Chandra mission to be the easiest to find satisfying digital coverage of. Yet another series of posters begins with the Chandra and Galileo missions.

[dvandorn]

EC, it's funny you mention Ulysses -- I was watching the Discovery Channel's documentary "The Savage Sun" yesterday, which included a nice sequence of Ulysses' deployment from the payload bay. A nice set of sparklies flew out of the payload table/spacecraft interface as she lifted out of the bay.

And Toma, the Apollo 12 patch was probably my third favorite. My favorite was the Apollo 8 patch, incorporating the great figure-8 trajectory of a lunar spacecraft into its design. My second favorite was the Apollo 14 patch, with the astronaut pin worn by all astronauts of the day streaking from the Earth towards the Moon. However, my *real* favorite patch was the Apollo 14 back-up crew patch. Gene Cernan had a patch designed for his back-up crew that mimicked the prime crew mission patch, but showed a version of Wile E. Coyote, complete with gray beard (to symbolize Al Shepard), arriving at the Moon to find the Roadrunner (symbolizing Cernan's backup crew) already there, having leapfrogged the prime crew. Along the bottom of the patch, it read "Beep Beep Your Ass!" Cernan had hundreds of those patches made up and had them secreted all over the spacecraft. There was even a decal of that patch affixed to the MET, the lunar "rickshaw" used by Shepard and Mitchell in their assault on Cone Crater.

Ah, the good old days...

-the other Doug