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Here behind me on two launchpads, a service tower, and all they have to do is put this together and start flying. it s going to be much cheaper than what they were doing. but what i was telling you, we ve always had this, nobody is against this, but paul shawcroft, a person in the omb, okay, why is he shoeldholding it up? you ve made him famous this morning. reporter: that s the question for you, chuck. jay barbree, a historic day. we ll be checking back with you every hour until we see this atlantis go up. as we follow this last mission of the shuttle. jay, good to see you, sir. reporter: thank you. well, another 7 million bucks is being poured into political attack ads this week. this time the target moves to capitol hill, the conservative group american crossroads has already blasted president obama and just today began a campaign targeting several democrat being senators up for reelection in 2012, the war being wage d. ....
Husband and that will be taking off possibly april, but more likely june. we have the same thing with last one to go atlantis, it could go as early as june, but more likely in august. three more. 135 shuttle flights, total of 166 flights by american astronauts. and then no one knows how long it will be before american astronauts will be lifting off from these launchpads, five, six, seven, eight, years. this mission they re on, an 11-day mission. what are the goals for them? well, it is primarily a supply run. they re going to take up a storage unit. it will be the last piece that will be on the international space station. they also are going to take up the first robot, if you will, little play there on r 2 d 2, that was on star wars. but he s going up. and he ll be training to service and do things that are mundane. ....
November flight. this day the weather was perfect. you see, the coastline, and launchpads. now, you can see there, the vehicle assembly building coming into view. six, five, four, three, two, touchdown. reporter: why so many practice runs? when the shuttle lands, it is a glider, and there are no do-overs. if you miss, you are done. the first time the pilot takes the controls on decent, he has to know how the orbiter is going to react. well, there is no go around, and you can say, i did this before and i can do this. reporter: just like the shuttle did we approach the runway at 225 miles an hour. to a spectacular orange sunset. it has taken nearly an hour and a half for the ten touch and goes and dark on the final ....
But it s a very workable combination. the launchpads are already here at the space center. you don t have to build launchpads. you ve already got people on the job. you don t have to go out and draw up things on paper and reinvent something and take five or six years to build it. so you re looking at a possible hiatus of no shorter than three years that america would not be able to fly an astronaut into space or more likely seven or eight years if they don t follow this already proven equipment. and then, last question for you, jay, asç we watch the curvature of the earth start to emerge around that camera on the shuttle, describe to us what it is that we re really seeing here. reporter: well, what you re seeing is you have a camera on board the external fuel tank. the fuel that is fed to the three main engines of the shuttle. the shuttle underbellly what you re looking at. what you re looking at. ....
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