Why are the shuttle flight numbers currently so mixed up, and why are there so many missions that begin with the numbers 41 and 51?
[With inputs from Jorge Frank and Henry Spencer] The really short answer is that the numbers are assigned early in planning, and are not changed when flights are cancelled or rearranged. Station delays, in particular, have caused considerable reshuffling in the last couple of years. For the answer to the first question, yes, it would be so much easier if they consistently numbered the shuttle flights in the order that they launched. After all, that’s what they did in the old days…. like Gemini 7 going before Gemini 6, right? As with those Gemini flights, the shuttle missions are always given the next lowest available flight number, and from that day until launch, that flight number is associated with that flight just to make things easier. Of course, it’s not a perfect world, and things happen to muck up the launch schedule — everything from weather to shuttle and payload hardware to the Hubble Telescope to the Russian economy. For example, let’s look at the missions numbered starti
