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What does it take to make the Space Shuttle Fly?
chrisd writes: "There is a fascinating web presentation called "Terminal Count" on CNN about what it takes to prep a shuttle for flight. Very interesting stuff. Includes lots of video and more. Fun quote: 'A running joke is that a shuttle is considered ready for launch once the stack of paperwork stands as high as the rocket.'"
While I certainly agree that in most cases, the amount of paperwork it requires to get something done in our government is absolutely ludicrous...your use of the word *overkill* made me realize that past of that is exactly what nasa's trying to avoid. Call me a blind romantic, but if it can do something towards saving a life, I don't carre if that pile of paperwork forms a staricase to the moon...hmm, that gets me thinking...
Hi,
I wonder how much paperwork they do when they launch a soyuz rocket. Much less, thats for sure.
Some information found:
Taken from http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm has the main differences of Buran and Shuttle as follows:
The main differences between the space airplane the automatic landing of Buran from orbit onto airdrome;
The absence of the main rocket engine on the orbital airplane. The main engine was placed onto a central block of a carrier-rocket ENERGIA which is able to launch into an orbit 120 tons of payload against 30 tons for Space Shuttle;
The height lift-drag ratio of the space airplane is 6.5 against 5.5 for Space Shuttle;
The space airplane Buran returned 20 tons of payloads against 15 tons for Space Shuttle orbiter from an orbit to an aerodrome;
The cutting lay-out pattern of thermal protection tiles of Buran is optimal and longitudinal slits of tile belts are orthogonal to the flow line. Sharp angles of tiles are absent. The tile belts of the Buran fuselage and fin have an optimal position.
Also for another comparison between USA and Russia's space shuttle go to:
http://www.k26.com/buran/Info/info.html
Another benefit of Buran being able to have unmanned space flights.
One of the big benefits of the Russian Space Shuttle is the thermal protection system, unfortunately I do not know enough about it to compare it with the USA Suttle. Last I heard the USA Shuttle they must check every ceramic tile under the underbody, which cost a bucket load of money (At least the Americans have it).. If someone could elaborate on this I would be very grateful.
I just did a little looking around for weight specifications.
World record cargo lift by plane: 273,400 pounds
(Antonov 124-100, though a 747-400 is close)
Largest helicopter lift AFAIK: 9100Kg=20000 pounds
Shuttle life-off weight: 4.3 *million* pounds
Shuttle landing weight: 230,000 pounds
Of course you could lighten the shuttle's load a bit by removing the big tank, but it's a long ways between 4.3 million pounds and 273,400 pounds. As someone else has pointed out, towing might be a better option.
That said, I doubt the shuttle's airframe, especially wings, are designed to handle much more than the maximum landing weight in atmospheric flight (where the weight vector is perpindicular to the wings). I am now imagining a space shuttle blasting down a runway, and the wings take off but the fuselage stays on the ground.
-Paul Komarek
An in depth analysis/commentary on just what is involved in making a shuttle launch would be an amazing piece to read I think. Unfortunately in depth news pieces seem to be a thing of the past.
I guess that's it ...
RFC2119
Yah, well, we might believe you if you weren't a member of the [Durham University Fart Lighting Society] we just might believe you.
But you are a DULFSer, [as this film clip shows]!
Atmospheric reentry, damn right. Ain't no silo-ceramic high-tech tile gonna survive that sorta abuse!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Let's just hope they aren't runing windows, or blue screen of death might take on a whole new meaning.
You may think it looks like the Concorde, but that is just a coincidence. No espionage here; move along...
Seriously, the article mentions that after the thawing of the cold war, there was an exchange of info between the TU-144 designers and Boeing/NASA. If the Buran is so faboo, why aren't we rushing to incorporate it's technology?
If anything, this kind of mondernization would be a great crusade for Senator John Glenn. No one would argue if he had to go up against a bunch of unions, as he is the ideal poster child for such things.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
A running joke is that a shuttle is considered ready for launch once the stack of paperwork stands as high as the rocket
And that, my friends, is where the FBI happened to find the lost McVeigh documents.
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Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
If you have to go through a 1.2M-item checklist before sending it up again, that's more like rebuildable than reusable.
If we are serious about having the ability to do interesting things off this planet, we need a reusable vehicle that can be turned around much more simply. The ISS is _it_ until we get a simpler way into orbit.
I thought that it was more of a lumbering glide.... I've heard the shuttle's aerodynamic properties described as "a brick that falls more gracefully than most".
I've always wondered.. Why cant the shuttle be designed to use a different "style" of booster (I know all about the LFB) more like a "Sled".. Have a high-altitude jet aircraft take the shuttle up as far as possible, release it, and let a reusable sled which contains the boosters and fuel tank take it the rest of the way up (and re-enter upon completion)
:)
Something like this was actually one of the original designs for the shuttle.
I am obviously not a rocket scientist, and im too tired to think properly right now, and i'm probably grossly overestimating the altitude potential of a jet aircraft capiable of lifting the shuttles bulk.. but, i wanted to stick that theory out and see if it can get chopped off.
Depends how high you want to take it, about 15km wouldn't be too hard, the 747 NASA use to ferry it around can probably manage that. However the higher you go the faster you need to fly to maintain lift. Which is especially important on release, the shuttle has to fly for several seconds unpowered whilst the launch aircraft gets out of the way. (Both of the rocket exhaust and the shock waves resulting from the transonic acceleration of the shuttle.)
Towing is more efficent that carrying too.
we would never have gotten to the moon if you had to mount a Titan IV or Saturn V booster onto a 707!!
At what altitude is the second stage motor fired on such rockets? Jet engines are rather more efficent that rockets at low altitude, dense air is the thrust medium for a jet, for a rocket it just gets in the way...
An "an elite few?" How about we replace that with "Some Poor Bastards?"
I can just see it...
(Two NASA engineers are watching another shuttle landing from the observation deck, doing good impersonations of slack-jawed yokels)
Bob: "Looks like the shuttle made it back again in one piece, Joe."
Joe: "(Sigh) Well, you know what that means , Bob."
(Both men pull out 1.2M item checklist, and trudge towards shuttle.)
** Windows has detected a mouse movement.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The range safety package was used when the Challenger exploded in flight. If you watch videos of that, you see the SRBs flying out of control after the explosion. Shortly after, the range safety officer set off the explosives.
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Has proven it's need. It's helped solve a few different problems that could have been fatal to the shuttle - When you only have a limited number of orbiters, and a limited number of parts for those orbiters, you want to make sure EVERYTHING is accounted for and documented.
:)
/.
warning - opinion follows:
IMHO, they should gut the shuttles and redo them in modern technology - cut the weight of the shuttles (The glass cockpit was a start).. But they still have those N+1 redudant hugeass computers on board - and lots and lots of copper wiring. Apparently with the scrapping of the X-3x projects and the Aerospike engine failure, we're going to be using them for quite a long time - so lets modernize them.
I've always wondered.. Why cant the shuttle be designed to use a different "style" of booster (I know all about the LFB) more like a "Sled".. Have a high-altitude jet aircraft take the shuttle up as far as possible, release it, and let a reusable sled which contains the boosters and fuel tank take it the rest of the way up (and re-enter upon completion). I am obviously not a rocket scientist, and im too tired to think properly right now, and i'm probably grossly overestimating the altitude potential of a jet aircraft capiable of lifting the shuttles bulk.. but, i wanted to stick that theory out and see if it can get chopped off.
Goodnight
"One can always hope that space program technology will eventually trickle down to us."
Hello! They're called Teflon coated frying pans.
One thing though, if you're up in the weightlessness of space, wouldn't you want your eggs to stick to the frying pan?
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Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I guess vitriol is the standard bill of fare here at /. anymore, unless the article is about Linus or a new game/game device. Still the tone of some of the posts is baffling (excluding the usual trolls), and beggars logic in some cases. To wit...
/.ers) was not a consideration. The safety of the workers and surrounding populace was not a consideration. The validity of the experiments performed was not a consideration. The "budget" was not a consideration. Hell, given a few more years, the Germans could have achieved "cheap" access to space, since they were using slave labor for many tasks (a financial bargain I'm sure).
How great the Russian space program is/was. No argument here, they've accomplished much. But consider what it took to get them there. Communism. People could be forced to do any unpleasant or hazardous jobs. The "exorbitant" salaries of space workers (insert knowing laugh here) were not a consideration under this system. The opinion of the public (gasp! even
It's exactly these thorny "problems" (public/congressional support, having to attract/pay employees, etc.) that cause some of the unfortunate situations mentioned. If we had simply let the Air Force keep control of the program back in the late 50's/early 60's, given them Apollo-level budget and the ability to conscript any people or knowledge they might need, we'd probably have one hell of a space capability by now. Why, we'd probably already have had our first space war (just like Star Wars!) by now as well.
The moon landings were done in a spirit of patriotism and competition, as an alternative to war. When these feelings wane, it is difficult to maintain such an expensive program on logic and common sense. I think NASA does an admirable job of trying to do this as they beg in front of a group of politicians every year to try and explain why something like the Hubble is of some advantage to a congressman's district.
Still, I think this is a better way to maintain a space program than building it on the backs of people waiting in line for bread. I think the money complaints I've heard here are based more on "what I'd do with that money..." opinions than actual food being taken out of your mouth.
As far as replacing the shuttle with a wondrous new cheap, fast, easy, state of tomorrow's art vehicle, I'm sure you would get no argument from those "overpaid, NASA welfare" workers everyone seems to have seen when watching the CNN show. Most space workers have been layed off before, and don't fear it as much as you'd think. They work here because they want to, not because the pay and healthcare benefits.
But where is the money to develop this new vehicle? Lots of staring at the floor, clearing of throats, shuffling of feet by the naysayers at this point. Until the public demands this, and is willing to spend the money (IE no tax cut), the people in the CNN special work very hard indeed to keep the old birds flying.
I thought the CNN show was great in explaining some of the difficulties of seemingly "easy" manned orbital flight. But, remember that it was trying to be a little entertaining as well. Don't accept some of the glib reasoning of the CNN reporter on why things are done as they are, he's trying not to bore you with the details...
Sorry for the tirade...
Smilodon
V V
Most people think the excitement ends when a jumbo jet lands. But for an elite few, it is the beginning of a 1.2 million-step process of maintenance, repairs, checks, double-checks and still more checks that render a jumbo jet ready for another take-off. In "Terminal Count," CNN Space Correspondent Miles O'Brien goes behind the scenes of the space shuttle Discovery to observe the crucial moments and fine details as NASA prepares Discovery for its 28th launch -- thereby ignoring the fact that that the incredibly over-sold Shuttle has been operational for about as long as the Boeing 747 jumbo jet which can take you from California to China and back for under $900.
Seastead this.
There are hundreds, (thousands?) of 747's in service, and only four Shuttles.
With the entire world's launch industry's market at $2 billion per year and NASA's budget at $14 billion per year, whose fault is that?
If NASA would just fly their missions on commercial craft instead of making "we are the world" happy faces for us on TV, there would, long ago, have been a huge competitive launch services industry. See my comment on the Kelly Act below:
The 747 is a late generation aircraft, the Shuttle is a first generation reusable.
The Wright Brothers flew their first aircraft in 1903. Goddard flew his first liquid rocket in 1926. The growth curves of both industries progressed quite well to mass production within 2 decades, with airplanes being mass produced in WW I and sub-orbital rockets being mass produced in WW II. The Kelly Act of 1925 got the government out of the role of supplier and into the role of customer of transport services whereas there was no analogue to the Kelly Act in rocketry until a group of us sacrificed a few years of our lives and substantial personal assets in a grassroots battle against NASA's entrenched interests circa 1990 and even then NASA didn't follow the clear intent of the law (PL101-611) when it decided to launch the ACTS on the Shuttle, among other violations of that and other programs such as launch vouchers -- which it resisted.
The Shuttle is an N-th generation craft by a communist bureaucracy that owns the means of production -- however it is less efficient than was the Soviet space program because the Soviets didn't have a private sector to tax to bail them out of starvation, so they had to figure out that shooting corrupt bureaucrats -- or threatening them with the equivalent due to the imminent loss of a clear competition with high visibility (eg: war or race to the moon) -- is the only way to get them to stop being malfeasant.
The 747 is a child's toy compared to the complexity of the Shuttle.
And E=MC**2 is trivial compared to 18th century theories of the caloric.
The 747 also requires incredible amounts of maintenance, support, and facilities, but most of this is out of the public eye.
I didn't ignore that, since I did say: when a jumbo jet lands. But for an elite few, it is the beginning of a 1.2 million-step process but of course, that "1.2 million-step process" is far more economical and scientific since the people engineering and operating it have to turn a profit -- unlike NASA which can just have you thrown in jail and given anal AIDS injections if you don't give them more money to cover their "technical difficulties".
The 747 operates in a far simpler and more benign enviroment than does the Shuttle.
A valid point... but let's be rational:
the USD$900 you cite is for coach class...)
And just what is "coach class" on the Shuttle?
What's the matter, the Goldin got yer tongue?
Your ticket cost is held down by the revenues generated by the cargo in the belly of the 747 and by competition.
If NASA weren't so intent on suppressing competition it might be able to follow presidential policies and corresponding laws that mandate that it use the lions share of that $14 billion per year to buy commercial launch services to actually do things in space.
Seastead this.
Ok, not a flame, but a genuine, (if somewhat idle) thought. I was impressed and shocked at how much work goes on to turn round the Shuttle - 2 to 3 people working for 2 weeks to clean one window - wow, the salary bill itself must be insane for turning around the ship.
How does this compare this with the Russian Soyuz modules? I'd be interested to know the comparison of costs. Ok, so what you get is vastly different but what I mean is that the Russian space program seems to be set up like a heavy engineering factory, they knock 'em out day in day out like Ladas. They work, they go, they bang out another one. It would be fascinating to find out about how they have turned a high tech industry into another factory production line.
It would be fascinating to invite over some of the engineers working in the Russian plants to see if they could streamline some of the processes used on the Shuttle, take it down from the equivalent of tuning a high performance racing car towards a regular service of a goods truck.
I know the Shuttle is amazingly complicated but it is a complete suprise that it appears to be virtually rebuilt each time it goes up, there must be a more sustainable, long term engineering solution we can apply with 20 or years expereience behind us. I'd say the Russians would be worth bring on board for their heavy engineering rather than 'gee whizz high tech' attitude towards getting these things done (I am reminded of the old tale about NASA spending all that time and money developing zero-g pens while the Russians just gave their cosmonauts 10 cent chinograph pencils and got on with the next task... ).
It would be very nice if we could launch rockets horizontally because they would be accelerating in the needed direction to attain orbit velocity. Unfortunately air drag is so high at supersonic speeds so rockets are launched vertically up until they get out of the densest part of the atmosphere and then a gravity turn (uncontrolled) is made to point the rocket to the east. You are right it would take the same amount of energy if gravity was the only acting force, since it is a conservative force. But drag force isn't.
If chemical fuels had 2x-3x the specific impulse to mass ratio, it would be a straightforward aerospace engineering project to build a commercial spacecraft. It would have internal tankage, the weight budget and robustness of a commercial airliner, would be fully reusable, and would be flyable to a landing under power. But chemistry doesn't permit that.
That's the problem.
Perhaps the most "reusable" space vehicle is the Apollo 11 capsule. It has been sitting there at the Smithsonian in DC for a few decades, and people never get tired of staring at it. It's an infinitely reusable conversation piece...
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Ok rough comparison:
launching the space shuttle 1 time extra per year:
$100M
launching soyuz:
$4M
(soyuz isn't particularly comparable with Shuttle, but still, launching a Proton V, which is broadly comparable as far as payload goes with the Shuttle costs about $5M).
Actually both numbers are a little arguable. Its possible to argue that the space shuttle costs upto $1.5 billion per launch if you include a reasonable fraction of the development costs... and NASA actually usually allows more like $300M per launch because they fold some of the pad and other overheads for the year.
Still, the Ruskies can get to space for an order of magnitude lower than NASA can. That's part of the discomfit around the Dennis Tito- that's an unsaid part of the politics; they simply can't do things that the Russians can.
I don't have information about whether the $4M include launch pad costs or not. Still, its hard to see how it could come anywhere near the NASA figures- I mean the entire Russian space program comes to only $120M or so...
Basically, modern day NASA is what you get when you get an extreme combination of pork-barrel, governmental specifications, defense and politcal white elephants.
Russia on the other hand, has little pork-barrel; and soviet governmental work is much more efficient (probably less efficient than capitalism though; but market forces and capitalism has nothing to do with space in the good ole' US of A).
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"as much as the fuel itself.
Anyone who has ever worked for the fed would realize how much paper work is involved in everything. I have friends who have seen them put a bar code on a mouse and keyboard and then go back to make sure the mouse hadn't been stolen every year. It would of course be MUCH cheaper to buy a new mouse each year. Luckily they don't barcode mice anymore :) Anyway, when you see how much paperwork is involeved with trivial things it is no wonder you get an insane amount of paperwork when you want to do something important. Remember when NASA lost a probe becuase they didn't convert to metric right? On the bright side, with all that checking and rechecking I bet that probably won't happen the shuttle. Of course it is easy to see that they have gone way past overkill. BTW, is it me or was the way CNN put the story in a tiny window VERY annoying?
and it has more bureaucrats producing more paperwork than ever before, just to get it launched.
we want you to ride on it
right . . .
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How strange, I too have tiles that look burnt and charred in my bathroom, but I can't recall having done a atmospheric reentry in my shower stall.
NASA uses a top-secret, super-duper cleanser, known only by its code-name, "Formula 409". If only there was a way you could get your hands on some, it might work on your shower. One can always hope that space program technology will eventually trickle down to us.
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Freeper Logic
What does it take to make the Space Shuttle Fly?
A very, very, very, very, very, very large rubberband. Bringing an inanimate carbin rod along makes emergency repairs much easier, too.
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Freeper Logic
First, any physics student knows it takes Less expended energy to lift 100 million-odd tons of mass straight up than it does to move it up a gradual incline.
Ahem. Any physics student known it take the exact same amount of energy. An incline spreads out the work over a longer time scale, but the work is lessenned, and it balances out perfectly. It's the same way pulley systems work. Sure, you have to pull for longer, but it's much easier to pull.
Stupid like a fox!
One can always hope that space program technology will eventually trickle down to us.
;-)
Well, there's Tang.
(And perhaps that "ice cream of the future" that's been sold in mediocre malls across the US for years now?
How strange, I too have tiles that look burnt and charred in my bathroom, but I can't recall having done a atmospheric reentry in my shower stall.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Here is a link to the mission plan for STS-99, for example.
Check out this on-board experiment:
ON-ORBIT DETAILED TEST OBJECTIVES (DTOs)
URINE COLLECTION DEVICE (DTO 690)
The purpose of this DTO is to evaluate the fit of several sizes/types of manual Urine Collection Devices (UCDs) and their adapters (anatomical interface) in microgravity; evaluate the capability of the adapter and valve design to accommodate urine flow with minimal leakage; and evaluate hygienic aspects of the UCD design with respect to minimizing urine remaining in or around the adapter which could potentially get loose into the cabin. This accomplishment will also increase the accuracy of science measurements of total urine volume within the bag. This DTO will also evaluate the user-friendliness of urine collection operations, and (Lower Priority) evaluate techniques for returning urine to the Waste Collection System (WCS).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Very few folks (relative to the general population) have been in the Shuttle safety board meetings (post-Challenger). These guys (and gals) go over every last inch of the payloads, looking for ways that they can fail. I've been in them and had to present several times - and let me tell you, it can be a harrowing experience. The amount of time and effert spent to keep the crews safe is phenomenal. There are so many ways things can go wrong. The joke, as I remember it, was that the shuttle didn't lift off until the weight of the paperwork exceeded the weight of the shuttle. "The worst thing that can happen," I was told by one of my former colleages, "is to find your project on the front page of the Washington Post."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There will be a static test firing of a shuttle motor at the Thiokol plant on Thursday, May 24, 2001 at 1 pm. The plant is located about 23 miles west of Brigham City, Utah. These are really fun to see, since the motor is sitting there only about 1/2 mile away for the entire 123.4 second burn time. It gives you a real feel for the amount of power it takes to put the shuttle up.
On the subject of paperwork:
I just spent the last year contracted out to Thiokol. They make the reusable solid rocket motors for the shuttle. I did the editor for their new documentation system that is getting finished up. What they told me was that in the old days when they shipped a motor to NASA they shipped an equivalent VOLUME in paperwork. It was literally a trainload of paper. They have to document who did EVERYTHING and who inspected what and any deviations from normal procedure.
They have been sending electronic documents for about six years now but are migrating to a new system. The new documents are XML and the editor is written in Java. You would think that a bunch of instructions with checkpoints and buyoffs would be a pretty simple application but they go way beyound that. The documents are incredibly complex and powerful. Luckily the new system is going to be a lot easier to use than the old one.
The new system should go into production this summer. It will make the job of creating, maintaining, and keeping track of so much documentation much easier.
Lasers Controlled Games!
DYNAMITE, and Lots of it!
It is a good thing that Starfleet Commander Rumsfeld will use those new oil-based lasers we've heard so much about to clean the place up!
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--hongpong.com
Secondly, the X-15 (for which eight Air Force Pilots were awarded Astronauts wings as they entered the official minimum altitude for "space") was launched from under the wing of a B-52. And this was a program that started in he late fifties! Also, when the Shutle lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, it's transported piggyback style back to Kennedy Space center in Florida by a specially modified NASA Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. They have "launched" orbiters this way before for the purposes of approach and landing testing, so there must not be any unreasonable risks in seperation at those speeds / altitudes or with massive craft like those.
For your third point... um... either way, verticle or not, you're going to reach *vast* speeds and move huge amounts of air. One way or another, you want as aerodynamic a design as you can reasonably build.
Your fourth point... We definatly would not have been able to, if we had to strap a saturn V to a jet. But with a starting point of 60,000+ Ft, and 600+ MPH before you even light the engines, you don't need that large a rocket to push you the rest of the way, especially with more modern techlology tht we have today.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
If they configured a few Space Shuttles up in a Beowulf configuration.. They might actually have enough fault- tolerance to put those 'ole 6502 buggers back into Radiation-Hardened usefulness
If ever a mission specialist were to download an MP3 off of Napster while in flight, the RIAA would make damn sure it never flew again.
I think Dale Earnhardt's pit crew is available...
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
We had to deliver some equipment (2 SUN workstations) to JPL and had to do much paperwork and negotiations over this. When we arrived we were besieged by guys with clipboards, who were not sure if we could deliver this equipment, whether we could install it in the computer room. Eventually my German colleague got pissed off a took the machines himself out of the car and into the computer room. There followed much frantic ass-covering paperwork, phone-calls and hand-wringing, before everything was settled. Sometimes I wonder with the level of bureaucracy how they got a man on the moon.
The Russians, on the other hand, are a very different kettle of fish. The Russians launched 4 ESA satellites last year and we had to install some stuff in Baikonur for the launch. They are very laid back, and quite excited to see new equipment. A lot of the quipment they have is very out of date, but the fact remains that the Soyuz launcher has done over 1000 launches without problems. It was quite amusing during the first launch, that at T-minus 10 minutes, 3 guys could be seen walking and smoking about 100m from the launcher! Our boss got a bit excited and wanted to know what they were doing there. 'Having a smoke and a walk' was the reply. He was speechless (a rare thing) and at T minus 5 one of the guys casually looked at his watch and they then got under cover. Both launches went without a hitch. The Russians are very confident with the Soyuz launcher having used it for about 40 years and they are not so safety and arse-covering paranoid as NASA and ESA.
Mr Churchill, If I was your wife I would put poison in your tea! Madam, If I was your Husband I would drink it!
I actually OWN an authenticated copy of The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual, complete with archetypical mission overviews and step-by-step procedures, published 1988. It's really interesting, for anyone who has operated research or industrial equipment.
Anyways, the ultimate re-usable vehicle would be a built-in-space extended-lifetime solar transit vehicle, a.k.a. starship. It won't depart from or re-enter the atmosphere, so all the aerodynamic and weight-stress problems can be ditched. Its size and mass can be expanded proportionately to the thrust of its powerplant (Scientific American has a marvelous article about Nuclear Propulsion in Space . Finally, such a spacecraft could concieveably carry its own hydroponics, waste recyclers, and recreational facilities, in addition to mission-oriented facilities, to support a 14- to 30-person team.
Gentlemen, we can build it. We have the technology.
There is so much space junk floating around above earth, that more often than not they REPLACE the windows on the space shuttle, because they have been damaged by so many micrometeoroid impacts.
long time listener, first time caller, love /.
I did some work for NASA at Kennedy Space Center last year. It was the coolest job I've ever had and at the same time it was a little sad. I was struck by how primitive everything is on the ground. Ground handling costs dominate the cost of space flight. Much of the ground handling is amazingly primitive. The manpower costs and time involved are astounding. Everything is done manually. Practically nothing is automated. There is much room for improvement.
Much of this is due to union and labor issues. There is definitely an entitlement mentality there. The lab that I worked in was littered with old robots and machines developed to speed things up and reduce costs. In many cases the unions complained and had the machines removed. More efficiency = less entitlement.
I worked with some very cool people who were passionate about their work. Many of them worked very hard. Unfortunately the majority are not as fired up. Many young and creative people work there after school, get frustrated, and leave.
NASA is stuck in a rut that I believe there is very little chance of them escaping. Let's face it, they aren't rewarded for taking risks. They can waste millions on inefficient processes and they get a gee wizz report on CNN. Spend the same money on a failed probe and you might get your funding cut.
Still after 20 years of space shuttle flight shouldn't it be getting cheaper to maintain with faster turnaround? Shouldn't it be cheaper to launch things into space?
I always imagined by this time there would be space tourism. I never imagined that you would be able to become a cosmonaut for $20 million. I thought that America was supposed to be the land of entrepreneurs? So the Russians have the first man in space and then the first paying customer?