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New Problem Could Ground Space Shuttle Fleet
Ender writes "As if the NASA folks at KSC did not have enough problems to deal with a the moment, (see previous
/. article on the engine cracks and the following
CNN article on the repairs) a NEW problem has sufaced in the Apollo Era transporter which vehiculates the Shuttles to the launch pads (crawler). They found many cracked bearings in the cylinders that lift the shuttle and its launch platform on the transporter. After this discovery they took a look at the other crawler and it too had quite numerous cracked bearings. No word from NASA yet but these findings may further delay the next
Space Shuttle launch which is currently scheduled for NET (no earlier than) Sept 28th and by the same token slow down the assembly of the ISS.
Complete articles at SpaceFlightNow and
United Press International."
What I don't understand is how they **JUST** Found these cracks? I mean obviously they all did'nt just appear at once. So do they have any idea how long they have been forming? How many shuttle roll-outs have been done with cracks already? Probably a lot i assume.. It would seem that they could do 1 more roll-out and then replace(get made) all the bearings they need..
Does this sentence mean what it says, taken from this:
" The crawler-transporters are impressive machines, built on site in the mid 1960s to move Saturn 5 moon rockets from the VAB to the launch pad.", I quess it does, because there's another sentence saying "Apollo-era".
If yes, are you amazed that it has cracked bearings if it has been sitting in a garage for 40 years? Could it be time ermm.. upgrade?:)
From the article: NASA and contractor engineers are troubleshooting cracked bearings ... it is not yet known what, if anything, must be done to resolve the issue.
My guess, and I should flag here that IANARS, is they'll have to replace those bearings...
Sigh.
I predict the feedback will be filled with the following:
1. Whining to the effect of 'they JUST found these? All the bearings went bad at once?'
2. Whining to the effect of 'They're still using 40+ year old crawlers? How dumb!'
3. Whining to the effect of 'NASA is so stupid, they can't even drive 5 miles, much less fly a million in a shuttle'
4. A few token 'We should be at moon/mars/jupiter by now, NASA has just fallen by the wayside and is a relic of lost dreams' whines
5. A few people will get a kick out of saying 'Maybe we should pay the Russians to help us with our space technology?' and 'Can't they fix this by having Natalie P. put grits on the bearings?'
6. Finally, one or two levelheaded people will say 'This stuff happens, and I'm glad they're catching it now instead of when a shuttle falls off a crawler'.
Of course, #6 will be basically ignored, and instead a message saying 'If these bearings failed, it would be bad.' will be marked +5 Insightful, +5 Interesting, and +5 Informative, the three I's of insipid posts that bring to mind the sound of a million people saying 'Well, duh....'
Well it's not like they can just call the AAA and pop a wheel off to have a look. That things is kind of big. We had a D8 bulldozer, and never opened some of the heavier stuff (just getting the winch off was a task of herculean proportions). We'd open smaller tractor after about 15 years to put new rings and pistons in, plenty of time for lots of stuff to go wrong.
;o)
Maybe they got pulled up by the local police who put a defect notice on the windscreen? Not like the local sheriff could get them for speeding.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
It helps to have a way for astronauts to not completely atrophy their bodies on long-duration spaceflights. Several methods are being tested now.
If a crew were sent on a 'short' trip to Mars without any way to keep muscle and bone loss to a minimum, it's likely that they wouldn't be able to tolerate even Mars' reduced (compared to Earth) gravity.
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
And I was hoping that it was a problem with the shuttle itself. The shuttle is entirely too expensive (half a billion dollars per launch?!?!) for what we get, and it really needs to die so that we can at least get another opportunity to replace it with something more cost effective. Because as long as they can continue to operate the shuttle, they will, no matter the cost -- because it's politically easier.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
"Time isn't that crucial here, considering that the thing will already be years late because of Russia's inability to meet a deadline."
At least they've supplied the damned lifeboat. The lack of a newer, bigger lifeboat to allow double the ISS crew is a failing of NASA to keep up, not Rosaviakosmos.
I'm too tired (and I gotta pee) to look up numbers, but the space shuttle fleet costs an arm and a leg to maintain. It was designed as the do-anything vehicle and ended up as the do-nothing-well vehicle. Sure it works but like masturbation there are better ways to get it done. At the current price/mass ratio, large space projects like ISS are uneconomical. Before building a space station, NASA should build a better launch facility either here or on the moon. Seeing as it's immeasurably easier and cheaper to build on Earth, I'd recommend starting with a big linear accelerator (think rail gun) here. If memory serves, the price/mass ratio is somewhere between 10 and 1000 times less than using the Shuttle fleet. It shouldn't take too long to recoup costs at that price, especially when one considers that lower price to orbit will mean lots more traffic. The flip side is that much more debris in the popular belts but the cost to send up a garbage collector would be that much less too.
Where's someone with 10 years and a hundred billion dollars to spend when you need 'em? By my count, 5 people could do it. Hey Bill, want to be a big player in an emerging market? Get your ass moving on a few square miles of solar cells and a linear accelerator.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Most of the work in Shuttle launch preparations and operations is contracted out to the United Space Alliance. Every year there is severe pressure to cut costs on NASA operations and maintenance contracts. These are often written into the contracts as performance goals. The contractor is expected to figure out how to reduce the cost of the contract by a certain percentage every year. This usually means getting rid of employees.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
NASA has to be one of the few agencies to take pictures of most of their activities. They added Pictures of the cracked bearings today to the KSC Media Archive, and they are some ugly cracks.
Links can be found here:
KSC-02PD-1166
KSC-02PD-1167
KSC-02PD-1168
KSC-02PD-1169
KSC-02PD-1170
KSC-02PD-1171
--Kumba
I saw this last week or so (I don't remember where exactly), but I did a search and found the story on Space.com. Here's what it said:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Did a 27-year-old with perfect vision and admitted pickiness help prevent disaster on the space shuttle?
NASA may never know, but the manager of the shuttle program said inspections will be more thorough from now on.
The first of 11 tiny hairline cracks that grounded the entire shuttle fleet was spotted by David Strait, a sometime surfer with 20/20 vision who works for United Space Alliance, one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's contractors.
Within the space agency there's talk of an award for the systems inspector, who caught the biggest potential hazard at the launch site since an engineer spied a 4-inch (10-centimeter) pin wedged against Discovery's fuel tank during a countdown in 2000.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Rumor has it the Bush administration is looking at the possibility of folding NASA and Amtrak into the new Department of Homeland Security. This is part of Mr. Bush's greater effort to make the federal government more like a corporation by consolidating all government organizations that are crippled by cracks in the system into one, easily-ignorable department.
There are big flame pits and channels under the launch platform that allow the hot exhaust gases from the main engines and solid rocket boosters to escape the immediate area of the launch platform. The Florida coast is not a good place to dig big holes in the ground, unless you are trying to create a swamp.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...vehiculates the Shuttles to the launch pads...
You means 'moves' or perhaps 'transports'?
You yanks...
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Driving this baby into the local Halfords (Sears ?for our US readers) and asking them to change the bearings!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I dug it. One of my sites was the topic of someone's successful article submission and it made the front page. I figure the high number of articles being posted lowered the bar enough for me to get posted. Heh. Seriously though, there's some balance between the fark-ish 80 items per hour and Slashdot's 8 per day that the blackout hit just right, IMO.
So, yeah, have a Blackout whenever y'all want.
Hey, if it gets more stories (with fewer comments; after a couple hundred it gets Usenetish) on the front page, then I'm all for it. In fact, maybe we could make it a regular event, perhaps a Geeks from Space replacement? Easier on your guys (except for approving submissions, maybe). Or maybe it could be like Arbor Day and every /16 could decide when they want to hold their own Slashdot Blackout Week. Keep it rotating, cut down on the the jibba jabba a bit.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Boring story, no response, who cares, no mention in newspapers, and the fact that the floating tin can currently up there will not get any larger for a few months does not stir the soul.
Consider the alternative universe I just visited, where a similar slashdot story was just posted but with the final phrase replaced by...
Oh, and by "NASA twerps" I don't mean everyone at NASA, the vast majority of whom are fine, hardworking geniuses. I just mean the people at the top who made the bizarre space station decision. I mean, the whole purpose of the Space Shuttle (check your history books, friends) was to resupply Skylab, which was an excellent space station. Roomy, simple, and one-piece, it was launched by a Saturn V and took the place of what would, on a moon shot, have been the third stage fuel tank. Then the Space Shuttle turned out to be more complicated to build than first thought, so it didn't make it up in time to rescue the station.
So, what were the thought processes jumping around the head of the collective imbecile which is the NASA beuracracy? "Shuttle built. Shuttle must go to station. Station dead... Build new station! Brilliant! Champagne and caviar all round."
I doubt that there was much talk about whether we need a space station or not. It just seemed obvious. Arthur C put one in orbit in 2001, every science fiction book has a couple of them floating around. But
"Um. It's for studying the microgravity environment! We can grow crystals. We can observe the effects on the human body." Fair enough, But now the station budget has been cut back to the extent that the station is just good enough to keep people alive inside, as long as those people are 90% dedicated to keeping the station running to keep themselves alive. There is little time left to do the science that is supposedly the reason it's up there.
Now I'm all depressed. Screw you guys, I'm going back to the alternative universe, and post a message on the alternative slashdot about our mad neighbors in the universe next door.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Well that begs the question:
...one in the eye hurts more than two in the bush
How do i "vechicle" myself?
oh it was a typo? hard to tell in this thread...
what the hell sort of word is "vehiculates"???
It amuses me that NASA has to invent fancy new words when there's perfectly good word that will do the job - "TRANSPORTS".
I guess it makes them sound important or something.
vehiculates - I bet that one isn't in the OED!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
The International Space Station represents a global partnership of 16 nations. The goal of the Operations phase of the ISS program is to perform world-class research that benefits the citizens and develops the economies of the member countries. The research includes living in space.
ISS Experiments
Less than 1 percent of the federal budget goes to NASA
IMAX ISS Site
Imagine something along the lines of a hundred-ton bulldozer with a rocket sitting on top of it.
After getting to walk around under one aftera visit a few years ago to KSC I can attest to the fact that they're massive vehicles. The treads alone tower over a grown man's head. Imagine something like Sealand on tracks (well, a little smaller). The roadbed consists of Alabama river rock several feet deep that supposedly causes less friction for the treads and gets crushed into dust as the crawler runs over it. It was pretty awkward to walk on the rocks since they're very loosely packed. All-in-all the crawler is quite a site to see up close and an amazing engineering marvel.
Anyway, it looks like the enormous weight was causing issues with early bearings even when they were designing it in the 1960's. This explains a bit about that as well.
Well, actually they need help from the Russians. After all, only the Russians can re-equip the ISS now. Only the Russians have manned space flight capability at the current time...!
They must be pissing themselves laughing...!
"Information wants to be paid"
this old NASA equipment (shuttles, crawler) isn't all it's cracked up to be...
umm... or maybe it is all cracked up to be.
~ kjrose
How would you keep a large platform level as the platform moves?
The original design had a mercury filled tube running around the perimeter of the transport platform. The idea was the mercury would flow to a low spot, trigger a relay and the low spot would rise. The basic idea was fine but it ignored latencies as the mercury flowed around the transport's 500 foot perimeter. They called my cousin in to fix the design after NASA powered the transport up and the platform started oscillating.
If I recall correctly (and I may not, it's been almost 40 years since he described the problem at the family dinner table), his solution was to discard the mercury tubes and replace them with photocells.
Let me be the first to say something that many might think is a tad silly...
After you decide to build something like a space shuttle - the decision process and what to build is another debate entirely - money should not be an object. Let me explain my point:
When the engineers were told to design this stuff (more the liners on the engines than the transporters) they likely came up with a beautiful design and were told to go back and find ways to make it cost less. Maybe this is OK when you're designing a Bic pen that stops writing half way through a meeting, but not when you're designing rocket engines.
The answer is to design the systems with total disregard for how much it costs and every regard for doing it right and producing the absolute highest quality machinery that can be built with the best materials known. There is no reason that we can't design rocket engine liners that don't crack -- except that we'd rather not spend the money. Try explaining that to the astronauts that fly engines with cracked liners after a catastrophe.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Buran has been destroyed and will never fly again.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Aren't all the problems being discovered now because of lack of funding? Durning the Clinton era, NASA was raped and thus they lack the people and the money to be looking at things like these. Come on, the crawlers are incredible pieces of machinery, unlike anything in the world. To assume that they could provide 30 years of use and not have problems is absurd.
I've seen that thing, it's insanely huge. I believe they said it gets about 1 inch/gallon, and the top speed is like 2 mph, but...
Put some armor and artillery on top of that bad boy and you've got yourself an Ogre!
A few of my NASA buddies and I got drunk one night, hotwired the crawlers and spent the evening drag racing them down the tarmac.
I may have over revved the engine on the first one while shifting from 2nd to 3rd gear at 0.7 miles per hour... I tell you, those suckers are tricky at those speeds...
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
Is it me or has NASA forgotten about basic maintenance on their equipment? Whenever we used the tracker loader or hoe we always spent half an hour or so greasing it and checking for damage. Did NASA forget to do this with their workhorses? Hell a farmer spends much of his winter doing maintenance on his equipment. I think NASA needs to remember some of the basics before they fly again.
AND WHAT ARE THEY DOING SPENDING $600 ON A HAMMER???
It's $10 for the hammer, $590 for the paperwork to go with it. And no, I'm not kidding (although the exact numbers may be off).
A friend of mine who worked at Martin-Marietta (before it merged with Lockheed) told me a story about a case of duct tape. Seems that some govt agency -- either NASA or Air Force, I don't remember the details -- needed to buy some duct tape. Now, government purchasing regulations (at the time, they're a tiny bit more sane now) required that purchases favor American-made goods, from companies that are Equal Opportunity Employers, etc, etc. This required paperwork to prove that the goods are American made, by EOE companies, etc. Let's face it, most hardware stores can't be bothered with that sort of nonsense (this is why Home Depot has refused for years to sell to the feds).
So this gov't agency gave Martin-Marietta a contract to find an appropriate supplier of duct tape and do the investigation required to fill out the paperwork. Not that big a deal, probably took somebody a few days of phone calls, letters and checking around. But that time and expenses get rolled into the cost of the duct tape -- result, one case of duct tape at about $200 a roll.
Your government at work, making sure they do what's good for the taxpayer, no matter how much of the taxpayers' money they have to spend to do it.
-- Alastair
Not very long. The current crew has a docked return vehicle at all times. IF they need to they could abandon the station and return to Earth in a matter of about 20 minutes.
The Russians don't have these problems and could lauch a resupply vehicle quickly. Probably in a day or two if necessary.
NASA took the expensive, high-tech, complex everything in one basket approach that America loves so much. The Russians continue to produce low cost, simple equipment in large volumes. The Russians also don't get caught up in all the beurocracy that we do.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people