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NASA To Try To Resume Flights By Fall
underground alliance writes "According to BBC News, space shuttle flights could resume as early as this fall. The article says that 'Engineers have been put on standby to fix problems already raised by the investigating board, and devise a way of checking the exterior shuttle for defects while it is in orbit.' I think that this is a good move especially since ISS construction has been put on hold because without the space shuttle. The space shuttle is the only heavy freighter and the only means of putting a new ISS component in space."
NASA space flights should stay suspended until they can develop a next generation launch vehicle that is safe.
If they can not (or do not have the political or financial will to) do that, then they should press some old rocket designs back into service and use them solely for unmanned flight.
Should they happen to devise a method of checking the shuttle while in orbit for defect, what would happen should they find a defect on a shuttle in space? Do they have the ability to fix defects while in space?
And lastly, how many people can the Soyuz capsules handle? If the shuttle could not handle a landing they might have to orphan it in space and send up multiple Soyuz capsules, or a second shuttle?
Maybe they'll give than NSYNC guy a discount on the flight? Seriously though, Hard to imagine NASA can overcome their usual glacial pace of change and get everything fixed and tested so fast.
The space shuttle is the only heavy freighter and the only means of putting a new ISS component in space."
I mean no insult to the story's submitter, but that kind of thinking is the heart of the problem. NASA is not a freight service - they're a space program, dammit. Their job is not hauling stuff into orbit, but doing real, hard science.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
They need to rethink their foam first. They had to change it to something more environmentally friendly, but obviously it didn't work as well. Ever since they started using the new foam some of it has fallen off during the launch. It just so happens that a piece of this caused damage one time... and it could again. BTW, this is not your regular light foam - it is very heavy.
NASA has a few things it can do for itself .... namely:
* Identify and correct any problems that can be fixed.
* Resume flights as soon as feasible;
* Ask Congress for a boatload of money;
* Use boatload of money to design Shuttle2.
Line 1 is interesting because well, there are inherent risks in flying the shuttle. You absolutely can't guarantee safety; I mean, honestly, if a micrometeor hits the shuttle while in space, well, it's a problem.
*ALL* future shuttle flights should be equipped with a Canadarm, ISS docking ring, EVA packs, and enough fuel to get to the ISS.
No matter what. If that means we have to cut back on the payloads, well, too bad.
Even if we knew there were cracked tiles on Columbia in space, what could we have done for them? Not really very much.
We need a rescue system; some way to either get guys down without their vehicle, or a way to park 'em up there 'till we can get another vehicle in motion.
That should be Priority One. Next up, let's replace the shuttle with something more modern --- something that can carry as much payload, but more modern.
--DM
Wouldn't it make sense to keep an extra Orbiter in space, docked to the ISS? That way, if some problem was discovered once in orbit, they'd have a way to get back down while crews in the ISS effect repairs.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
that makes about as much sense as not wanting to get on a 737 because another 737 crashed that day.
yes, the design of the space shuttle probably has some flaws but then again they had a hell of a lot of flights that didn't blow up - it's not the least bit more dangerous than it was before, they actually will have more safety measures in place next time.
being an active astronaut is not an office job and everybody knows it's dangerous.
There will allways be enough reckless 'strebers'
willing to take the risk. Given the fact that
those patriots will be given their fifteen minutes
of fame and substatiantial taxpayer resources for
the rest of their lives.
If a defect were discovered, they could park the shuttle at the ISS and do repairs there. Now, 3 to 6 crew on the ISS + 7 from the shuttle = 10 to 13 on the space station. According to this article, they could evacuate 6 in the emergency soyuz capsule. That would leave 1 extra crewman on the ISS, which I don't think would be a big deal (considering it was designed for a max crew of 6, according to the article)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Now of course you can take *some* supplies with you but not necessarily an entire space shuttle of spares. So what would happen if they find a problem that would stop re-entry but can't fix whilst in orbit? Of course you would hope that they would detect this sort of thing before lift off but you never know. Has NASA ever had two shuttles up at once?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Dispite what some people say, prayer should be used.
Find out more here.
What about the possibility of using the Russian Space Shuttles? I havent heard anything about this. I did some research on the web, and the russian government said back in 1997 that they had the means and the will to get their program back online. The design is better, can carry more cargo, is safer to refuel and more modern! I think NASA should do some serious consideration into using MOLNIYA and the BURAN space shuttles as their 'cargo carriers'. Any comments anyone?
The shuttle program (and the ISS) use up a disproportionaly large % of Nasas budget for the return. Look at hubble and Chandra and Cassini and Galileo -- they're giving us a boatload of useful data for a fraction of what the shuttle costs and gives us. I'm not saying that Nasa shouldn't put stuff into space, but it's gotten to the point where people think that's all they do (ala, referring to the shuttle as a freighter)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Seriously, Why can't Nasa subcontract out the space-freight part of their job (like all the communications companies do), and focus exclusviely on the science part of it? Also, bear in mind that generally, the private sector is a lot better about effeciency than the gov't.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Disagree? Read this spooky article written in 1980. Predicted death, both by explosion on liftoff, and due to failed tiles on landing.
0 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/80
The shuttle was an expensive boondoggle in 1980. 14 dead astronauts later, and it's now a catastrophic diasaster.
113 flights and 14 dead astronauts = 1 in 8 chance of an astronaut dying on any given flight. All this for junk science like ant colonies in space (call Homer Simpson!), and soybean germination in zero gravity.
The shuttle design is 30 years old. We have to be capable of better design now. NASA should return to unmanned missions, and go back to the drawing board for future manned flights.
Before I got on another 747 I would want to know if it was a design flaw or pilot error or what. So to me that makes a bit of sense, but I agree with your sentiment. There is inherent risk in any great endeavor.
Chuck
It really is time to make a new space vehicle. Is it really that hard to perform a horizontal take off and get into orbit with the same vehicle?
I do it in X-Place all the time, but I know it's hard to put 999,999,999 for all the engine specs in real life.
anybody ever asked himself whether mankind _really needs_ manned space programs? most experiments could be done either on mother earth or by robots. saving money, our environment and lives.
1) Equip each shuttle with a little mini-satellite with a web cam they can use to take pictures of the underside. This shouldn't be complicated at all.
2) Build all missions so that inspection of the shuttle can take place early enough into the mission to allow for a detour to the space station if a problem presents itself.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I thought it was funny, at least. Must be some touchy moderators around here.
I'm sure many will disagree, but the cost of the shuttle program is horrendous, and NASA's insistence on using it has led to some cataclysmically stupid decisions. One example: the ISS (which is an utter joke compared to Skylab or Mir) was placed into a rapidly-decaying orbit not because that was a good idea (it isn't) but because the shuttle could get there.
Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
The idea of capturing and reparing satellites is inherently absurd; most aren't where the shuttle can get 'em and the total cost of the program utterly dwarfs the expense that would have been incurred had they said of the Hubble "Well, we screwed it up...build another one and get it right this time."
The safety record sucks. After Challenger Richard Feynman put the probability of a fatal accident at one in fifty. So far, NASA's on the money and the nature of the shuttle is such that if someone dies, everybody dies.
Lest I be misunderstood, I understand the romantic and scientific appeal of manned space flight, of the visceral sense of satisfaction we can have as a species when we look up to the skies and say "We live there." I'm a strong proponent of that. I also recognize the complaints that the money spent on that is money not spent on (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, inoculating the sick, fill in your pet cause). The manned space program is hellishly uneconomical and a great deal of that can be laid at the feet of the shuttle program.
It's a white elephant without a mission, a bastard child of a spacecraft and an airplane which like most gadgets that try to do two fundamentally different things does neither well. Its payload capacity compared to heavy-lift rockets is a joke, it's barely capable of crawling out of the atmosphere, it's presented a tremendous constraint to the rest of the space program by forcing many missions to be less than they could have been in order to be shuttle-doable, and it bears repeating that every fifty flights it kills everyone on board.
It's time to ground the shuttle fleet permanently. Space isn't going anywhere. Stop pouring the hundreds of millions of dollars into the shuttle program and pour them into a new design effort. Scrap the silly "space-plane" concept and develop a family of lifters and craft that _can_ be used for many things but don't back NASA into a corner that forces them to use it for all missions. Make crew safety an inherent feature (recognizing that there are tradeoffs and that getting out of the gravity well is a fundamentally dangerous activity). Stop throwing good money after bad on that ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
Let's do it over. And do it right.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Your math doesn't work there fellah.
And that "junk science" as you call it will give us a cure for cancer one day.
Dumbass troll
Chuck
Score: -1, Flamebait
Shortly after the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986, a sick joke started circulating. "NASA" was reported to mean, "Need Another Seven Astronauts."
Unfortunately, as news reports come in about disregard for safety for Shuttle Columbia, it appears that such "joke" has a major element of truth. NASA bureaucrats (and probably politicians up to and including at the White House, as well) disregarded Morton Thiokol engineers in 1986, and we're now hearing that engineers warned NASA officials and the President prior to Columbia's launch that the Shuttle system itself was prone to such a disaster as witnessed yesterday. We know that Columbia was hit with "something" ("foam" or more likely, ice) during its launch on January 16th, and apparently, officials didn't take it seriously enough (Cain slew Abel; did Leroy Cain slay Columbia?). The excuse that "Columbia's crew was doomed from the start because they couldn't make repairs" is both silly and illustrates the current "can't do" attitude of today's NASA, which is far different than the NASA which both put humans on the Moon AND safely returned a crew to Earth after Apollo 13 had a "major malfunction" way up there.
For NASA's bureaucrats (and some politicians), it appears that risking astronauts' lives, NOT for the "unknown variables," but for glamour, expediency, and selfishness, is "acceptable." Perhaps this is to be expected in today's America where style and appearance are far more valued than substance and tangibility.
The "joke" way back in 1986, "N.A.S.A. = Need Another Seven Astronauts," has tragically turned out to be 2003's reality.
The space shuttle is the only heavy freighter and the only means of putting a new ISS component in space.
Titan IV-B, LEO payload capacity 47,800 pounds.
And at an estimated cost of only 350-450M, it's somewhat cheaper than the shuttle. With a better than >95% estimated success rate, it's also probably safer than our current shuttle fleet.
Even better, the upgraded IV-Bs have a LEO payload capacity roughly equal to that of the shuttle. (~48,000 lbs-LEO)
And, they're unmanned and not expected to be re-used. It goes boom, no astronauts go boom with it, and it's not like you were expecting to get the rocket back. Oh, and it can loft a good bit more to GEO than the shuttle can.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
To find defects while in orbit, How about electrically charging the exterior of the shuttle and then checking for inconsistancies in the EM field. (read: differences from a "good condition" exterior, maybe from a test conducted on the ground). Maybe this has already been suggested, who knows - but it might be worth a shot.
While I am definitely pleased that space flight is resuming, it certainly seemed to me that the program was on a downhill slide to budget reduction.
If they don't innovate and expand their horizons, it truly seems to me that NASA is a marked program, especially after ANOTHER catastrophic failure. I doubt the politicians have any concept of MTBF, or the statistical risks involved... but BIG PLANE GO BOOM probably scared the crud out of them.
NASA needs to take this opportunity to explore programs ala Russia's "Send Rich People Out of the Atmosphere", and all the space planes we've been hearing about for the past 20 years. I really appreciate the ISS effort, but it seems unlikely that the general populace or the general representative government will hop on. With the anti-internationalism/pro-isolationism trend we're slowly riding (Freedom Fries?!), the "International" Space Station is in danger of becoming unnecessary overhead.
-Greg
-Greg
If these journalists weren't all buddies who also created most of slashdot, they would never have kept the job for so long with how fucking bad their grammar is.
At the risk of being flamed, are we putting too much emphasis on human life? Historically, all exploration has been risky, with significant loss of life. As an example, look at the original Jamestown settlers. The astronauts are well aware of the dangers involved in spaceflight. And if they didn't know before, they should know after both the Challenger and Columbia accidents. So if they are willing to take the risk with the current design, should we stop them? If the engineers say, there is no way we can improve on Feynman's odds of 1 in 50, should we stop them? It seems to me, that the astronauts should have the final say in what is safe enough. If they're willing to take the risk, as informed adults, I'm willing to let them take it.
What's the point of sending a shuttle into low earth orbit to conduct science that could be better done on the ISS? Why don't most science flights that require human hands-on presence just head for the Space Station? And why are those which don't require hands-on presence flown on the shuttle anyway?
As a freight transporter, it sacrifices many tons of lifting capacity in favor of a shirt-sleeve living environment for an unneeded crew of seven. As a people transporter it has a poor record.
According to the article that you cite, there is a possibility of keeping a second Soyuz docked as an emergency earth return vehicle so increasing the total capacity to 6. There are some gotchas, and I don't know how they would keep everything docked. There should always be space for a third soyuz vehicle to allow for changeover as each capsule is only supposed to stay up there for a certain period and then they are rotated.
Lets send more people off to die for a pointless mission; how about we spend that money on welfare for a real purpose.
Nothing better to do than troll today? Go for a walk and get some nice fresh fall air.
The BURAN has been keep in storage, and in acceptable conditions, (according to the the russians), maybe it needs extensive computer programming for a regular mission but its automatic landing pilot was usable and even impressed NASA, why not use it instead of the soyus "lifeboat", so you can increase the ISS crew, or have it rendezvouz with the shuttle if case needed.
hmm, by that logic we should still be using asbestos
for soundproofing, because it is no more dangerous
now than when we didn't know it was dangerous.
But in general I agree spaceflight is dangerous, we have hollywood to thank for our expectations that
returning from orbit is a pedestrian affair. Just
identify the problems fix them and move on, adjust
plans accordingly.
1) The southern hemisphere is mostly ocean. The vast majority of the human race lives in the north. They're not being so very self-centred on that count. But...
2) In a whole lot of places there aren't the traditional four seasons; instead there are two, dry and rainy. So they don't call it fall, because it isn't.
3) In a whole lot of other places most of the trees are coniferous. So they don't call it fall either, because the leaves don't.
4) Most people alive, even those with four seasons and deciduous forests, don't speak English, and so don't call it fall anyway.
5) Of those who do speak English, live in areas with a four-season climate and deciduous plant life, a whole lot STILL don't call it fall, they call it autumn.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There's been a lot of research into "space diving"; deorbiting with no surrounding spacecraft - here's a good page with a lot of information. Also, here's the existing Shuttle bailout procedure.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
It cost too much money per pound to load the shuttle with all the gear you request of it. A better move would be to have a simple emergency rocket with extra food/air/fuel ready to send up should they discover that the shuttle is unable to return.
.5 billion and can only fly 4 times a year.
An even better option is admit we've got a flawed system and do the sensible thing and abandon it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for manned space flight. But we need to set a real goal. Like Men on Mars by 2020 or bust and then build the needed items like a space elevator, moon base to mine Helium, and a space station that is able to rotate so that we can simulate gravity.
The Space elevator could possibly be built at a cost of $7-15 billion dollars. Each shuttle trip cost
The moon base can mine the fuel needed to power nuclear engines for a Mars trip.
A rotating space station is needed to simulate gravity. We are going to have to provide gravity to any one going on this trip. Our past experience on Mir proved that weightlessness is harmful to our bone structure over the long haul.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
5. PROFIT
Check out this critique of the Shuttle design, complete with a lot of technical and political analysis:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03l.html
The shuttle clearly compromises crew safety by its fundamental design. Given it's mounting location, extreme diligence is required to protect the orbiter from the external tank and other propulsion components.
point 1..
you'd think science was a religion for alot of people here. It appears that many people think that science is the end all be all and that science isnt a tool that we use to further are human needs and wants at all.
Have we forgotten the purpose?
We're not up in space just to learn irrelavent stuff.. We're not doing so much science up there just cause we're curious. We're putting the effort to learn all that because we intend on living and pioneering out there.
point 2..
what's wrong with freighters?
how are we suppose to do anything in space, science or otherwise, if we don't move stuff there, and around one we get it there?
How in earth are we to get anything done in space otherwise? Of course that consists of the larger percentage of NASA expenses, because it consists of the largest need to do anything other than look up there from down here with telescopes.
point 3
My last big beef with many posters here is their excessive worry about the lives of our astronauts. These men and woment are freekin' pioneers for crying out loud! A vocation that never ever in history has ever been remotely safe. Our astronauts know that and are very adamant about the goal being worth the risk. If they think so, I think so.
conclusion..
yes I think we need to put alot of work into the next generation of manned launch vehicles. We started to make a big move with that in the early 90's but apparently the money got cut off right when at least a couple better/faster/cheeper projects were coming to fruition. It wouldnt take nearly as much effort as the shuttle project originally took to finish one or two of these projects off and have something better to do our space work for us, be it freighting, science or other.
Why have I not heard anyone else in the media talk about these past projects and the opportunities they offer?
this is more bold action, but this time in an appropriate fashion. well, at least it would make me feel better to see things moving again. i'm sure the nasa engineers are shitting their pants right now wondering if they are going to fire off another shuttle before they know some definate answers.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
According to NASA, the shuttle orbits at 17,440 mph miles per hour and all shuttle missions combined have logged 19240 hours, for a total of about 333256040 miles. This works out to one fatality per 23,804,002 miles travelled.
According to The Public Purpose, in 1996 the US had 1.058 traffic fatalities per 100,000,000 passenger miles.
The statistics aren't directly comparable because the auto statistics are per passenger mile and the shuttle statistics are per mile, but if we assume most US vehicles have a single occupant (my observation while driving), being in the shuttle is about 4 times as dangerous per mile as riding in a car.
Terrycloth Lobster
"*ALL* future shuttle flights should be equipped with a Canadarm, ISS docking ring, EVA packs, and enough fuel to get to the ISS."
Good idea, but the problem is that, first of all, getting things into orbit is insanely expensive. And, the payload of the shuttle is limited. So what you propose is that on every flight the shuttle would carry a boatload of gear it may very well have no intention of using - that's pretty wasteful, and you don't get much return on your investment - the vast majority of the time, shuttle don't break up on reentry.
I'm the stranger...posting to
NASA should have 2 systems.
1) A honking powerful rocket to lauch heavy payload to wherever they want. Safety is not an issue, just reliability.
2) A small, safe crew module that re-enters the way Apollo did. Everything focused on getting the crew to space and back as safely as possible.
Imagine a mission set up this way. Payload launchs on a Monday. It may be a LEO science project, something you don't need to go the space station with. It safely achieves orbit, and on Tuesday, up goes the crew. They dock with the module, spend a week doing experiments, load up whatever results you need to bring back home and splash down in the ocean. Maybe, to decrease the descend rate, they'll have some extra fuel to slow themselves down (like that very old computer game!). Science module burns up on de-orbit. Or maybe it could be boosted up to hook up with the space station.
yeah, keep falling and try to miss the ground - and you're flying
Fleur de Sel
use U.S. Spy satillites to check the damage on Columbia, like Sept 11, they did nothing to try and prevent before with having knowledge of what was to come.
NASA has shown that it can pull together good science when that is its focus: Hubble, the Voyagers, other satellites. What it can not do is manage a complete space program with the vast number of engineering programs to oversee and coordinate.
I suggest the best thing at this point would be to start sub-contracting for systems which others have proven they can build reliably. The Russians, for example, have shown they can achieve reliable, high-capacity payload launches, plus they managed to keep a space station in orbit for a long time. Why not pay the Russian space agency, as a subcontractor, for handling some of this work, such as launching? It would allow NASA to focus on science, where we have good engineers anyway. Get rid of the shuttles! Declare victory and retreat! Nobody, absolutely nobody, thinks they are a good idea (or ever were).
p!yaya
"I honestly would vote libertarian if their candidates weren't usually total cooks."--slashdot poster
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The procedure for installing parts on the Space Station now that it's grown big enough, is for the Canadarm in the Shuttle to lift the new component out of the cargo bay and hand it off to CanadaArm 2, which is anchored near where the new part is going to be installed.
Canadarm 2 can travel like an inchworm over the surface of the ISS, both ends of the arm have grasping manipulators, and full video/control/power hookups, and every module on the ISS Has one or more docking ports for the Arm. So the arm is maneuvered end over end to a position near where a new part is to be installed, and takes the new component from the shuttle's arm and installs it. There aren't many pieces of the station now that need to be installed within one arm's reach of the shuttle's cargo bay (particularly the res of the Truss, and Solar Panels/Radiators)
It verbs. English, like most human languages without verbs. Do you what I'?
:-)
(To the sticklers, the apostrophe there was beyond deliberate.
--proper section--
I wish I was in a position to be a linguist or have one at hand and get a meaty grant to investigate language skills/usage/customs of the 'geek' community. Not just the superficial stuff like 'verbing' and strange mutations of english influenced by the structure and timing of Japanese and C, but the fundamental understandings of both the dynamics and structure of language. The relation of same to the specific mechanics is also fascinating to me. I have a friend who hates English for its constraints, but uses an intricate, nuanced implementation of the tongue that is highly effective when communicating with some, but impenetrable to those who are unable to contort their brains to see his logic.
To a non-trivial degree, I suspect that the homogenization and misuse of degree adjectives and verbs (amazing, wretched, awful, ultimate, amazing, best and need, hate, require) has contributed to a constriction of our basic ability to assign precise labels to concepts in our realm of internal representation. The net result of that is that language becomes less powerful as our denominations for thoughts all creep to the shrinkingly-available upper end of the spectrum. The longer this phenomenon continues without extraordinary and revolutionary (and consequently unpredictable) linguistic change, the more we will turn to jargonistic or degraded constructions away from the already-existing, currently-proven basic precepts.
The disappointment that I find in the trend is that those who should be most responsible for wrestling these trends to the ground and killing them (or at least giving them structure and harmony) are the ones with the most vested interest in promoting them. Those who are at risk of losing relevance can do the most damage to that for which they are responsible. (Parallels abound -- heck, look at the evolution of MS Word and Excel from good office tools to bloated monsters.) The current linguistic elite [word used not for its implications but for its meaning] requires fresh content and concept to justify their continued work. And, unfortunately for them and us, the pursuit of what I've come to call neo-archaism has been out of style since Eliot and the modernists rebelled against the prevailing school of thought and sparked the trend that that subordinated to integration of perception and amelioration of greater uncertainty the diversity of language. Interestingly, their efforts had precisely the opposite effect on the language, producing undermining effects that depopularized meaning and traditional structure in favor of the comprehensive powers of symbol and allusion. Not knowing much about the authors, I have to speculate about their responses to what they wrought. I can't but believe that Joyce would be all for the outcome (Finnegan's Wake has to be the climax of the trend!) But could Eliot, a man with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock rattling inside of him, be fully at ease with the careening path of postmodern deconstruction that he and his contemporaries set off? Whether a literary person or not, the average geek can't but be influenced by the inflation of pretension resulting from the relentless pursuit of "progress" by Academia. Unfortunately, the further you move from fundamentally sound structure, the more you have to resort to writing like de Lillo and Toni Morrison to fuel your self deception with novelty.
I have no idea how I got here, but that's how it goes. And there's a healthy chance that this is all bunk, as I really don't know enough about what I'm talking to properly base my speculations.
That's what the shuttle is right now, because it's not flying. No wait, I take that back...I suppose you could fall off a scaffold and break your neck. How come there's no one screaming for ejection seats for every single airline passenger? Death sucks, but trying to keep everyone alive no matter what would suck alot more. Seventeen years ago it was O-rings, last month it was a tile burn-through. And even if we spend a gazillion dollars on Shuttle II, it'll be something else.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Hell where's all the interest going that's being charged because of the deficit? How about this, balance the budget and give the money we would have thrown away in interest to the banks, to NASA!
My God! Where is the 380-400 Billion we spend a year on the Military Industrial Complex going? Why did we have to kill 79 American's during the Gulf War cause of friendly fire? Why does it seem every other day another Black Hawk or Offspree goes down - in non-combat situations!?! Any video game developer worth their salt would have invented a fully encripted, wireless battlefield tracking system so that a friendly couldn't even lock onto equivalent troops even if they tried - the system would lock them out! Those friendly troops would appear with colored markers over their heads/units/armory even if they were lost on the battlefield.
My point is, we, as a society, a nation, a civilization seem to reep so many more benefits from the work of scientists, and NASA specifically, and no benefits whatsoever with of all this money we are throwing at the military except how to kill each other more efficiently and in greater numbers.
Change our focus, end this path of destruction, embrace our enemies (aka the friendly-hug, no dictator will survive western cultural and economic influence because of it) and GIVE NASA A MUCH BIGGER BUDGET! They are not just about Space Exploration, you know?
Finally, lets have a national agenda to get to Mars. Once we do, we'll suddenly realize were killing our own planet burning fossil fuel's and dumping toxin's into the environment with no consideration of future generations. Please, let's stop thinking about what this means to the shareholder. We are all shareholders when it comes to the well being of this tiny blue world. NASA makes such a difference in all our lives, let's make a difference in theirs.
Peace.
JM
I get about as much "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." from CNN as I do slashdot.
The engineers in Japan build great cars, planes, satellites, etc. The Japanese engineers are underemployed because of the 10-year-old recession. Let's put them to good use.
The Space Island Group is planning to build space stations with 1/3 the gravity of earth before the end of the decade. And civilians will be able to go there.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Anyone familiar with working with large corporations
... and they have the audacity to project that there might be even a chance of resuming op's so soon!!
.. what needs to be said!
knows fully how enormous can be the 'internal inertia' resistent to change.
Anyone reading of nasa's manned-vehicle design, construction, and performance issues must be aware of just how serious nasa's problems are, and how they seem to permeate the entire organization.
This idea of such rapid-paced 'return to normal' planning is only another symptom of an organization that refuses to see the most obvious problems, and which refuses to stand-fast on safety-related issues, yet which is happy to project an imaginary "safety is everything to us" attitude.
Think of it.. no official analysis has even been done, no list of problems presented, no testing of any possible solutions
Arrogance? yes. Self-serving at the expense of safety? yes, again. Motivated by "the buck"?
Nasa: Either face realities or get out of the business.
tkj
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
A real comparison of the cost of the Titian IV-B vs. the Shuttles needs to take into account the entire build / support / fuel / launch equation. It looks as though Shuttles are good for around 20 missions each on average before they blow themselves to bits. Tack on another $100,000,000 or so a launch for the amortized cost of each Shuttle vehicle (and stuff like major Shuttle overhauls), and suddenly the Titan IV-B becomes much, much cheaper than the Shuttle to build / support / fuel / launch.
$t-15 billion is similar to the cost of designing the shuttle (and the ISS, for that matter). However, there is a quite big difference between the design process for the shuttle and the design process for a "space elevator", namely:
'Most' of the engineering required to build a space elevator is understood (well, so the proponents claim). The only thing missing is, ahem, the construction material simply does not exist today.
In theory, diamond or carbon nanotubes could do it. But nanotubes are so hard to make that I don't think there is a single example of an object make of nanotubes larger than a few microns, at best. Certainly no one has ever made an object of any use at all to the construction industry (even a small beam or rod would have immense use, so it is not through lack of interest).
The space elevator is no less "pure science fiction" than it was 50 years ago.
Ironically, the Columbia was flying just such a mission that I am saying the shuttle should be used for as it was carrying a science lab. What we need are two vehicles. One heavy lift similiar to the Russian Proton for taking supplies and crew to and from ISS and the shuttle for long term science missions. Why incur unneccesary risk inherent with a more complex system (shuttle) than necessary.
Don't get me wrong, I am as big of a space program advocate as anyone,... if the shuttle demand was less, NASA would have more money available to fund a successor or dare I say it? a Mars mission?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Well, the first paragraph was. Then you went and said this BS:
My God! Where is the 380-400 Billion we spend a year on the Military Industrial Complex going? Why did we have to kill 79 American's during the Gulf War cause of friendly fire? Why does it seem every other day another Black Hawk or Offspree goes down - in non-combat situations!?!
I work at Sikorsky Aircraft. If a helicopter "went down every other day", I'm sure the company would no longer be in business. There are thousands of Black Hawk helicopters in service and one is lost every couple of years, normally due to pilot error.
Finally, lets have a national agenda to get to Mars. Once we do, we'll suddenly realize were killing our own planet burning fossil fuel's and dumping toxin's into the environment with no consideration of future generations.
Now, I have absolutely no idea how to follow this train of thought: how will a Mars mission suddenly change everyone's mind about the environmental consequences of greenhouse gases and industrial waste?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You can get 22 000 kilos to low orbit on a Proton-M. The ISS has already received the Zarya and Zvezda modules from Proton rockets.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The Energia booster team has been split up with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The strap on boosters were built in the Ukraine and have now become the Zenit rocket which is used for the Sealaunch programme. The Russian workers have been deployed to other tasks such as the new Angara rocket which should fly this year.
Sadly it looks like Buran will never fly again. The Russians have continued work with a series of ongoing spaceplane projects.
There is the Multi-purpose Aerospace System (MAKS) a 30 tonne, 2 man orbiter with an 8 tonne payload which would be launched off the back of an aircraft, and a programme known as Orel which is developing a single-stage to orbit spaceplane by the name of the Tu2000.
Of course the ongoing crisis of the Russian economy means that these programmes are running almost on empty. The Orel programme has done work on scramjets in conjunction with the French, so it is possible that ESA might get involved at some stage in the future.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Honestly, they're 30 years old, we've needed something else for years. They scraped the Venture Star(x-33) program, but that could be revived and give us a cost effective single stage reusable orbital vehicle. If not the venture star why not give the Russians the money we spend on the shuttles(most of NASAs budget) to revive their Buran program. IIRC both the Venture Star and the Buran had an estimated TOC that was something like a magnatude less than the shuttles.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
OK, I give up... what exactly is a fall, and how do you resume one? No, I'm serious!
Fall == autumn, the season after summer. Regular shuttle flights could continue this autumn.
the first shuttle to go into space was the Columbia (R.I.P.) and she has been in active operation for the past 22 years.. in fact she was older than many /.ers.
lets face it folks, Columbia and her sisters were NEVER supposed to be in operation for this long.. iirc AIRLINES aren't allowed to fly planes which are more than 25 yrs old (i may be wrong on this one).. and the shuttle goes through MUCH more stress in reentry than your regular airliner.
the shuttles use outmoded technology and are designed for missions that are in many ways different from what they have to do now. should seven lives be risked just to get some satellites into space? or to get some supplies to the ISS? i would say the answer is no.. the US needs to get its priorities straight. start using rockets to get hardware into space, and then use the jettisoned hardware as part of the ISS, use a space equivalent of a delivery truck (pilot, copilot, navigator/arm controller ONLY, and lots of cargo space) for the kind of mission that absolutely HAS to have a human to handle the cargo and use a "space RV" which is what the shuttle was, to conduct some of the missions the shuttle did.. but i believe that once the ISS *REALLY* gets going a lot of those experiments that they were doing on the shuttle could be done just as easily on the ISS labs, with just the experiment components being brought to them via the "delivery truck" or by rocket.
lets face it folks, the shuttle as we know it is not the right tool for the job. so how about we put them out to pasture, and use the lessons they taught us to build a proper spacefleet?
oh i remember why now.. PORK..
ah well... forget it then
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I don't disagree, but I'd like to point out things are even more lopsided than you think. Take a look at the STS system over the time period 1972-1993, and the total budget it received divided by the total number of flights it made. You get an amortized flight cost of one billion dollars!</dr. evil> per launch.
Even assuming NASA's own wildly optimistic launch costs, each Shuttle launch cost $450 million. Those aren't numbers I just made up: those are numbers from NASA's Public Affairs Office.
So with the Shuttle, we're looking at $1.7 billion initial outlay and a recurring cost of $450 million per flight... whereas with a Titan IV-B, we're looking at literally a fraction of that cost, without the risk of killing off astronauts.
So a sortie on the Shuttle has the same odds as a B-52 crew during Nixon's 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi? That is of course with North Viet Nam firing every SAM they had in their direction but the BUFFs having really good radar jamming but with the North catching on that when a B-52 made its "nuclear turn" over the target its jammer antennas went out of horizontal and the radar could pick them up for about a minute but then the B-52 crews switching to coming at Hanoi from every compass direction and the B-52's stopped getting shot down. The B-52 crews were not happy campers for being sent over Hanoi while it seems people are still lined up to fly the Shuttle if it ever goes again. But then a combat crew has to go back for seconds and thirds and more, each trip a chance to get shot down, while a single Shuttle crew member maybe flies once, perhaps no more than 3 or 4 times.
Doing this means you have a 1 in 50 chance of dying by Shuttle.
The car has a 1 in 10^8 miles fatality rate. Suppose I drive (or ride) 12,000 miles a year for 70 years. That means I drive or ride close to a million miles in a lifetime, or have a 1 in 100 chance of dying by automobile.
Is the utility of a once-in-a-lifetime ride on the Shuttle similar to the utility of the use of automotive transport over the course of a lifetime?
Perhaps it can be said that we had to give up on the moon shots because of the expense, since we also were paying for the Vietnam war also.
Now, with the Iraq war and subsequent occupation/rebuilding costing American taxpayers a lot, I wonder what will become of the Shuttle and ISS programs.
Too bad the public is not as interested in the exploration of space as many of us are on Slashdot. That lack of interest may have contributed to the end of the moon flights also.
Eventually, the bills come in, and the taxpayers have to pony up. I suppose that is why so many of our allies are not backing the war in Iraq, they can't afford to get involved. Russia had to ask for funds to extend their increased involvement in the ISS since the Shuttles have been grounded until later on this year.
I note today that Italy has sent 500 soldiers to Afghanistan to help out there, so not everyone is holding out on these efforts.
I'm just saying that between Afghanistan and Iraq, and other places, the USA is spending a lot of $$ that would, if those problem areas did not need our attention, go to the space budget.
All of us remember comic books when we were young that showed imaginative space exploration scenarios, also the wonderful covers on Popular Mechanics over the years showed what might be done in the future of space exploration.
Since the USA has been attacked, (9-11) and remains threatened, then the tax dollars will have to go to the war on terror and then maintaining world peace.
Those of us who also want something spent on space can consider ourselves lucky that we got the Hubble Telescope up and running with Space Shuttle assistance. That'll have to do. Seems with an aging Shuttle fleet that the ISS will be hard to keep going in the future, since the USA and Russia are the main ones keeping it going, and $$ will be hard to come by.
As memories of 9-11 float by, I say that the war on terror has to come first.
It's hard to imagine the terror that was 9-11 for the people that were directly affected in the cities that were attacked. Perhaps we are still used to thinking "It can't happen to me."
If that were true, then there would be no need for our "war on terror", since "it can't happen to me". That's just not true, history attests to that. (Didn't we have a War to End all Wars?)
At my age, I doubt then, that I will see such dreams as "men traveling to mars", or "colonies on the moon." happen.
That's the way it goes.
And this is news because?
And in all other places humans have gone so far, right after the romantic exploration came economic exploitation based on the fact that we learned enough from the tragedies of the explorers to by and large, avoid them. After that, we got enough people into these domains to figure out how to use them profitably.
What's the difference between then and now? I'm not the only one who wonders if this is due to end-to-end goverment control, and your post has made me start thinking about this again.
We've been going to space since the 1960s. You're telling us that we still haven't learned enough to build a near-Earth vehicle with safety comparable to that of a DC-3?
You are also telling us that it's time to close down NASA as a space transportation organization, make the expertise it's got locked up that we've paid for available to the private sector, and see if the private sector can do a better job.
Sounds to me like you're speaking for an institutional culture that prefers to promote the "romance" of falling out of the sky in barbecued chunks (with one interesting exception) to saying "We've got a fleet of vehicles that belong in museums and we will not fly anyone else in them, if you don't like this, fire us."
Travel at the bleeding edge of the human envelope is supposed to be dangerous. Anybody who tells his insurance company "My employer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is sending me to Mars" is going to get his policy cancelled, and this is reasonable. Nobody has ever done it before. The moon isn't routine yet.
The information on atmospheric and reentry dynamics relevant to transportation in the domain the Space Shuttle uses exists by the terabyte. You're saying that nobody associated with NASA or the traditional aerospace establishment knows how to turn that info into designs for vehicles comparable to in safety to say, the DC-3, that don't cost 500 megabucks per trip?
After 40 years of trips into near-earth orbit, either near-earth orbit is not bleeding-edge or NASA and it's contractors have wasted one fuck of a lot of our money. If it isn't bleeding edge, why are we still sending people up in experimental vehicles which have to be virtually rebuilt between trips?
Plenty of people have already gone into the other management problems with the Shuttle, building flying machines that carry people is not supposed to be done in a way that parcels jobs out to as many Congressional districts as possible. Not if the intention is to build safe, reliable, cost-effective vehicles. Why hasn't anyone tried to do anything about this?
Personally, I'm not interested in helping pay the salaries of a culture whose employees believe that having us pay for their home mortgages is more important than human life.
You want real life? Why don't you look at some real corpses?
Tech Public Policy stuff
You're porbably talking of Energia rocket.
I believe the tiles are quite light and fragile- almost like rigid foam insulation. (?)
All you rocket scientists and aerospace engineer types: would it be possible to make an expendable aluminum or steel protective cap for the wing leading edges?
I agree.
I think Saddam is an evil person and we should get rid of him, but I think space exploration exceeds Iraq as a national priority.
Our military budget is going to be 500 billion dollars a year by 2006. I would rather see 300 billion, 6 aircraft carriers, and SSTOs. If anyone attacks us, we will just drop an asteroid on them, or aim a solar mirror at their country and burn up all their food.
Plus if we found a rock with plenty of palladium on it, well, that would be worth the expense of bringing it back - when you figure the environmental destruction of palladium mining and that there is --only one-- source.
This is my sig.
VentureStar didn't work. The design was fundamentally screwed because the lifting body did not generate enough lift or stability, so they had to add more control surfaces, which increased weight. The new fangled tanks were the best hope for keeping the weight low enough to be usable. When those cracked and it became apparent that they would have to use stronger, heavier tanks, then the weight envelope got screwed even more.
So VentureStar didn't work because it couldn't work. That doesn't mean SSTO is dead, it just means that somebody besides Lockmart should build it. Really, the right way to do space would have been DC-X
This is my sig.
Good luck with that... I would rather play Russian Roulette alone than fly in a 25-year old, decrepit space-burial-casket.
What advantage do reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) have over the expendable (ELVs) ones?
COST?
It is definitely not cost -the Russians are quite happy with the economics of their Soyuz ELVs. It has been shown over and over again that the Soyuz ELVs are more cost efficient. Commercial operators like Ariane and Antrix can easily do the heavy frieghter work. Parts on the shuttle are replaced so often that the shuttles are practically rebuilt every 8 years [ saw this on CNN ].The kind of support infrastructure that the shuttle program needs is enormously expensive. The most important thing IMO, is the huge SUNK costs that the shuttle program involves. It is very difficult to upgrade the shuttle without rendering a large part of your infrastructure useless.
SAFETY?
This is certainly a redundant head. The ELVs like the Soyuz are much safer when compared to the shuttles [who can think of a Soyuz disaster?] . Since no component is reused, the risk of failure is reduced. You will not have the constant worry of having passed over some critical component during inspection.
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS?
Now that the ISS is somewhat operational, there is no need for experiments to be conducted aboard the shuttles - that can be done aboard the ISS thus negating the need for a roomy crew capsule. The tiny crew capsules of ELVs will be more than sufficient.
SATELLITE RECOVERY AND REPAIR?
Bah. Rebuild and relaunch.
PS: I might be TOTALLY wrong on any/all the above points.
Take 200 billion dollars, screw the nuclear treaties, and build the Orion...
This is my sig.
Couldn't you have just used the word 'autumn' insted of 'fall' in this case?
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
i can see nasa's view point of which is cheaper, a space shuttle, or a shuttle crew.
but consider this argument, "have the ability to go to the i.s.s. if there is a problem."
something else is nagging at me, "could the first 30 minutes of the desent on final be slowed down such that given sloppy tile replacement, that inceneration of the craft is 'greatly' reduced?".
This is being reported (new as of about 9pm Wed, 3/19/2003), but not being reported elsewhere yet:
" NASA Finds Columbia Shuttle's Flight Recorder... Captures information from dozens of sensor locations, raising hope that investigators will soon have new trove of data... " http://www.drudgereport.com/