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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."
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
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.
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
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.
Not entirely realistic. You want another 6-10 year drought in the US manned space program while this development takes place? A number of projects were started and cancelled/disbanded/abandoned and I'm not sure any real active projects are underway. If you use the Apollo program as a model it could be 5-7 years from initial designs to usable product.. (I believe the shuttle design process took LONGER, starting in early 70s and making first real manned spaceflight in '81(?)).. and hopefully we could do it faster, but in the interim the ISS fell back to earth, Hubble may have had enough component failures to be currently offline (if it hasn't re-entered too) and public sentiment is even WORSE for NASA.
Ah.. we should return to the days of Pentiums because at this point they're so solid. Uh, no thanks. Enough current-gen unmanned rockets are available, though I'm not sure any have the lifting capability to get ISS components (probably the largest shuttle payloads) into orbit. And then there's rendevous, docking/joining of components, etc.. not easily done via unmanned missions. So send astronauts! Oh wait.. they're still waiting for a new vehicle that's 3-4 years off. Oops.
Columbia's demise (imho) will have a major component of its failure be the age of the airframe, compromised ground review and one/two external influences that inflicted some sort of damage (foam strike, increased dynamic stress on the wing at liftoff, a strike by space junk, compromise of the RCC.. take your pick). The other orbiters do not share a number of Columbia's limitations (increased weight and age, mostly) and should suffice... but the whole affiar should put the spurs to NASA (and more importantly, Congress) to get another manned (or manned/unmammed combo) program in the pipeline to actual completion.
my $0.02; take or pitch as you will.
-r
-'fester
-'fester
Finally someone with some brains around here. Astronauts are explorers and they know the risks of spaceflight before they go up. They make what maybe a flight every three years at most? There may not be many jobs that are more dangerous than a 1/50 chance of dying every three years, but you still will not find a shortage of adventurous individuals who will brave those odds in the spirit of the explorer.
No, the space station was placed in that orbit as a compromise so that both the American (Shuttle) and the Russian (Soyuz) vehicles could get to it. Baikonur and Cape Canaveral are at quite different lattitudes. ISS is half way in between.
> Let's do it over. And do it right.
I'll be honest. I agree with most of your criticisms. But your remedy would be disasterous. If we axe the shuttles and drop ISS into the Pacific, you are starting from square one. The US population isn't interested in constructing anything grand anymore. If we had nothing in orbit, things would stay that way.
If you stop, you'll never get started again. The only politically viable option is to move along one step at a time. Let's make sure that we make each little step count.
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We're in violent agreement. There was no reason for the ISS's compromise orbit. It should have been positioned for most effective getting-to via Soyuz. Groceries come up via unmanned rockets and people ride the capsule. Much better for the ISS and it's much cheaper to put the Americans on a plane to Baikonur for a Soyuz ride than to put them in the shuttle.
And you're probably right about that all-stop meaning that we're quitting, but that's too depressing to contemplate before noon on a Saturday (where I am).
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The romantic side of exploration is a contrivance to compensate for the fact that most returns are so long term as to be uneconomical and so dangerous as to beyond a sane person's capability. What makes the adventure worthwhile is the practical knowledge gained from the act of doing, and the application of that knowledge. We cannot get the practical knowledge without being there.
If we do as you say and junk everything to start over, all we will get is the loss of years of practical experience and a set of whole new problems. We can't think of everything, even when we know these things exist. The system is too complex, the interactions too numerous. I was on one project that was crippled by two well known effects. The problem was that we just did not have the experience to know how those effects would affect our science. That knowledge is now available. It was expensive and painful to acquire, but I believe there was no cheaper way to acquire it.
We need to build new LEO infrastructure. We need to build other delivery vehicles. We also need practical experience so we can make those new technologies as practical and useful as possible. We cannot sit in front of our computer running simulations and thinking about how wonderful it would be in space. Simulations are fun because they never knocks us down and tell us we are wrong. Real life is hard because it does.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"*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
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
The feasibility of designing a single-stage launch vehicle has been explored in depth over the past few years. Proponents of the shuttle program always seem to discourage NASA from making any substantive investments into making said vehicle a reality. In fact, I would suggest that these people believe there is no real political pressure to expand the space program beyond where it's been for the past two decades.
For those who need a political kick in the ass before they're willing to get to work on upgrading our space program, all I have to say is one word: CHINA. Sure, their efforts are no where near what America has achieved (hell they haven't even sent a man into same yet) but you can be sure that within 10 or 15 years, we will be playing catch-up.
And you think "Spam in a can" (astronauts in an unsteerable, not reusable reentry-capsule) are safer? Today you need a couple of runways to land on. Capsules need Aircraft Carriers to be fished out of a whole ocean as landing place.
Oh, would you kindly look at the safety record for capsule flights? You'll find that while most American capsules survived (Apollo 1: complete loss on ground, Apollo 13: complete loss but for the fact that the moon lander was still attached., Apollo-Soyuz: Toxic fumes on descent cause at least one unconcious...) the USSR had their own row of failures and deaths with parachutes tangling, sudden decompression and so on.
As to payload carriers: They are available. Or do you believe every single satellite is out into orbit by a space shuttle?
There is little they can do. NASA originally planned to produce a tile repair kit for the Shuttle. Contracts were given to Martin Marietta around 1980, but I don't think it ever flew. The plan was to use a paste to fill in small cracks and dents in tiles and carry blocks to fill larger gaps in the thermal protection.
I think NASA ditched the plan for a number of reasons, amongst them were that the tile system seemed to be more resilient than people thought. The Shuttle routinely lost tiles, but none of them were ever in critical areas. Then, NASA introduced thermal blankets over most of the Shuttle's surface which got rid of the troublesome tiles once and for all - apart from in the most critical areas.
There are serious worries that an astronaut moving close to the tiles would cause more damage than he could repair. The tiles can be damaged by a fingernail - so they are horribly vulnerable.
The real problem is that the outside of the Shuttle has few handhold that would be needed to replace tiles. The underside is particularly smooth and would be almost impossible to work on.
I've got a nasty feeling that the committee that is formed to investigate the disaster is going to find a repetition of the workings that contributed to the loss of Challenger, the Shuttle was being hit by debris - it survived, so obviously it was more robust than people thought. Instead of fixing the problem, they congratulated themselves on a resilient spacecraft.
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?
Soyuz can carry three people. The main problem is that the Russians are so strapped for cash that there are probably only three or four Soyuz capsules available.
Best wishes,
Mike.
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?"