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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."
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?
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?
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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?
This point WAS being addressed by the European Space Agency when they were still considering their own shuttle. In fact, This Guy's project came out of that research.
On a side note, Michel's jump is to take place just a few miles from where I live. :-)
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.
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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.
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.
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Columbia wass the only shuttle that has real difficulity getting to ISS (this was covered after the origional accident). Now all shuttles can get there, though admitidly not all orbits make it easy. Though we can get around that. (send an atlas up with supplies, a few space suits, and a second rocket designed to change orbits, or devise a way to refuel. Nothing easy of course)
And has been pointed out, nearly all shuttle missions are ISS missions. If you arrive at the ISS and someone says "The shuttle won't get you home safely", then you just sit tight, in crowded conditions. In fact given a docked shuttle that can't safely get back home I could see engineers devisiong a way to use it as a part of ISS since it is there. A second airlock for remaining shuttles would have to be added, and a lot of details, but getting things into orbit is hard, if you got something on the ISS you want to use it for the ISS as much as possiable. Who cares that it is mostly useless, if nothing else use it as a private office for someone who just wants to be alone.