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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?
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.
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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
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?
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
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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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
Score: -1, Flamebait
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.
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.
As CNN's investigation into the shuttle crash enters its thirty-third week, we begin our review by showing the tape of a little streak of light in the sky for the six hundred-eleventh time. We then talk to a janitor and a bookkeeper, both of whom used to work for NASA and claim that a faulty paper towel dispenser in the sixth-floor mens' bathroom disrupted the job of the middle manager whose job it was to get the attention of the upper-manager & have him inform command that there maybe could've been a problem.
Who broke the paper towel holder you may ask? Oh, I don't know.... SATAN!?
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
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.
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>NASA space flights should stay suspended until
>they can develop a next generation launch
>vehicle that is safe.
What does "safe" mean? Launching people into orbit and returning them again isn't fundamentally a proposition.
A next-generation spaceframe may very well take advantage of lessons we've learned with the Shuttle, and certainly won't be vulnerable to any issues found to be fatal in it. Nonetheless, I'm sure, this being reality, that brand new flaws and weaknesses will be exposed.
Please note: upgrade to the latest Microsoft operating system because it's finally safe.
NASA should resume flights as soon as they determine that whatever actually was the catalytic element in the Columbia loss isn't a structural issue. If it's a "there a 1% chance of it happening on any given flight" issue, flights should resume immediately, while parallel efforts are made to reduce that chance, if practical, and also while further parallel efforts work towards a future spaceframe.
The Challenger "O" ring issue was one of shoddy workmanship by the lowest bidder, that would have raised its ugly head time and time again. Columbia... was the foam flawed? Was it wind-sheer? Fluke? The investigation will tell us.
"Oh no... he found the
"*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.
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
Geez, you wouldn't even need thrusters with the right design. Just have the arm or an astronaut place it adrift from the shuttle, then have the shuttle spin a half-revolution on its longitudinal axis.
The whole time the satellite is busy taking pictures and recording pictures.
Then do another half-revolution and retrieve the satellite.
Man, all we're really talking about here is a camera!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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.
>Myself, I'm not sure I'd take the word of a sportswriter.
Oh goodie, argument from authority. I suppose you don't put much weight in physics theories from patent clerks, either?
The "rebuttals" at hal-pc.org are pathetic nitpicks. They do nothing to undermine the basic thrust of Easterbrook's positions, which seem to be that the Shuttles are:
1) Outrageously expensive to build and operate compared to any other lift system.
2) More dangerous to their occupants than any other manned booster.
3) Incapable of living up to most of the promises that NASA made to Congress in order to get them built in the first place.
One of the "rebuttals" at hal-pc is so ignorant it defies description. Easterbrook asserts that, "a rational person might have laughed out loud at the thought that, although school buses are replaced every decade, a spaceship was expected to remain in service for 40 years." The author at hal-pc twitters on in his rebuttal about the B-52, and about how it may end up with a lifespan of over 90 years. Ignoring the fact that the first B-52 flew in 1954, which means the craft will need to remain in service for another 40 years (a completely baseless assertion), the type of energies and forces Shuttles are exposed to simply dwarf those experienced by a B-52. I'm guessing the Shuttles experience more forces acting on them in every launch / landing cycle than a B-52 can expect to experience in its entire operational lifetime. You might as well compare the Shuttle to a paper airplane. Even the SR-71, which the hal-pc author also cites, operates under conditions that are vastly less hostile to materials than those experienced by the Shuttles each and every launch.
As usual, Shuttle proponents can't come up with any positive arguments of their own for supporting the continuation of the Shuttle program, so instead resort to insane levels of nitpicking regarding any arguments against continuing the failed, costly, dangerous program.
>Myself, I think Easterbrook simply doesn't accept the fact
>some things have high inherent risk.
Manned spaceflight is inherently risky. That doesn't mean you should take on unnecessary risks - particularly when you don't gain anything by undertaking those risks, and when you're spending substantially more in the process to boot. I haven't read the Easterbrook articles in some time, but I believe he might even make a similar point in one of his articles. There was no good reason to trade in the Saturn V for the Shuttle. NASA lied to Congress, and the result is the expensive, deadly boondoggle we're stuck with today. This mistake should be rectified. The Shuttle should be scrapped, existing alternatives (such as Soyuz) utilized in the interim, and new, truly superior replacement manned vehicles should be developed. Once which are truly cheaper to build and operate than the current generation of manned launch vehicles, and which are safer, too, regardless of whether these vehicles are radically different from existing disposable boosters or simply the natural evolution of their design.
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?"
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 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.
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