Shuttle Missions Will Be Monitored From Space

los furtive writes "According to this news article NASA has made an agreement with the U.S. military so that all future shuttle missions will be monitored by National Imagery and Mapping Agency satellites."

Comments

Re:and this will help how?

[zeno_2]

#2 - There has been some talk recently of making the cabin be able to eject. If a problem is discovered, they can simply eject the cabin. As for how it gets back to earth, I would assume they just come back via Apollo mission capsule style, with a heat shield and parachute.

I dont think our shuttle has any sort of ejectable cabin. The russian shuttle that they copied from nasa (dont remember the name) had an ejectable cabin, and a few other nice features, but I do not think nasa has incorporated any of that.

The reason I see this being of help is that were dealing with human lives up there, and having the ability to check out the shuttle before going back to earth is going to help make things much safer I think. In the article it stated that the national imagary and mapping agency approached nasa to see if they wanted any shots taken of the shuttle, but nasa declined. That shuttle then came down and exploded, as well all know. I know that when we look at this now, we can pick out all the little things that weren't done right, and say that these certain people are bad, but it happens. Putting this extra step into checking the shuttle out should make it safer though, and having the ability to get shots of the shuttle from satellites, and having an easy way to do so can only be good.

Re:and this will help how?

[ncc74656]

There has been some talk recently of making the cabin be able to eject. If a problem is discovered, they can simply eject the cabin. As for how it gets back to earth, I would assume they just come back via Apollo mission capsule style, with a heat shield and parachute.

IIRC, NASA considered an F-111-style cabin-ejection system for the Shuttle in the early stages of design. It more than likely got dropped because of the added weight that would be needed for the latching system, an ablative heat shield, extra connections between the cabin and the rest of the shuttle, etc.

Columbia was originally built with ejection seats for the pilot and commander, but they were removed during a refit in the mid-'80s. At the altitude and speed at which Columbia broke up, it's not likely the seats would've done any good if they had still been in there anyway...and with only two of them, the other five astronauts would've been SOL.

Re:Is this a "feel-good" response?

[MyNameIsFred]

As has been reported, that was not a black box. It was a data recorder that survived reentry. There is a difference between a black box and a data recorder. A black box is specifically designed to survive accidents, that data recorder had no such special protection. Calling that data recorder a black box, is like calling that video camera whose tape survived a black box. Neither was.

Hindsight

[overlordhab]

Strange how emergency procedures are ussually seen as to costly. Then the shit hits the fan and suddenly the budget for emergency procedures are almost more than the original project. I think its great that they can now monitor the shuttles entry. They did not find a lot of it after the crash and (from my point anyway) the best clues as to what happened so far are from amuteur footage. I'm suprised NASA did not have its own video cameras pointing to the shuttle on entry or lift of. On TV you see that one video clip of some camera mounted on the nose of a rocket that lifts of. Why does the shuttle not have one mounted? I'm sure a camera like that would have noticed the tile being broken. hmmmmmm the camera though migh get fried on reentry. Don't you just love budgets cuts.