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Shuttle Politics
TheLoneCabbage writes "Texas Rep. Joe Barton has been quoted today in an AP article saying that he is in favor of grounding the remaining fleet of shuttles. 'If we have to stop manned spaceflight for five or 10 years, then so be it.' The fine gentleman from Texas displays his outstanding grasp of statistics and engineering stating that 1 failure in every 62.5 flights is NOT acceptable. According to OpenSecrets.org this may have more to do with Joe's friends than how much attention he paid to his math teachers." There's also an interesting piece on testimony given by the first Shuttle program manager.
He has some good points. We do need to replace the shuttle. But, his campaign contribution lists kind of outline the whole "conflicting interests" problem that he has here.
We already have a Senator Disney, might as well have a Senator Lockheed-Martin.
Maybe we could start a group of citizens and buy our congressmen back?
Disclaimer: I am not trolling.
But how is it that we have had troops (US gov. employees) all over the world doing the most dangerous things for decades but 7 astronauts are unreasonable losses? They knew what they were getting into, I assure you, just like any soldier. Thousands have given their lives for science and would gladly do so again. These scientists/adventurers/gov. employees were willing to die for the embetterment of the human race - why should cowards decide where the brave may go?
if the problem is kids being horrified at school watching the space shuttle then put the feed on delay.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
From this link:
"Barton's moment in the sun, up until late last year, was his advocacy of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)."
So, apparently, this guy's not all bad...(although, apparently, that was politically motivated as well...)
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Or, more accurately, NASA-controlled development of manned space flight.
Given the huge amount of private-sector activity in the suborbital market currently, and NASA's pitiful track record in developing new launch vehicles, it's not at all unlikely that simply getting NASA out of the way will yield an economically feasable set of replacement vehicles in a shorter time frame for less money.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has made 1500 successful launches in a life of over 30 years. Several hundred of those have been manned, with only one catastrophe.
Unlike the Shuttle, the Soyuz is not a reusable craft. The Shuttle was designed to be reusable to cut down on the cost of manned spaceflight - the irony being that the cost of the two lost Shuttles is greater than all the money spent on Soyuz craft so far.
More information here.
Given that Joe Barton represents the state of Texas, home of NASA, this is a major surprise.
Most Texans (and especially Houstonians) take extreme pride in the space programme. You only have to look at the name of Houston's NBA and MLB franchises - the Rockets and the Astros - to see how synonymous the words "Houston" and "space" have become. ("Houston" was even the first word spoken on the moon.)
But lets look at the rationale behind this "frank" admission.
The longer the shuttle fleet is grounded, the more likely it is that the fleet will be put through a series of expensive upgrades and overhauls. Furthermore, the more likely it is that serious amounts of money will be spent on looking at the next generation of NASA manned orbiters. (There's no way that George W. Bush, the former Governor of Texas, will want to go down in history as the President that mothballed NASA and destroyed a national symbol of pride - that's not the way he wants to be remembered.)
And just who'll benefit from all that extra money pouring into space research? Why, astronautical and aeronautical engineering companies, oil, power and chemical firms, big and small, especially those that are based in (yes, you guessed it) Texas.
Is grounding the shuttle fleet for the next ten years a good idea? Well, I don't have all the facts but the failure rate does suggest that the programme does need to be more closely examined.
Is a new orbiter the best way forward? Again, I'm not on the NASA payroll so I'm not the most informed individual but I'd argue that we need a reusable platform for getting to and from the International Space Station now, and a more modern, flexible and efficient replacement ASAP.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
'Commercial Fishing' is actually the world's most dangerous job, closely followed by 'Timber Cutters and Loggers'.
Being a Soldier, Fireman, or Astronaut is not even in the Top 10.
Airline Pilots and Railroad Signal Operators are in there though.
Astronauts have a lot more in the way of glory and probably money than fishermen too.
You ask people who Neil Armstrong was. I bet a lot more people know that than know who Neil Kinnock was.
source
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Let's look at basic facts of manned American flights to date.
Project Mercury: 6 flights, no deaths.
Project Gemini: 12 flights, no deaths, 1 abort.
Project Apollo: 18 flights (including Apollo-Soyuz). 3 fatalities (non-launch-related), 1 abort (in-flight, no injuries)
Project Skylab: 3 flights, no aborts.
So, by the end of 1975, Americans have flown into space only 39 times. Thirty-nine. Barely enough to tempt fate, it seems.
Space Transportation System: 113 missions, 14 fatalities (in-flight).
Everyone knows that spaceflight is still very dangerous. In the case of a Shuttle, the odds just caught up. That's not a failure.
In the Challenger disaster, NASA and its contractors failed, as they did with Apollo 1, to use their imagination properly to see the real numbers as real chances for catastrophe.
In the Columbia accident, NASA didn't go the extra mile in determining damage on the orbiter, but all other decision making appeared on-target, IMHO. Not that there were many options that they could have presented to the astronauts to save orbiter and crew.
The main problem with the Shuttle right now is to protect the critical tiles. Ice will always form on the orbiter's ET and all flights have returned with some ding damage from ice. Foam falling from the ET was obviously too much damage for Columbia to withstand.
I propose an aeroshell that fits under the orbiter body where it mounts to the ET. It would be integral to the ET, and cover the RCC and underbody of the orbiter, including part of the nose. The only change in flight that would be required is for the orbiter or the ET to be given thrusters that push the ET forward (or orbiter to aft) to clear the aeroshell that covers the leading edges and nose.
That, and perhaps we can rig a harness where we can place inept Congressmen under the STS exhaust to show them how things really work.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
--I don't want them grounded, but I would like to see them all used for one more trip up, then left up there. Turn them into the first step of having a shuttle fleet between LOE and the moon and mars. It's the take off and landing to earth that beats on them bad, but they are fine once in orbit. They could be additions to the space stations, perhaps the cargo bays retrofitted before last launch to additional fuel tanks and better crew cabin areas, purposes like that. No need to waste them, just use them more efficiently. On the ground they would just be stupid tourist traps, up in space, still dang useful. I see little reason a shuttle couldn't have smaller boosters installed and a larger fuel tank filled once in orbit, then used for manned missions to mars and whatnot. It's that HUGE fuel cost to escape earth and reach orbit that is expensive and dangerous, so WHY keep doing that over and over and over again? A fraction of that fuel used once leaving from orbit would take you to mars. Launch them up there ONCE, then it's UP there and we got us "space rockets" then. We're reinventing the wheel every time we launch and re land one. OK idea when first proposed, now time to move on. I see it just exactly like they have done with B-52's, they have thought of so many uses for them that go beyond their original missions and specs. Let's just do some more creative modding with what we got and paid for already instead of throwing them away or continual beating on them.
I've thought this for more than a decade now, seems a duh to me.
Dumb rockets can carry cargo and occasional passengers up better, and we can land passengers better too, our old "splashdown" into the water worked quite well..
Ok, so if the true destruction odds are 1:56.5, that means that over time, 1 out of every 56.5 flights the shuttle will be destroyed. That's a 1.7% chance of catastrophic failure. Because as we've seen, there are no survivors. Those actually seem a little high. What are the odds of other methods of space travel?
Odds must be taken in context and with the benefits and outcomes weighed against each other.
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
If I were told that my child had a 1 in 56.5 chance of getting a fatal genetic disease, I'd certainly think twice before have a child, and I'd definitely have any possible screening tests done.
In *your* opinion, the risk of death to people you don't know (probably) is low enough to justify letting them volunteer for a mission. Their spouses may think an almost 2% chance of death is far too high.
Regardless of the political motivation behind it, an examination does need to be made, and the risks adequately explored.
As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000. I had trouble getting an exact figure, but I think that's a conservative estimate of troop numbers and the 129 is an official DoD number from a couple of weeks ago. One place said there 110,000 troops around the Quwait border alone. So the chancces of getting killed in this latest ware were 1:1162. Pretty slim.
That's an incredibly specious arguement--if space travel scaled to the point that air travel is at, we would naturally expect the rate of failure to decrease--it would have to, as we wouldn't expand to that point until it had.
It is a real issue, but bad analogies don't help with illuminating anything.
Per dollar, per mile it bloody well should be.
You think so? NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD. Seriously. If you or others want to bitch about the way NASA is funded, back it up with some facts, and look around. I'll even help you!
NASA Budget
This reality check brought to by the Office of Management and Budget!
when you consider these VOLUNTEERS enter the most dangerous and inhospitable of environments known to man (a vacum), and return safely in nearly 99% of missions, then the risk becomes more acceptable.
To ground the program due to what seems to me an exceptional track record given the extreme nature of their work is beyond senseless, a disaster occured in which information can be garnered to prevent such catastrophies from occuring again. Because a ship was lost does not justify reasoning that the entire organization is flawed. This is high risk work people, and generaly high risk work runs into intermittent tragedies that illuminate problems to be prevented int the future.
Now at this point im sure plenty of people will chime in, that what if these tragedies can be averted by further research and development... etc.... This logic however falls short because we cant prepare for every possible imaginable disaster, we cant protect ourselves from millions of potential disasters that are beyond boundless in scope and possibilities. An ill timed solar flare on a certain region of the sun could wreck ireprable damage on all the electrical systems on earth, so should we just not go into space at all considering that may happen (and trust me, we dont have the tech to protect ourselves from a strong enough flare)
so then the real question becomes acceptable risk. is a 1-2% failure rate acceptable? I would have to say yes, and most risk-analysers would agree.
the second question is risk vs profit. this is far more tricky, as many have mentioned what THEY believe to be pointless or fruitless expiraments done in space, which provide little benfit given the risk and cost of the endeavor. In my honest opinion almost any reasonable research in space is at this point priceless, even manned research is of an in-estimable value to mankind. The results may not lend any imediatly profitable outcomes to buisness ventures, but on the whole the entire endeavor does many things, it first of all provides a wealth of knowledge otherwise completly unattainable on earth to the scientific knowledge of all humanity. We are talking about research that is impossible to obtain otherwise. Second of all it gives us, humans, a goal beyond this planet, a sense of a greater direction, a destiny of sorts that we can all build towards. I know that sounds grandiose and over the top, but look at our cultures far back into time, breaking boundries and pushing limits to find new things has been the legacy of humans since we could write on walls. And lets face it folks, as far as earth goes we're begging to reach the boundries here-in.... the space program has been giving us a new frontier that is important for the well-fare of the human psyche and our global culture. Thirdly the program creates jobs on more levels than NASA, there are contractors, and the companies that support the contractors, most people in the end are somehow connected to NASA through the MANY companies that support, supply, or buy from her.
while no-one has seriously proposed to stop NASA, grounding her is a similar action in that it would kill a great amount of drive behind her development. And in my opinion NASA's development is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT things earth should be doing right now.
i agree that reviewing the processes behind how NASA operates should happen frequently, but hampering her as well is worse than foolish, it is counter-productive, and potentialy catostrophic in it's own right. If anything we should be pumping more money into appropriate portions of NASA and concentrating on creating and achieving even grander goals in shorter spans of time.
a manned mission to mars should have been accomplished years ago.... there should have been a manned (or at least unmanned) station ON the moon decades ago, there should have been hundreds more probes sent through our measly solar system, and many more things.
the space race has died, and needs to be revived for the greater good of all.
If commercial space ventures can get a jump-start soon (as they seem nearly there), then we may find ourselves finaly advancing at an acceptable rate.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
As you said yourself two of the arguments don't really hold. There just isn't any money in reparing satelites, LEO or geosynchronous, just lanuch a new one. And geography takes care of the rest. There is one left though, return of heavy objects. Granted it's not that much of an issue, what heavy objects are there to be returned in one piece? A few hundred kilos will go a long way towards deorbiting anything worthwhile. There simply isn't hundreds of tons sitting up there waiting to come down.
But the answer is not that hard anyway. You design something that does deorbit a ton or two (it's not that hard to do). I'd bet that that could be done cheaper than the cost of a few shuttle flights. You only need a large enough parachute (perhaps metal vanes initially) and landing it in the ocean. Since there's no people involved landing shock etc can be much higher.
Looking at the dollars involved, the cheap thing is probably to scrap the existing shuttle fleet, and redesign non-reusable craft to go atop existing US rockets. Granted they weren't built for manned flight, but operational records aren't that bad for some of the more tried and tested designs.
Hell, if memory serves the Titan IV is cheaper per shot than a shuttle launch, and you don't even have to bother about what to do with the junk once you've used it! ;-)
Stefan Axelsson