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NASA Redesigning The Space Shuttle
ekarjala writes "To avoid wing damage from foam separation in the future, NASA is planning a redesign of the existing shuttle. Seems to me it is time to consider a new design rather than a redesign -- let's take the lessons we've learned and create a space craft for the 21st century rather than re-treading a 30-year-old design."
The way I see it, our space shuttles have done remarkable well in the past, and they continue to do remarkably well today.
Why change what works? Isn't that what we network administrators have said for years? If it ain't broke... don't fix it!
There are still "bugs" in the shuttle fleet, and NASA is creating "patches" for them. Someone please tell me what's horribly flawed about our existing shuttle fleet. What critical feature has yet to be added?
Um, I may be the only one to actually READ the linked article, but it really doesn't say that they're redesigning the Space Shuttle. They're considering a new design for the part that is supposedly responsible for causing the crash. To say that they're redesigning the shuttle I think is overstating things.
There is no magical autocad plugin that just redesigns the shuttle system. Just because we all want to see some sort of B5 or Star Trek design hurtling up into space, holodeck and all, doesn't make it worth while to scrap an entire group of shuttles, their support systems and the related industries behind it.
In any case, if you want to do something about the sad state of the space program, push for giving the private sector the ability to do what NASA does. There is where your real innovation will take place.
Also John Glenn has several times stated that the science is important and that the ISS needs to got to full staffing of 6 or 7 ASAP. The re-entry sphere would allow that to happen rapidly and is likely why he supports that idea.
Disclaimer : I do live in the Huntsville area, but I am not in anyway affliated with Marshall SFC or NASA.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
on the flip side of a new shuttle design is the maturity of the existing shuttle. Many of the kinks and problems have been ironed out. Think of it in terms of software, which do you think works better: version 1.0 or version 9?
In some respect you can consider a new design version 2 and we could apply some of the things we learned from our existing shuttle, but with the new design comes new technology which will have a similar path of ironing.
I am not saying a new design is a bad idea, just that we have a significant investment in our current shuttle and thats why it has been around so long.
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.
I think the reason they are fixing the old design rather than using a new one is obvious - money and commitment.
First the money part: while in the long run it will cost more to keep the old fleet alive rather than build new, cheaper shuttles, the short term investment is much lower for the redesign. Especially in this day and age with a monster defecit.
Second, commitment. We have a manned space station up there. On that (this is a guess) will not stand up well to be un-manned. Yes, we have russian rockets we can use, but nasa isn't too happy about not having a backup method to get people up/down. A new shuttle would take 5-10 years to design, build, and test. By that time, all the money invested in the space station would be a waste it it was un-manned for so long.
just my 2 cents.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
But let's look at something:
Time
- It would take minimum of 10 years to design, build, and test a working model.
- We've got the ISS flying right now that needs service and crew changes-- and more often than the Russian Soyuz can provide. While I'm on the Soyuz-- their last flight wasn't so hot either. That was a new model, too. Did you know it takes 18 mos. to build a Soyuz capsule? Did you know they barely have enough money and crew to meet the six month demand for the ISS? Do you trust the Russians to go drum up people from the unemployment line to ramp up production? Do you... ah, nevermind.
- Space is not easy or safe. The fact that we've only lost three crews in forty years of space flight is totally remarkable! It is not a safe environment. Tito and the other dude who flew on the Soyuz took their life into their own hands-- and hell I would do the same in a heartbeat! But it is not safe. It is extremeley dangerous and every astronaut knows that. Citizens forget that.
Money- It will take billions of dollars to pick one of the many designs for the next orbital plan/vehicle, build and test ONE.
- We also face increased spending on defense, security, and welfare. (Damn terrorists, criminals, lazybones, and old folks) Which one will you cut?
People see NASA's record and watch Enterprise every week and think it's an easy thing. It is not!I TOTALLY agree that we do need a new vehicle. But we can't just mothball the Shuttle and stick 'em in museums. They have to be toughened up and fly for the next ten years until the new vehicle is ready. I REALLY want a new vehicle now! But I am fatally realistic: the shuttle will be permanently grounded, the borrowcrats will cut NASA some more causing the space plane to take too long, and the ISS will probably do the SpaceLab thing.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
NASA could also hire launch hardware, instead of building it by themselves. it would give a boost to the market, the know they have a customer with certain needs, and they will make sure it is cost-effective. If NASA put up an 'ad' saying: we ned a man rated launcher, for at least 4 launches a year, an unmanned launcher, capacity XXXX et.c., i'm sure SOMEONE would come up with sumtin useful. If they did that, maybe Russia's behemoth ENERGYA booster would become used again, it was awesome, but flew only once, there was no market for it... Also, the small fishes could benefit, if NASA prepaid them for their first several small launches, they could literally go far. And NASA could stick to developping sciencemodules, habitats et.c. everybody wins. (ok; i know, oversiplicized; but hey, i've been thru a long and boring day, so my brainzz are kinda rusty)
"Seems to me it is time to consider a new design rather than a redesign..."
I agree. Throw out all the stuff that's proven to work 130 times and replace it with brand new stuff.
"Derp de derp."
They aren't redesigning the shuttle itself. They are redesigning the launch system, to prevent a similar accident ot the last one.
The over all effect on the shuttle itself is nil, as far as I can tell from the article.
It is a redsign of the "shuttle launch system."
NASA will spend of order $100 million per life saved to make the shuttle safer. Are astronauts really worth so much more than the rest of us?
Meanwhile, nobody seems to have noticed that the rate of shuttle losses is completely statistically consistent with what NASA has been telling us all along:
According to NASA, the probability of a critical failure was 1 in 145 before 1998 and 1 in 245 from 1998 on. Plugging these numbers into the binomial probability distribution, we find that the probability of 2 shuttle losses by 2003 is about 16%. Most people find 5% to be the threshold for statistical significance, so there is no good reason to believe that NASA got the risks wrong based on the two critical failures!
This is not rocket science, it's freshman statistics.
Looks like Estes has all their ducks in a row in regards to Homeland Security take a look at their website This may work to our advantage with regards to meeting the little green men, Estes Rockets are kinda small so we need really small pilots. Maybe Mars has an ATF of their own....
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
If they are worried about foam, why don't they use Aerogel instead? It's lighter, heat resistant and transparent.
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Your statistical reasoning is flawed, however. You're saying that fixing the space shuttle only saves lives of astronauts. You failed to factor in the lives saved by the knowledge gained with the shuttle fleet. I don't think it is neccessary for me to rehash the benefits that the shuttle program has gained for humankind, since they're mentioned repeatedly every time the shuttle is discussed. However, it is important to note that fixing the shuttle not only saves astronaut lives, it saves the lives of those affected by its research.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
Maybe your old monitor can take you into space. (Here's About.com's take, a bit popsci.) I thought this was bogus until I saw This mouse flying in a lifter - including RealVideo.
Perhaps we have a workable alternative to rockets available. Rockets are a terrifically inefficient way to get, essentially, a 1 to 8 hour drive straight up. In order to do that we have to spit 100 times our mass out the back. That's a lot of commotion and expense and danger. If the tech shown here actually works, it might make the whole concept of rockets obsolete.
It seems this guy Townsend Brown patented what is now mostly called "ElectroKinetic Drive" back in the late 1950's. It was immediately ignored. But it seems to work quite well, even in a vacuum (I'm still a bit skeptical on this point - IMHO the vacuum test I saw pics of on this site was not sufficient.) Lift capability appears to be on the order of 1 gram per watt, perhaps better than that with good design.
At this point, there are almost 200 successful experimenters worldwide, flying lifters using the 'asymmetrical capacitor'. In Japan they have one over 5 meters wide, flying 15 meters in the air. (one of the photos also shows some cool sci-fi looking high voltage equipment below it.)
All of these devices so far have been powered by external high voltage sources, mostly from old PC monitors. I'm not a HW geek, but I figure if you can build a HV system that generates 15KV to 50KV, and enough continuous power to produce 2.5 or more watts per gram, you could build a completely self-sustained lifter.
Of course, I wanna be the first to do this, so I'm not gonna post it on Slashdot. No, really, I hope that lots of people start experimenting with this, and publish their results using a GPL-type approach to patents, so the major tech is bound up in open hardware licenses. This will prevent those who want to own this tech from patenting every nut and bolt and preventing us from building our own. For example, using attitude sensors and a crossover network to vary lift on different sides and maintain attitude and generate horizontal velocity.
Here and Here are some thrust calculations. The latter has a calculator to design your own. If you build one big enough for me, please give me a ride!
Also, if you follow this up, you'll find lots of interesting and downright spooky connections to UFO's, the Lockheed Stealth Blimp (what was that thing that floated over Phoenix in 1997?)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Although this post is about a French craft, and everyone knows how well the Americans and the French get on ;), why the hell doesn't someone use some common sense and use a design that is not some overloaded flying brick.
Cut space efforts into two parts:
1.Launching payloads. Ariane 5, Deltas etc can and do this very well. These launchers are designed for lifting satellites, and other heavy payloads into geostationary orbit and beyond.
2.Launching humans. A small purpose designed craft like the Hermes, that can return to earth like the shuttle, AND be launched on top of a heavy lifter such as Ariane 5 is far more practical than the shuttle could be.
But perhaps Americans dislike the idea too much that it's originally French, and perhaps the French can't afford to pay for this anymore.
Perhaps this is froma previous /. article. I can't remember. Good read, nonetheless.
8 00 4.easterbrook-fulltext.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/
Why not development on hold for a while and put the money into a huge x-prize type fund. 10m is getting some serious competition - what would 100m or 1000m do?
NASA could specify rules - the contender must be able to lift so much for so much cash - it must be reusable to whatever degree and cost so much per flight.
Perhaps we need seperate categories for manned / cargo lifters
There probably need to be some rules on risk and the environment as well. Keep the rules simple though and make a big prize.
Then we sit back and watch it happen. Like tendering but without the politics bureaucracy etc
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If only that stuff were true, we could be zooming about the solar system by now. Here's what NASA has to say about it though.
Stick Men
Given that gasoline has an energy density of 12.3 watt hours per gram, and gasoline can be readily converted to electricity at 40% efficiency, it should be very easy for you to make a VTOL flying car with a 3-to-1 fuel-to-structure weight ratio that would hover in the air for an hour or two.
Let us know when you've built it and flown it from place to place - Slashdot would be sure to post it on the front page.
Or, alternatively, succumb to the NASA spiel in this post's sibling.
The problem with the shuttle is that it wasn't designed to be taken apart and rebuilt after ever flight.
The shuttle was supposed to be a quick turn-around vechile. Take-off, Do a Mission, Land, Refuel, repeat.
The current cycle is more like this
Take-off (maybe), Do a Mission, Land, Take the Shuttle Apart and fix all the pieces that were cracked, missing, or broken, Refuel, Pray, Repeat.
Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of space flight and can't wait to start work on the first warp driven galaxy class starship. I also have immense respect for the courage and skill of all the men and women who risk their lives to work in space. However, the shuttle has served it's time and needs to be retired. It's time for the next generation of space vehicles to be designed. Time to move out of the 70's and not risk anymore lives in aging shuttles.
The question right now is, "Are we spending money to fly the shuttle, or flying the shuttle to spend money?"