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Shuttle Set for Launch on Dec 18th, Says NASA
Tony J Case writes "Just a quick note for you guys - According to space.com, NASA's target date for the next shuttle launch is Dec. 18th, with a whole bunch of new guidelines."
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Continuing to fly the shuttle,l and explore space is definitely the best memorial they could ever give to the people on Columbia.
Maybe they should think of some better uses for the shuttle than literally shuttling stuff back and forth from the ISS.
It's time for something new and exciting.
"So when bad stuff happens, someone actually does something about it."
They did do something about it. They asked the engineers if it was a safety problem, and the engineers said "No".
"So when bad stuff happens and someone actually does something about it there's a way home."
Yeah, provided you're willing to risk another orbiter and its crew to fly up there, crossing your fingers that whatever bad stuff happened to the first shuttle won't also happen to the other one. Though if you're going to lose the first shuttle anyway it doesn't really matter what happens to the second once since the shuttle program will be dead, dead, dead whether it's left with one or two orbiters.
"Why was nothing done about this previosly?"
NASA were developing a fix for the problem, which would likely have gone into place sometime next year. No-one was ignoring the problem, it just wasn't considered to be as high a priority as fixing the numerous other problems which haven't destroyed a shuttle yet.
Incidentally, I was under the impression that the only launch possibility at or around Dec 18th was a night launch, so if they have to launch in the day, they can't launch then.
Without getting overly technical, that's not feasible because it's necessary to have a significant percentage of the thrust be variable and steerable. While the SRB nozzles can gimbal a bit, the thrust is totally predetermined. Also, I don't see sitting next to huge steel cylinders of ammonium perchlorate/aluminum powder as being safer than the cryogenic gasses used by the SSMEs. There was much resistance at the outset of the shuttle program to using solid fueled boosters on a manned vehicle, and those concerns are still valid. No, I'm not a rocket scientist.
"Didn't NASA used to keep an extra shuttle on standby?"
No. There have been occasions when there were two shuttles on the pads simultaneously, but there's never been an active requirement to have a second ready to launch... more normally, there's one on the pad and one a month or two away from being ready to go.
Its going to make the shuttle one incredibly expensive taxi service for the ISS.
When the shuttle launches equipped to dock with ISS, it has an ammount of its payload bay consumed with the docking adapter.
If the shuttle is used for the originally slated US module launches, this would indicate a valid use (although still very expensive in comparison to a Soyuz module launch).
Now, here's my thinking. The Shuttle was a severe compromise of an originally good system (Flight launch Horizontal TakeOff and Landing) but ended up with the return vehicle pointlessly (and expensively) attached to an SRB+LOX rocket system.
NASA is now likely to resume using the Shuttle - apart from anything this is quite political with China probably joining the elite club of nations who have launched people into space later this year. What NASA ought to be doing is saving the pennies by retiring the shuttle - not neccesarily immediately, but soon and putting out to tender a contract for a brand-new cost-effective launch system.
The new system could be based around the original Ho.T.O.L concept which was mean to be the Shuttle.
At the same time, NASA can be doing lots of new research into aerodynamic re-entry to safeguard lives in the future (FYI 2 aero-re-entry incidents to date - 1, X-15 and 1, STS).
The major sticking point is simple: The U.S. government would have to get their wallet out!
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Yeah... don't forget to include the new cover sheet on those TPS reports. Did you get that memo?
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