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Orbital Space Plane Problems
FTL writes "NASA's next big step in space (after getting the remaining Shuttles flying again) is the construction of the Orbital Space Plane. It is a small vehicle designed to transport people to and from ISS. Jeffrey Bell takes a close look at OSP in this article and comes to the conclusion that it will result in yet another crippled vehicle. Sounds like what people were saying about the Shuttle's problems back when it was being designed."
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?O SP4.jpg
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/shared/news2003/OSP/
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
What next, the "space elevator"?.. Oh wait...
Ñ'
Maybe we can outsource it and have the Russians and Indians build it?
Want to see another familiar image on NASA's site? Check out my sig!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I glanced through the article...this is unfortunate news, and I hope the author's conclusions are incorrect. The shuttle is aging, and I think we all expect it to go the way of the Segway pretty soon.
.NET Server Orbital Vehicle Edition failing to convert between metric and English units correctly as leading to the tragedy. Space travel is important to our culture, the future of our children, and our global economy...we in the open source community need to do our part to ensure its success.
Maybe with some more $$, NASA could do a better job of shoring up the space program, to ensure boy-band members will still have the opportunity to travel in space for the foreseeable future. Perhaps if they switched the shuttle's software to an open source alternative, like Linux, or even one of its flakier derivatives like BSD, they could save enough money to get this new space plane up and running. It may also improve safety, as some of the reports from the Endeavor disaster cited issues with Windows
Consensual sex is boring.
"Apollo missions regularly landed within 2nm of the predicted point," Wow - 2 nanometers! That shows my tax dollars are well spent....
"Anyways, it sucks that this "space plane" still needs a big buttload of fuel tank and booster rockets to get off."
Based on how this rocket looks, I'd say that they could have just avoided the whole fuel issue if they had designed the ISS to look more vaginal.
... or could it?
Simple lap belt replaced with 7-point harness.
In-flight movie would just have to be Apollo 13.
In-flight beverage would be Tang.
Mandatory cavity search at security gate.
No sharp or blunt objects allowed on board.
That includes shoes.
In case of decompression, a preferred religious object will drop from ceiling.
This is why we missed Mars.
Eagle landers finished in 1999 for Moonbase Alpha.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *Shuttle's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Shuttle faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Shuttle because *Shuttle is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Shuttle. As many of us are already aware, *Shuttle continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of squandered astronaut blood.
ColumbiaShuttle is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core astronauts. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time ColumbiaShuttle astronauts <Some Isreali Col> and <some Paki Dr> only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: ColumbiaShuttle is dead.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
AtlantisShuttle Cmdr. Theo states that there are 70 users of AtlantisShuttle . <got bored of this here...> How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of AtlantisShuttle versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Budget overruns, construction difficulties, and safety issues are causing many tribal elders to reconsider whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs.
Many tribal members feel increasingly alienated by technology.
A case in point is fire. The recent development of fire has been seen as a mixed blessing by many in the community.
"Fire bad.", says Dr.Ugh, gesturing to his burned hands suffered during an early meat cooking experiment.
Good or bad, fire has been rapidly adopted by the younger generation as both a means of cooking and the primary source of entertainment.
If the wheel does beat the odds and becomes a viable means of transportation, what will it mean?
Is our technological advancement going to far, too fast?
Where will our science lead us, and do we really want to go there?
... because rockets don't have any atmosphere to "push against" in space. It's simple common sense.
Freedom: "I won't!"
How would Honda, Mitsubishi, or Toyota would go about tackling these problems?
They'd slap a V-TEC sticker on it, or call it the Space Shuttle XJ20. Then we the public would get an inferioity complex about it, so we'd get the rockets extended 6", put a huge spoiler on it, and give it a nitro system.
If only NASA could win the X-Prize, the 10mil would more than triple their current budget :(
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean