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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?
The X-prize is suborbital. Still, supporting a similar orbital prize may very well be a good idea.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Wonderful lines like:
Sound familiar? It should. The OSP is only the latest of many "Shuttle replacement" programs that have all failed dismally.
Most critics have focused on the suspiciously low development costs, or the embarrassing gap between 2006 and 2010 in which no ISS lifeboat is planned. In fact, the basic concept of the program is so stupid that every knowledgeable person involved in it must be perfectly aware that it will never fly.
Lost my attention at this point. If he had anything worth saying he destroyed his credability by that point.
Yeah I read the article. However I realized it would've been against the rules to RTFA and then post, so I'm pretending I didn't. :)
Anyways, it sucks that this "space plane" still needs a big buttload of fuel tank and booster rockets to get off. This is hardly gonna save any money... What nasa oughta build is a reusable launch vehicle that can carry the OSP or the shuttle off, and then land and refuel.
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....
and the prototype is working.
they used a modified 747, and a special tow line. they then tow the orbiter up to very high altitutes and launch the orbiter.
the orbiter then ignights its rockets and because it it already high in the atmosphere, it can use half the fuel of bullistic launch.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I'm assuming you don't realize how many technologies you use on a regular basis that were developed by NASA.
I'm also assuming that you don't realize that due to NASA's charter, all the new technologies they develop are given away to companies for commercial development.
Calling NASA a 'money pit' is true in a sense - they can't actually make money - they're not allowed. If congress had written NASA's charter to allow for commercial development of technologies they invent, they'd have made a fortune on medical equipment alone... And on UV-filtering sunglasses, communication devices, fireproofing materials, life support equipment, remote-sensing weather prediction systems, composite materials development... etc... etc...
/sig
Orbital Space Plane @ orbital.com
Orbital Space Plane @ globalsecurity.org
OK, NASA still looks screwed up.
Possibilities we must consider:
What should we (the United States in particular and humanity in general) be doing?
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
... 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.
Then why hasn't congress rewritten the NASA charter in such a fashion that NASA can pad its own funding with its profitable endeavors?
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
But, sometimes when you're just going for a drive or taking a trip, you don't really need a bus, a moving van, a construction truck, a science lab, or a race car. Sometimes, a simple compact car would make traveling a lot more convenient and less expensive. The same principle applies to spaceflight.
I wonder if NASA has considered actually bringing some compact car makers as consultants. How would Honda, Mitsubishi, or Toyota would go about tackling these problems? Combine the efficiency of the Civic or the Insight with the existing X-plane aerospace technology of Lockheed Skunkworks and Boeing, and see what happens.
The trouble with orbital flight is that there is a hell of a lot of stuff orbiting up there already. You wouldn't want to accidentally run into any of it, either. Some of it is classified. I would assume (don't know for sure) that only NASA knows for sure where it all is and how to safely avoid it all. Better to stick with suborbital for now, at least until NASA collapses under it's own weight (should happen any day now).
An interesting can of worms to open here, who owns those patents? If NASA developed them, then they should be in the Public Domain, since they used public money for funding, shouldn't they? Even if they are developed outside of NASA, if NASA pays for it, the U.S. government pays for it, so indirectly I've paid for it, so if anyone is making money I should get a cut. (Hey, that's Metallica's reasoning.)
I'm not trying to start a IP bru-ha-ha(sp?), but I'm curious if anyone actually knows this. Or do these end up in those companies with the "We don't make X, we just make it better" ads?
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Me, I think that Dennis Tito did it right- buy a flight at the lowest price he could. Ok, so it turned out to be the Ruskies, I call that an incentive to Americans to actually get off their money-wasting duffs and actually go out and make competitive rockets rather than the government subsidised massively overpriced efforts you see at the moment.
I mean, everyone acts like 'high technology' is the answer. Nope. Sorry. 'Low Cost' is the answer. And you nearly always don't get that from Government run operations. Government departments want to grow; they don't want to shrink. They don't want higher efficiency, because that just means they can do the same with less, that just means that their 'excess' budget gets cut and they end up doing the same amount for lower cost.
No. We need businesses. Businesses actually have an incentive to grow the market. Launching more often actually makes launching cheaper, and this in turn grows the market and hence the business and the total profits. Businesses win over governments.
Frankly, if you're proNASA you're pretty much a communist- (no I'm not trolling, not everything that seems controversial is a troll) NASA is run by the country 'for the good of the country'. I don't want that. I want launching into space to be done for profit, not because they want to be nice to everyone. Being nice does not scale like profit motive does. We need to scale space up to put a reasonable number of people into space, you and me.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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?
We spend tens of millions (hard to say, NASA won't disclose) training "astronauts", and then dedicate most of the lifting capacity of the vehicles to keeping them alive while they watch a board and occasionally push a button that could be pushed by the guy that trained them back at mission control. That's a hell of a lot of money per button push.
Buzz Aldrin says it best. He never thought space exploration would come to mean shuttling cargo up to low earth orbit. Let's leave that to the machines, and send men out to do what they can't. Explore and describe the wonders that are out there, so that us lesser men touch them by proxy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I don't know this guy, but sounds like there's a considerable chip attached somewhere south of neck. Invoking the word 'stupid' towards your critics in a technical article isn't going to go over too well.
Look. Flying to space is hard. People are going to die doing it, just like people are going to die driving across the state or flying across the country or running around the water on a jet ski.
As long as we do it only a few times a year, the fatal mistakes are going to look horrific. If a million people a day flew through space and a few dozen died, why is that any more astounding than what happens on the roads?
Of course I'm not proposing flying lots of people into space to make the accidents look good. But realize the carnage we DO put up with to get to the movies or visit some tourist trap.
Now, if it were simpler, it'd be safer.
If it were truly reusable it'd be cheaper.
If it were less vulnerable to chaos (water landings, wind shear, parachutes) it'd be easier to swallow the alternatives.
As for climbing cables to orbit, a bunch of smart people on a shuttle had a real tough time wrangling a few hundred meters of cable - but 200 km? I want a few more proof-of-concepts and sims before I grab the business end of one of those.
Part and parcel in this whole thing is the time to market - the shuttle took too long to get to the pad - if it had flown with current at the time avionics and computers, it'd been in much better shape. Tony Englund tells the story of being in the shuttle simulator when they shut it down one day and said sorry guys - we need the cue-ball - a mechanical cue-ball - becasue the last working one one a flying shuttle had gone bad and they aren't making them any more. That sort of thing has stopped, but could be repeated with obsolete tech if they don't dev faster...
I would still sit on the shuttle flight deck tomorrow to orbit. Knowing the risks and using the process. NASA ain't perfect. But they're not malicious or stupid.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Halfway to Anywhere" by G. Harry Stine should be required reading for anyone interested in new manned spacecraft design. It's out of print, but used copies are readily available.
If you are going to debunk the debunkers, please do it properly.
The atmosphere is responsible for "twinkling" yes.. but htat has nothing to do with stars being seen or not. The sky from the moon looks pretty much like the sky from earth, minus twinkling.
The reason you don't see starts in the photographs is because of EXPOSURE time. Lunar surface == bright, Astronaut in white moon suit == bright, remember this is directly reflect sunlight with no atmosphere to dim it at all.. therefore, the exposure time is very short, and that's why the stars don't register.
This isn't just a theory.. its' the same reason you don't take your picture indoors with a bright window or reflection behind your subject... because it casues everything else to fade to black.
... because rockets don't have any atmosphere to "push against" in space. It's simple common sense.
Freedom: "I won't!"
"I'm assuming you don't realize how many technologies you use on a regular basis that were developed by NASA"
As someone who has worked in a government lab, it seems that every invention or achievement that is even remotely associated with the lab they take credit for. I wonder how many of those technologies were really developed by NASA or really just developed by associated companies and institutions. NASA doesn't devise new technology, individuals that may or may not work for them do.
Regardless, developing consumer goods is not their mission and cannot be a measure of their success. Even if Tang is really good at removing stains.
things, and not journalists.
In fact, let's thank God the only thing we let journalists do is spew out crap like that found in these articles.
~ now you know
One of his arguments is that they will still need the shuttle to bring up supplies. No, they already have the soyuz freighter for that. In fact, I think they hardly ever use the shuttle to bring supplies to ISS. It would be very inefficient (the part he did get right). The point of this vehicle is to allow cheaper and more abundant crew transfer ability, especially in case of emergencies.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Some of it is classified. I would assume (don't know for sure) that only NASA knows for sure where it all is and how to safely avoid it all
Sure it's classified. So what? It's still tracked by a multitude of civilian organizations. Just because it's classified doesn't mean that it doesn't return a radar ping or show up on a tracking sweep for a telescope. The US is far from the only nation putting stuff into orbit anyway. Each nation with an orbital presence has the same issues with making sure you don't whack into something up there (and there's quite a bit of up there too - it's not like a Disney parking lot after all).
Of course, you'll find an amazing number of "communications" satellites orbiting the earth with no comm band registered with the FCC. Funny that.
Only by desperate weight reduction measures, resulting in incredibly fragile vehicles, is anything made to fly into space at all. The vehicles are almost all fuel. Pieces have to be thrown away after launch. Payloads are dinky for the size of the vehicle. Costs are insanely high.
It's been that way for almost forty years. It's not getting any better. No combination of parts will fix this fundamentally broken technology.
Space travel is like lighter-than-air travel. The technology has been around for decades, and it reached its limits a long time ago. It's possible to build vehicles. But the weight limitations are too severe for them to be more than marginally useful.
Space travel won't work until we get a better energy source.
Yes, sure, but you forget one thing.
Economics.
A Federal agency has to worry about costs much less than a business. And NASA certainly worries about costs. For a business to compete for a chance to go to space, cheaply, quickly, or any other "ly", there would have to be MONEY up there.
Science doesn't pay. The only reason the Russians launch cheaper is because if they didn't, nobody would use them. They'd get NO money, instead of LEAST money. The Russians are Wal-Mart in this respect.
The only money to be made in space right now is in the launching of satellites. So long as there's insurance for those, the Russian cost-cutting is not much of a problem.
Now, show me something up there to go an actually get, that is of worth, and I'll show you all the current aerospace contractors lobbying the government to be cut loose and allowed to leave NASA in the dust.
But until there's a money to be made, business isn't lifting a finger.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Well,h tml
I currently work for NASA and I would like to dispell some of the ugly rumors you are spreading.
1)Space travel is not beyond us (we have already proven that).
2)Furthermore, NASA has been behind all of the most up-to-date space travel(that we know about).
3)Management is not the problem with the columbia disaster, it is only portrayed that way because the media needs someone to blame so people like you can be happy. Everyone involved in the disaster understood the risks and did everything they could to prevent a problem. We are not perfect, but that doesn't stop us from trying to be.
4)NASA does not have a monopoly on space travel. First of all, monopoly only applies to private companies, not government-funded programs (the website is www.nasa.gov NOT www.nasa.com). Secondly there are other space programs in the world who are less advanced, but face it, we are the most wealty country in the history of the world, if we didn't have the most advanced space program, we would have our priorities confused.
5)I think it is a great idea to have other agencies investigating options for space travel, however, do you really want a space vehicle built by corporate America where profits make decisions before safety? The reason NASA is a government-run entity is the fact that they can pursue new ideas and breakthroughs without the pressure of having to create something that is profitable (even though much of what NASA creates is). Take a look at http://technology.ksc.nasa.gov/spinoffs/spinoffs.
to see some of the things you take for granted that were created by NASA. (cordless drills, cellular technology, GPS, Air conditioning just to name a few)
6)You may not know that NASA is operating with essentially the same budget today that it had 15 years ago. Figure in inflation and you may realize how meagre the budget has become. The amount that is spent on NASA from your tax dollars is miniscule compared to our defense budget. NASA's annual budget is 14 Billion dollars, which may seem like a lot, but the treasury department spent 360 Billion in interest, 32 billion in education, 41 billion on roads,400 billion on social security, and 350 billion on the Dept of Defense. NASA's budget doesn't seem so bad, huh?
7)NASA doesn't just do space travel. There are many other branches that I don't even have time to elaborate about here. Look at www.nasa.gov and look at some of the projects NASA is working on, it may surprise you.
8)Writing your congressman/woman is a great idea, but maybe you should be telling them to increase NASA's already tightened budget so we can enjoy more of the benefits later. The only way to improve is to learn from our mistakes and move on. No one can predict whether or not our research into space will be useful someday, so why not explore all of our options?
--Derek Riley
What surprises me is that it took less than 10 years to go to the moon, with primitive 1960's technology. This project looks like it's going to take just as long... even longer... and this is with more advanced technology, plus all the experience of over 40 years of spaceflight.
Something is seriously wrong...
This is something that I've often wondered about - yes NASA has created a number of things that have improved life for the rest of us, but is it really a good return? Couldn't we have given a fraction of that money to the same clever people and said "please invent me some UV-filtering sunglasses" while we went off and spent the rest on healthcare, or beer, or whatever?
Not an attack on you, btw - I can understand that the end goal of space flight can motivate greater innovation than a simple request for invention, I just wonder if the effect is that great.
Cheers, Paul
What function does NASA serve?
Could those functions be served more efficiently by multiple, smaller, privately run organizations?
Why spend so much on manned flights when all of the experiments are simple enough to be automated?
One advantage of a privately run organization is that they can take risks.
When did space travel become something that has to be risk free, with every death being a tragedy?
In the year 2002 42,850 people died in automobile crashes in the US . These deaths accomplished nothing.
What if a fraction of that number, say 500 people, died every year in an attempt to increase humanity's capability to get off this rock. Would that be such a tragedy?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
What he says about "advanced technology" is pretty much spot on.
When you look at our "advanced boosters" - in a basic sense, all they are is old early cold-war-era ICBMs, retrofitted with Solid Rocket Boosters. Atlas, Delta, and Titan. The last REAL innovation in US booster technology was Saturn V.
I agree with several points he made - about how VTOHL is kind of retarded. Launching big heavy wings vertically, so the craft can land horizontally is ridiculous. But he overlooks some of the alternatives.
Lifting Bodies - X-33 was a spectacular failure - only because when confronted with adversity, WE GAVE UP. Part of that was the failure of the guys who set the budget unrealistically low in the first place, and let it overrun past the point of credibility. But if you want weight-savings in not sending wings up vertically, that's the way to do it. There's one real technicall challenge - an oddly-shaped fuel tank able to repeatedly deal with the pressurization cycle. And we just rolled over and quit when the first few attempts failed. I think that's sad.
Horizontal Take-off - Pegasus has been a spectacular success. If you're going to put wings on your craft, you may as well Horizontal Take-Off. Most of the launch fuel of getting a vehicle into space is used up in the first 5 miles. I don't know if there's a good way to fix this problem cheaply - we already "blew our wad" so-to-speak, but here's what we can do maybe in 10 years:
Justify the development of a new, VERY large multi-purpose transport aircraft - like the Galaxy C-5, only, in order to take advantage of economy of scale, use the same principle used in the JSF program. One plane that fulls multiple roles. Here are the roles:
Heavy Bomber (to replace the B-52).
Cargo Transport (to support loads the C-5 cannot handle)
Commercial Passenger plane (I know, we can't justify the Boeing double-decker, but at one point, it was at least worth thinking about).
Launch Vehicle Deployment.
Currently, the Pegasus can loft a tiny 1000lb payload into orbit. It's taken up to 40,000 ft by an L-1011, which is a pretty large plane. A plane on the scale of what I'm talking about could horizontally loft a next-generation spaceplane up to 40,000 ft, separate, and return to the ground, for mere peanuts compared to what it costs to prep your typical Atlas/Titan/Delta/Arianne. From 40,000 ft, scramjets can get this plane to 80,000 ft and Mach 8-12. (another technology we would need to develop, but it will save the weight of carrying oxidizer). Booster rockets can get it to Orbit. (either a SRB strap-ons, or perhaps the scramjets can be fed oxidizer).
Admittedly VERY complicated technology, but this is the evolution we were looking at 15 years ago with VentureStar, and other variants. And they were abandoned, due to lack of vision at the federal level. This lack of vision stems from a lack of a pissing-contest with the Russians, like we had when we were going to the moon.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
First flight already. More at http://www.avweb.com/news/atis/181827-1.html.
That's a general aviation plane, lots of catching up to build spacecraft.
It's a pet project of mine, but I think it bears commenting on: The space elevator.
I think it may be a _very_ good option for the nation's space needs.
More information can be found here:
Space Elevators: Low Cost Ticket to GEO?
More on Space Elevators
Going Up?
Calling the Space Elevator
Space Elevator May Become Reality - The Linked Study(PDF) Was fascinating.
Space Elevator Could Cost Less Than You Thought
Stepping Closer To The Space Elevator
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I think several of his complaints are incorrect.
First, he claims that the OSP is bad because it only ships people, not cargo. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. Manned spaceflight is more expensive than unmmanned flight. It is a waste of money to send anything on a manned flight that could be sent on a cheaper unmanned one. The Russians have already demonstrated that cargo can be taken to the ISS with an umannned system. Satellites can be launched without using a manned vehicle. The only thing that can't be launched on a cheaper unmanned vehicle is people. Therefore the most economical system would be one where the manned rockets were just for ferrying people. That's what the OSP is; yet he seems to have a problem with that. If we start trying to make the OSP do everything, then it will be an expensive boondoggle like the Shuttle. Unfortunately we probably will have to fly the shuttle a few more times to get the rest of the station modules up, but it doesn't make sense to add billions of bloat to the OSP to give it the capability to add the last few modules to the station. Bring up cargo with unmanned vehicles. Bring up the last few modules with a few Shuttle flights (with minimum crew) if necessary. Keep the OSP small and only use it to do crew rotations. That's my $0.02.
He complains about not understanding the plan for the escape system. That is his inadequacy, not the OSP's. The original plan I saw (which was called the Orbital Space Plane because it was Orbital Science Corp's proposal) had a rocket on the spaceplane that was used as an escape system for the manned section in case of a booster failure, and was fired as an additional stage after the booster dropped away if there was no booster failure. He says this introduces an "extra" failure mode. Well, yes and no. If you are concerned about mission success (getting the OSP in the right trajectory) then I guess it does add additional failure modes. If you are concerned about keeping the crew alive (which the crew would probably appreciate being top priority), then it adds a "new" failure mode but not "more" failure modes. Sure, there is the chance that the escape system/final stage rocket could blow up and destroy the vehicle. But if any of the other stages blows up, then having that escape system turns those from fatal disasters to non-fatal mission failures. Since the escape system/final stage should be a reliable, evolutionary rocket design that gets a lot of attention, the odds of it failing catastrophically should be much smaller than the odds of one of the booster stages failing. Adding this system will, therefore, slightly increase the odds of a mission failure, while greatly reducing the odds of a crew fatality. Whether that is an "extra" failure mode depends on if you are looking at mission failure or crew loss. In my (and certainly the crew's) point of view, having an escape system is essential to the design's commitment to the safety of the astronauts.
He claims that the OSP is not much more technically sophisticated than the Dyna-Soar. That's fine with me. The point of the OSP is to reduce cost and reduce technical risk. At the time, the Dyna-Soar was ambitious, costly, and risky. With today's technology it is a cheap solution with low technical risk. Why would we want to introduce new technical risk if we don't have to?
He also complains about the possibility of the OSP being built with a reduced size that would require more than one launch to perform one crew rotation for the ISS. I agree with him that that would be bad, but I don't yet know how likely that is to be a problem. Something to watch out for, but I don't think it is as likely as he seems to.
He would prefer a capsule to a lifting body for reentry. A capsule is not necessarily bad, and I wouldn't dismiss it just because it is "old tech". The choice, however, is a complex technical trade off and not the sort of thing that can just be decided with a knee jerk reaction, nostalgia for the "good ol' days of Apollo",
..spaceflight has advanced over the last 50 years..
..;).. maybe the army/navy should start using those apollo boosters for weapons delivery. :p
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
The conclusions at the end of the article are pretty decent. Using refurbed (or updated versions of old) Apollo-era capsules is a good idea. Wings on spacecraft are there because the USAF mandated that spacecraft be piloted by ... you guessed it ... pilots. Pilots fly things with wings. They were horribly opposed to the "spam in a can" image being laid out for them in the 50's. Much of the crap in NASA's systems are a direct result of pilot intervention being mandated by the USAF.
If I was scheduled to go to the ISS, I'd want the dirt-simplest flight equipment available. I'd definitely want the reentry profile to be *fundamentally* stable - just like the Apollo-era return vehicles. I don't give a crap where it comes down - that's what we have aircraft and helicopters and boats and trucks for.
Back in the sixties, during the "cold war", it was a matter of national importance that we "dominate" space and the funding was set appropriately. There was a lot of funding for training existing engineers and also encouraging students into the engineering field.
I lived through that. I still have many certificates and recognition papers from NASA that was awarded to me in High School ( I usually took the science fairs ). I don't see that any more, or at least not near the level of encouragement to get into engineering as I received.
Instead, as we passed from the Gene Krantz philosophies ( "Failure is *not* an option!") to the Dan Goldin business philosophy ("Faster, Better, Cheaper!"), it seems to me that Engineering has lost a helluva lot of its appeal, becoming much less a work of art and much more as mundane clerical work.
Personally, I have a hard time recommending any of my younger friends to go into Engineering unless its what their heart is driving them to do, as it did me. Engineering for me turned into a constant battle to justify my existence, eventually leading to my dismissal. Although I loved the artistry of design, there are a lot of starving artists out there. I never liked the idea of cutting corners to make something right now, but not made right. It went against the very core of my psyche to do so. I felt that when you were creating an artistic effort that would eventually be copied, possibly millions of times, one weighed the one-time cost of the effort of doing it right against the integral cost of fixing something not done right, integrated over all the things made that had to be fixed or replaced. My own analysis damn near always echoed those old cliches: " a stitch in time saves nine", "haste makes waste", and "if you don't have enough time to do it right, you must make enough time to do it over."
So we have these aging scientists and engineers who have actually done it, but many of us are now in completely different fields. I can show you engineers that used to build the systems in the 70's that are now working as greeters in Wal-Mart, or as countermen in hobby-electronics stores.
Although I loved working in the field myself, I can't see me trying to re-enter it as my experience is mostly with the older tools - tools I understood very intimately and had complete freedom to open up and re-code their algorithms if I discovered the mathematical functions inside did not accurately model what I was seeing in practice. The new stuff - I have no earthly idea how it works, or how to open it up and change it if need be. They would laugh me out of the building if I showed up with my trusty old Borland C++ compiler and VGA graphics packages.
Its going to be interesting, given the level of intimite knowledge required to do analysis of spaceflight sophistication, if the engineers they get can make enough time not only to understand the physics of the phenomena they are working with, and also keep abreast of the software packages they are allowed to use on the job. It took me over ten years before I felt I understood just some of the physics in my area, despite the fact during the entire time, I did not have to learn DOS over and over again, or have my previous tools fail to operate because I went from DOS 3.30 to DOS4.0... Or endlessly battle licensing issues.
The new guys have it a lot harder than I ever did.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I grant you that it has sufficient return cargo capacity to return a satellite to earth. And with the canada arm it can capture a satellite, as demonstrated by the Hubble repair.
However, while technically the shuttle could return a satellite for repair, there are a couple of problems to overcome.
First almost all satellites orbit higher than the shuttle can fly, so it can't get high enough to capture them.
The original idea was that there was going to be an on orbit tug to ferry satellite to and from the shuttle. Never got built.
Second the canada arm's capture device only works on satellites that have a special attachment point on them like the Hubble. As far as I know no other satellite has one, so a satellite couldn't be easily capture even if it was close to the shuttle.
Third, NASA is very worried about possible damage to their shuttles, and don't like flying it near anything they don't have too; much less a damaged satellite which could do something unexpected or have debris floating around it
And Fourth, while this isn't a technical point it isn't economical to return a satellite for repair and reorbit. Its cheaper to build a new one and scrap the old one except in maybe in special cases like the one of a kind Hubble.
So in summary, the shuttle could retrieve a damaged satellite and return it, if it could reach it (which it can't), and capture it (which it can't), and NASA would authorize it (they wouldn't) and someone would pay for it (which they won't). The original statement that the shuttle can't retrieve a damaged satellite might be overstating the case, but stating that they won't would be about right.
Obviously this doesn't count thing like spacehab which stays docked in the shuttle's cargo bay, or a science experiment released and recovered during a flight.
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
Irrespective of this guy's opinion in this article, I simply wonder where the real problem is. Since the beginning of space shuttle programme there have been exactly two ways to get someone into space and back. One has been in a capsule with ablative heat shield on top of a standard rocket and the other has been in a glider with fragile tiles on top of or strapped to a standard rocket. Specifically, both have been expensive and both have had pros and cons.
The fact that shuttles have crashed is not really shocking, given how long they've been in service. There have been crashes with Soyuz capsules as well.
What seems to me to be the problem is that there is simply a lack of money. The fact that there is a lack of money is partly because of spiralling costs, but also due to an incredible inconsistency of policy and bad planning.
Consider that ESA started working on Hermes almost 20 years ago. While the author states that this vehicle is also lacking in saftey, the fact is that the vehicle is not here, now as ESA abandoned it due to spiraling costs. Consider that the Russians had a working shuttle , Buran, capable of automated flight also around 15 years ago, and built with typical Russian solidity. That is now for sale on ebay, because no one wanted to fund it. So we have two possibly better or at least alternative shuttles that were killed off due to lack of funding.
Prior to, during and since that time, many nations have being studying alternative methods of human spacefilght. The Dyna-Soar, the lifting body studies during the 60's, the Delta Clipper, the British Hotol, the X-what have you. They were all dropped due to lack of funding. Has anyone, ever, considered how much money has actually been wasted/spent on these studies?
For me personally the concept of a two stage, conventional rocket powered glider where a larger unmanned booster took off conventionally from a runway and the second smaller manned glider seperated at high altutude with both landing conventionally on runways was probably the most practical. I further imagine that with all the enormous amounts of funds that were simply thrown away in developing alternative after alternative without having a coherent goal this type of orbiter/lander could now be in service today
Years ago, my campus newspaper had a profile of a professor who had just been awarded funds to do a study on women's attitudes towards fitness and their negative images of their bodies.
It seemed like a good idea to me. But a female buddy came in, looked at the article, and was outraged. "What an obvious waste of money! Yada yada yada." I asked, and she explained to me why she thought it was a waste of money.
Another gal comes in. My buddy shows her the headline of the article that outraged her. The other gal agreed that the study was an outrageous waste of money. My buddy left. The second gal finished reading the article.
So, I asked her why she thought it was an outrage. Guess what? These two gals both thought they were in complete, loud, certain agreement that the study was an obvious waste of money, that there was no doubt as to how the money should best be spent.
But in their discussion with one another they never actually said why it was an outrage, and although they thought they were in complete agreement, their views were diametrically opposed.
One gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to be more comfortable living with their bodies current shape and level of fitness. The other gal thought it was obvious the money should be spent teaching women to develop better fitness habits.
People who thought they agreed whose interpretations were actually diametrically opposed.
So, Miket01 and the a.c.? You think you are united in your outrage? Your views might be diametrically opposed