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Shuttle May Fly Again In '04
giantsfan89 writes "A report from CNN says that a shuttle (possibly Atlantis) could fly again next fall. "The latest launch window is September 12 to October 10, NASA said Friday." A conference call referenced in the NY Times (free reg or via Google News) says it'll be an uphill battle (obviously) but that 'I'll also guarantee you that we're getting an awful lot smarter about this and we're going to come back stronger and safer as a result.'"
I'd be much happier to hear that we could expect spaceflight based on rocket technology in 2004. Whatever happened to that article?
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
...after seeing an article like this, it does seem that NASA is more reactive than proactive in fixes of this nature.
Granted, we're only going to hear about stuff like this after something happens...
However, I'm really wondering why we still spend a crapload of money more or less flying around in circles above the Earth.
How much more can we really learn from the shuttle? Put the money in some other form of space research...
There is a big difference between "smarter... safer" and "smart.... safe."
Let's see if we can dump some of that massive defense budget and sink that cash into a more active space program. Let's see if we can get to the moon. We already know we can blow up the world pretty good. We don't need to prove that we can, and if the situation actually arose where we needed to unleash our arsenal, then the world would be screwed anyways.
I bet I sound like a naive, idealistic fool...sue me.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I think it's great that NASA can recover so quickly from such a tragic incident. I think it's very important that they launch another shuttle to show the public they're still hanging around.
However, I think the CAIB Report released in August raises some very interesting points that need to be addressed (if they haven't already been). It mostly discusses long-term issues that will only be solved over the long term.
The last thing NASA wants to do is jump into anything to quickly. Let's face it: one more accident resulting in injury/death will destroy NASA's reputions for many, many years to come. Maybe they should elect to take some years off now, watching out for their own future? Let's just hope they've got 100 people thinking about this...and everyone else actually listening to them this time...
A more detailed version of the article can be found at the NY Times site. According to this article, the restrictions imposed by the new safety regulations constrain the shuttle to daylight launches, where adequate ascent video can be obtained. This unfortunately results in am extremely limited number of launch windows to reach the ISS. (It seems that there are only 4 between September 2004 and March 2005, and two of these are very narrow.)
Now I certainly want the thing to be as safe as possible, but is anyone else think that the level of acceptable risk has gotten too small? We should make the shuttle as safe as possible, but we shouldn't do this by compromising the shuttle's ability to fulfill its mission. Remember, we now have a space station up there that is going to need lots of maintenance, supplies, and fresh crews if it is going to be able to carry out any of the science work that are ostensibly the reason for its existence. Albatross or windfall, we put the thing up there, now we have to take care of it -- otherwise we've wasted a lot of money and political capital.
I'll also guarantee you that we're getting an awful lot smarter about this and we're going to come back stronger and safer as a result.
The same kind of stuff was said after Challenger. Then over the years everyone got complacent again and reverted to the old attitude. Maybe they've learned that lesson now and won't make the same mistake three times. It remains to be seen though.
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I think there needs to be a lot more changes at NASA than just shuttle design before they try to go back to space. Repeated failures seems to be the norm for this agency, and the Columbia disaster, while tragic, should not have been that surprising. I feel the problem isn't jsut the technology, but the organization behind the program.
My best friend's father is actually an engineer at NASA and I would sometimes talk with him about some of the problems there. He said NASA has become too bureaucratic and that the management barely communicates with the engineers or with other managers. He also said that NASA was lacking an atmosphere where innovation would be welcomed and that there was no big goals for them to strive for.
I personally think that NASA either needs to completely recreate itself or it should be replaced with a new organization altogether.
How many problems with the shuttle can we really hope to fix?
When the shuttle launches again, the current problems will still remain:
- There is still no viable crew escape system. During launch you theoretically have a chance to abort as long as the emergency doesn't involve the SRBs. In reality though, there is not much you can do. A mid-launch abort is more of a fantasy concocted to make astronauts and the public feel better. Once you're in space, hope that you can either get to the ISS (assuming all your navigational and propulsion systems are working properly), or that there is another shuttle almost ready to go...and you manage to survive the shuttle-to-shuttle transfer.
- Repairing the shuttle is still pretty iffy. NASA developed a substance that can be injected into small breaches in many parts of the shuttle to ensure the craft survives re-entry. Note I said *some* parts. The repair does not work on leading edge of the wing and you couldn't really hope to fix it in orbit even if you happened to have just the right spare part with you. (which is unlikely in of itself)
Repairing the shuttle can actually inflict more harm on the craft. There is a good chance anyone going over the side to look at the heat tiles will actually damage more in the course of the repair.
- The launch systems....mainly the SRBs are still horribly broken technologies that are absolutely not fault-tolerant whatsoever. Hundreds of things usually go wrong with the shuttle during the course of a mission. Little things here and there. If something goes wrong with the SRBs, you will probably die.
I can't wait to see what happens to Nasa if China starts a new space race.
And that's their main problem. In order for something to work reliably this something MUST be simple.
USSR had a superior shuttle program, "Buran" which got cancelled because of three simple reasons:
1. It was way more expensive than rocket-based space launches (which kinda defeated the purpose of having a reusable spacecraft).
2. It was less reliable than rocket-based stuff.
3. Russians had proven they can build a better shuttle than Americans (Russian shuttle flew its first flight unmanned and landed all by itself) which back then was a big thing.
Here's more info on Buran: http://www.buran.ru/htm/molniya5.htm
The Shuttle is only about 99% reliable. In other words, if you fly it 100 times it is pretty much certain to have a fatal failure. We have two Shuttle orbiters left; that's about 200 flights we have left. Maybe less.
My suggestions:
Make sure anyone who flies on the Shuttle is a volunteer. You will get volunteers who want to be in space so badly they are willing to risk a 1% chance of death, so that's okay.
Immediately start finding ways to ship people and supplies to the Space Station without using the Shuttle. Never again use the Shuttle for any mission that could be done by, say, a Russian rocket.
Immediately offer a large, tax-free, cash prize for the first company to put 1000 kilograms in the same orbit as the Space Station, and then do it again within three weeks. Offer another, almost as large prize for the second company to do this. Also offer contracts for delivery of supplies and people to the Space Station.
Something everyone needs to realize: there is no amount of money that anyone could spend that will buy another Shuttle orbiter. They are done. There are two left in the world, and that's all. When those two explode or whatever, there will be none left.
Something else everyone needs to realize: NASA is incapable, as an organization, of building any reasonable system for going to space. If we let NASA build a "Shuttle II", they will first spend billions of dollars, hire many people, and conduct many studies and write many documents. Perhaps even, someday, some hardware might fly. That hardware will be a haywire monstrosity almost as bad as the current Shuttle. Conclusion: don't give any additional money to NASA, and don't ask NASA to design any new spacecraft.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It would require redesign of a lot of systems. Soyuz, for example, is powered by kerosene + liquid oxygen, but Proton (designed by a different team) runs on dimethylhydrazine. The former is harmless; the latter is deadly. Guess which one would you choose for a manned flight? Then we would go into redundant, voting systems, crew ejection tower, and many other things that do not even exist on cargo rockets.
Some people would even say that you need to design the whole rocket from scratch. Imagine, for example, that you need to upgrade your Ford Taurus to win Indy or F-1 race. Where would you start? And consider that failure of any single part can doom the mission; so you need to go through *all* parts and improve them or make sure the failure will be contained.
It's not like NASA haven't done it before. The trick is that the old rocket scientists of Von Braun vintage all retired long ago, some are dead already. Nobody at NASA (or at Boeing, etc.) has a clue about where to begin. Design from scratch, and then testing, and then inevitable failures will take many years (say ten) to reach good reliability numbers.
If you compare this situation to Chinese, Russian and European efforts - which are up to date, and quite finely debugged by now, and for which trained technicians and engineers exist, then you will see that NASA painted itself into a corner. It has only Shuttle, and nothing but Shuttle. Today it can't operate anything else, and it can't develop anything else either (proof of that is in many canceled X-projects which were meant as a replacement or a companion for the Shuttle.)
The Ariane 5, for example, was initially developed with the french shuttle Hermes in mind.
Show me this Hermes thing in orbit, and then I will take it seriously :-)
a shuttle (possibly Atlantis) could fly again next fall.
"Fall" is a comment on the reliability of the shuttle program, or the US for Autumn?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
"We can go there after all the things wrong on Earth are fixed," said Betty Collatrella, a retiree from Caldwell, New Jersey. "I'm totally against any of it. It's a total waste of money we need for our kids, for illnesses, could put somebody's kids through college, could cure so many diseases."
And why don't we cure injustice and human suffering first as well? Bleh. We have heard those arguments for decades, but they scare the ever living hell out of me... What's the good of sending kids to college if we stagnate here doing nothing? What good is one more .com founding MBA if the taxes they pay aren't going towards something other than money for more kids to go to college and start more .coms?
Enthusiasm for the program of space exploration was greater among younger adults, those with more education and those with higher incomes. Whites were more likely than blacks and men were more likely than women to think the shuttle should continue to fly.
Let's all just stay home and knit sweaters. Liberal women and their damn social welfare concerns.
More than half, 56 percent, said they believe civilians should be allowed to participate in shuttle missions, while 38 percent said they should not.
This makes no sense to me... Should we send soldiers off into space against their will, or should we ask for volunteers? I think astronauts understand the risks involved pretty well. This article concerns me because the polls show ignorance and lack of ambition. There are also priceless lines like this:
"I think it's all bogus," said Claudette Davidson of Jonesboro, Georgia, who does accounting work for physicians. "I just do not believe they've gone to the moon. I saw Capricorn One," she said, referring to a 1978 movie that featured O.J. Simpson and included a faked trip to Mars. "That did it for me."
My head was about to explode after reading that.
Well, Claudette, do you believe in alien abductions? Maybe the extensive education necessary to perform your job doing 'accounting work for physicians' gives you a unique insight into the veracity of the government's claims regarding the space program. I've got to say, though, that I've seen Catch Me if You Can, and I feel fairly certain that your employer is not only a con artist, but that he is in fact Leonardo DiCaprio.
It's too bad that people like Claudette get to vote.
So the government isn't going to get us to Mars as long as people like Claudette and Betty have any choice in the matter. What we need is a private venture to take us there(see the X Prize) or a good scare provided by the Chinese (see the 100 Day Countdown until China puts a man in space, which may or may not be on hold or on target, I haven't checked) to jumpstart the government program. China is already talking of a moon base. Would that be enough to wake the government up?
Probably not. Claudette wouldn't believe that they had actually gotten there.
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Just as with the Shuttle, a fatal (and much more lethal -113 people were killed) crash occurred as the result of a known weakness - easy projectile rupturing of fuel tanks.
Despite attempts to bring it back, the thing is finally going out of service. It's old technology, and it is always expensive to maintain small volume old technologies. Of course, there is no replacement supersonic passenger air travel. But it hardly matters. Long haul flight is now cheaper and more fuel efficient than ever before for "normal" passengers, and the thing that did not exist when Concorde was first built - efficient video conferencing and around the world networking - is now commonplace for urgent communications.
I think the analogy is worth pushing. Why is the Shuttle needed? The Russians have shown that bread and butter manned flight can be done relatively cheaply and more reliably with non-reusable rockets. The things that didn't exist when the Shuttle was first launched - really sophisticated, small robotics systems - are now commonplace.Eyes, ears and other sensors can be put on other solar system bodies using increasingly sophisticated remote robots. The development of miniaturised electronics and ion drives gives the enabling technologies for really interesting long range missions that would not be possible in manned versions for many years to come. So why keep the Shuttle flying at vast expense rather than do something new? Inertia?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Several points here. First, soft gloves aren't sufficient for handling tiles in bulky spacesuits, these things are too delicate for that. Ie, astronauts shouldn't be touching tiles under any conditions. That brings me to the second point. Never ever use the word "trivial" when discussing a space walk.
It sure is a lot harder to launch a shuttle for the ground controllers and the people repairing the shuttles and building the disposable parts. But the astronauts are just along for the ride.
In a space walk, on the other hand, they risk not only their lives, but the integrity of the equipment that took so much effort to get into space. In other words, a space walk merely to look for damage on the bottom might cause more damage through accidents than it finds.
Then there's the matter of training astronauts to repair the space shuttle. A lot of this sort of work can be done on the ground. But because the tiles are so delicate, the first real test of the repair material, kit, and process will be when something gets punctured.