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House Asks NASA to Postpone Space Plane
PipianJ writes "The House Science Committee has requested NASA to postpone the orbital space plane program (official letter (pdf)), thanks to lingering concern about the safety of the existing space program. On the other hand, isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment?" The Senate is also getting into the act.
The board that investigated the Columbia space shuttle disaster recommended that the future goals of human spaceflight be subject to a national debate before any replacement for the shuttle be considered.
Do we need manned spacecraft to do our research? This is the important question that is being floated under the surface.
Davak
could it be they are just doing this to put the space program in limbo to save on money? They have some pretty expensive stuff to pay for these days. Iraq, war on terroism, weapon programs, etc ...
just a thought
With X Prize successes possibly being one year away, it sounds like a good opportunity to help this new industry.
... these rocket things just tend to all blow up on the launch pad after all. We really need to realize that Space is a really dangerous place. I mean we have to take up all of our own atmosphere, and if even one thing leaks, we start loosing people.
And with the level of technology we have today, I mean really. Just this last summer, my inflatable raft was punctured by my cat walking on it. This is a really serious demostration of how poor our level of technology is.
If my cat can puncture an inflatable raft, there is no way I can believe that there is anything like safe space travle. And if we can't make travel in space safe, then we really shouldn't go.
Of course I have gotten to the point where the potential risk in my life is such that I don't even bother to get out of bed in the morning. You probably shouldn't either.
-Rusty
You never know...
Right, it should be as safe as possible. But there is a limit. What, exactly, would be the point of making manned space flights as safe as, for example, commercial air-travel? The space program is about risk and reward, and I'm sure that the astronauts are well aware that they may be killed.
If I was wearing a flame-retardant suit, being tested for G-tolerance, I would assume there is some risk involved. If you negate the risk, you will negate the reward as well.
Since when was the job of those "Fearless and Brave" astronauts supposed to be "safe"?
Rockets, are by definition, controlled explosions! By parking your ass on top of one, you are exhibiting the ultimate example of informed consent!
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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
We need manned spacecraft.
China gives us our answer!
By flying someone safely into space and returning him home, China bolted itself to a new level. The entire world had to admit that China was a new technological power. It's a trophy. It's a mark by which countries are judged.
The side effects of this? The people of China immediately (at least those who understood what happened) were filled with joy and respect for their government.
The space race is costly... but we use the technolgical research from it on a daily basis. Even more so, we must stay ahead in the space race for the respect of our citizens and the rest of the world.
In times like today... we need dreams. We need to know that we are exploring, researching, and reaching to new places. It's a part of the human desire to discover.
The old semi-dead people in the senate may not realize this. However, the majority of us thought about being an astronaut as a child. Even more of us would risk our life to see the earth from "out there."
We need to push into space... regardless of the cost.
Davak
Before we spend billions of dollars designing a new space plane, I think it's reasonable to ask exactly what we want to do with it. I'm not so sure that having people in space for the sake of having people in space is worthwhile anymore. It seems like just about everything the astronauts do these days could be simulated or automated, and yet there are no grander ambitions being seriously bandied about by NASA.
The space program can't take another shuttle or space station -- huge stacks of money wasted on things that don't do what we need them to do very well. No, they need a *visionary* program right now, not a space plane...
Mars Direct, anyone?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
What the hell? This sounds like my boss issuing a new "build me a brand new OS that is more secure than OpenBSD, runs all MS software, and will allow us to recycle Commodore 64s!" vision statement.
I mean seriously, what good will a vision statement do NASA? Space programs need money, not flowery vision statements. When Kennedy comitted the States would go to the moon, he didn't stop at the speech we have all seen at one point or another, he put his money where his mouth was (ok, he put taxpayers money where his mouth was) and made sure the deed got done!
The ridiculous amounts and money and engineering talent wasted on a Buck Rogers toy like the space shuttle, the international space station, and now the proposed space plane, have drained funds that could have been used for unmanned exploration of Mars, the moons of Jupiter, Titan, etc. We landed on the moon over 30 years ago, and haven't done anything interesting since. Sending astronauts into orbit around the earth is 1960s technology. It's pathetic that we are just building space toys instead of doing real space exploration. But hey, the shuttle looks cool, and the space plane will probably look even cooler.
I dont know about the space shuttle, but planes are designed to last a long time and 20 years is reasonable. There havnt been any accidents because of old equipment - the accidents happen because of management PHB's who are the turds of any system and need to be flushed.
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Yep, we can't fund the space program because we are running up a bill for the wars we are waging. Pretty soon other government programs will see the axe.
After all, terrorists hate us. Why do they hate us? Because we like to attack their country and tell them how they should run their government. Sure, some of the citizens, mabey even most, don't like their current government. But, you will always have those that hate us for it. As you build up more and more hate, you get more and more terrorists, and more and more wars to wage to fight them.
The biggest problem is that most of the governments we install become dismal failures. Why?, you ask. We had to work for our democracy. We saw that the situation was bad, we wanted a change, and we faught to get it. The problem with Iraq, Afgahnistan, etc, is that the people, by and large, did not have to fight to get their democracy. It was handed to them by us. When we turn over control, they don't know what it takes to really make it work, so some dictator will exploit this vulnerability and turn the country into a shit hole again. This breeds more hate towards us by the people we were trying to help because they think we packed up bags and left them stranded. It is a vicious cycle.
We could grow up, however, and realize that people in different places of the world share different opinions than ours. We could accept this and let them go about their business. If they decide they want a change, let them work for it so they respect it and know how to handle it. If we did this, we could save our money to fix the problems within our country. We would probably have less of a terrorist problem to (or at least they wouldn't hate us for being arrogant pricks.)
</rant>
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
They failed because of lack of funding.
That the government doesn't have money! Instead of using lame excuses as safety issues for people who knows its unsafe, they should just say it straight out that they don't have money left over from the wars to fund space program. And the only reason why we are not getting anywhere is because the government don't want to pay for it. We already have the technology to go to Mars or the ability to adapt existing technology to do it.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
You've made a very good point, disguised as a silly joke.
... unfortunately it also triples the mass of the system and the number of interconnects between components, which correspondingly increases the cost and the chance of failure in some component of the system.
The name of the game isn't safety. As you point out, space travel is inherently unsafe. The focus of the space program, then, should be on the efficient mitigation of risk.
For every action a planning team can take to mitigate risk, there is an associated cost. If I include three redundant valves in my liquid propellant delivery system, let's say that reduces the chance of a catastrophic failure by 25%
NASA's mandate should be to find the optimal balance between high cost and low risk. Of course, we also need to distinguish between risk of mission failure and risk of people losing their lives...but that's a stickier issue.
1) No civilization has succeeded or advanced by curtailing their use of resources. Ours is no different, we are increasing, practically daily, our consumption of every non-renawable resource on the planet. It's pretty much a binary solution set, we either use those resources while they are still available to access other sources of those resources, or we fade away. Most of them are right in our own solar system, we just got to go get them.
2) The planet's population continues to grow, the sure fired cure to this is to materially increase prosperity for large sections of the planet. That will require resources, see 1 above.
3) Polution and ecological damage result directly from both of the above. Both will be attenuated if we derive most of our resources off-planet, which will require colonization efforts, which should have a small, but positive effect on population. One which can be expected to rise over time.
4) We still retain the means to turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland, we are also starting to play in technologies which have the potential to make life on this planet problematic. The universe istself could have a long period comet bearing down on us right now. The planet has been hit before and can be hit again. The best defense against this is to proliferate.
There most certainly are some massive obstacles to overcome, but we won't overcome them by curtailing our space program, including the manned portion.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Okay, for the 1000th time, let's get this straight people:
WE NEED space exploration. Just because some people died, doesn't mean we should completely stop space exploration. People who think like this should be shot. Following that logic, Spain, France, etc shouldn't have tried to sail "around the world" and find a new way to get to India. A lot of explorers died then, should we say that the discovery of America should never have happened because explorers died? Boo hoo. Cry me a river. Damn it, the human race will ALWAYS look for more adventures. WE will always try to search for new lands. WE will always keep researching new and better technologies. It's built into the human psyche; to always want for something new.
For you people who don't want to explore space, fine. Stay home and cower. Build a tinfoil hat manufacturing facility. The rest of us, the ones whose blood runs hot, will go out a blaze new trails for the rest of you to follow.
I don't know about you, but I would be happy to go up into space. Damn straight I would be more than happy to put my life in NASA's hands, because those people are doing the best they can. If they make mistakes, so what? Lots of astronauts died during the space race, but we NEVER gave in. If I died going up into space, I wouldn't blame NASA, and if anyone of my family did, I'd haunt them.
Exploration has almost never been done "because it's there".
Lets tweak that shall we?
How about
Exploration has almost never been FUNDED "because it's there".
If the barrier to entry is low then people will just wander off and do it.
But if you need ships and provisions and pay for hundreds of people then you need to show the investor a chance of getting something back.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
"But you don't care about that kind of stuff. Dont care about spreading freedom! Stop being a patsy of the negitive media. Wakeup and get educated."
You assume of course, as do so many, that this is what the people we are spreading our idea of freedom want. When the truth of the matter is they might not particularly care for our idea of freedom. Either because they haven't experienced it, or because they believe that things should be done differantly. Forcing the American idea of freedom on the rest of the world is no better than a dictator forcing his ideals on his populace.
I think we'll get there eventually, but there have to be solid economic reasons to get there.
So the first trip to the moon was a waste then, right?
Seriously, since when does there have to be a "solid economic benefit" BEFORE doing anything new? You don't think the pursuit of knowlege of space is good enough? What about the POSSIBILITY of finding economic benefits? We'd be completely ignorant right now as a people if everyone shared yours and Mr. Park's pessimism.
Seriously. Who do you think is more concered with the safety and welfare of our astronauts - the guys who work with them everyday and build the fireworks that they ride in or politicians?
If our boys in labcoats are ready to build another rocket, then they should be able to have at it.
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Agree'd. The only thing that the shuttle can do that a traditional rocket can't is fly around in orbit and repair things. The main expense of the shuttle is that it gets beat to hell everytime we go in and out of the earths atmosphere. So we back to rockets to get things in and out of orbit and build a seperate vehicle that stays in orbit, docked to the space station to repair things. We could probably get more done with one of these than with a whole fleet of shuttles, since it's always available for immediate use by the ISS crew. This solution is cheaper, safer, and more functional than what we have now.
The Russians are using 30-40 year old tech, and have a much better safety record than NASA. I doubt the problem is the age of the technology, but rather the application of it.
saftey should be paramount, and if that isn't the case I would urge congress to put a stop all manned flights until that is the case.
Safety should be an important consideration but not paramount. The people involved know the risks, or they shouldn't be there. How many test pilots have died? How many mountain climbers? Oceanic explorers? Pushing back frontiers is a dangerous business with its own rewards. Given the number of miles travelled, I'd bet the odds of being killed are higher for commuters than for astronauts.
The idea of a winged space craft is stupidity. What purpose do those wings have in orbit? The only thing they do is reduce payload capability and greatly increase complexity. NASA is not gaining anything in reusability. Put a capsule on a simple liquid fuel mostly expendable rocket, strap on the current shuttle SRB's for a little extra boot and you have a sensible space platform.
Got Code?
Well, I know that this is the third next generation space vehicle program that has had its financial legs cut out from it before a workable prototype could be designed. Is that what you mean by "failure?"
NASA is old. They still work under the weight of a crusty 60s-era layer of bureacrats. They are dogmatic, self-important and no doubt there are employees at every level of the organization who are more concerned with their jobs (after decades of having them) than with their work.
;)
You do realize that those 60's era bureacrats accomplished more in a decade than we've been able to try and do in the last 30 years?
I think the problem is that NASA *isn't* being run by 60's era bureacrats...
Measuring accidents per mile is best for automobiles, trains and boats, but not for spaceflight or probably even for airline flights.