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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
Of course safety should be paramount.
But at what point do you call sending people up into the cold, dark vacuum of space by strapping them to a large rocket safe?
I really thought this quote from the last man to set foot on the moon was particularly insightful :
"NASA is too old, too bureaucratic, and too risk adverse. Either a new agency would need to be created to implement such a program or NASA would need to be restructured largely along the lines of the NASA of the late 1960s," Schmitt said.
Schmitt said of particular importance is for NASA to consist of engineers and technicians in their 20s and managers to be in their 30s, and the re-institution of design engineering activities in parallel with those of contractors.
Sadly, it's very hard to get rid of an agency the size of NASA and replace it with a bunch of young turks. I agree that NASA does need new blood, a new direction and a kick in the pants, but how that will happen is beyond me.
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.
You know, whats funnier still is that the Slashdot fortune cookie at the bottom of the page reads:
:-)
You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. -- Yogi Berra
"Manned spaceflight is going nowhere because there's nowhere to go." Seriously, who IS this genius?
Actually, the comment is much, much, much more sublime and sophisticated than you think. Stop reading science fiction, and actually think about space. Where are we going to go? The other planets are ROCKS. Sure, there are people who want to live on rocks. But not as many as you think. Asteroid mining? VERY unproven. Power generation in space? Also VERY unproven to be economical.
Sorry, but "because it's there" is not good enough.
I think we'll get there eventually, but there have to be solid economic reasons to get there. Remember, Columbus didn't go for the hell of it, he did it to find a new route to China. Exploration has almost never been done "because it's there".
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I think people like Heinlein saw things in our culture that would keep us from keeping our edge and staying out front. They might not have had every detail covered- they weren't clairvoyant - but they had an intuitive 'feel' for the reality of the situation.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
According to this story, in the history of the shuttle program 15 flights have had tile damage due to debris falling off the external fuel tank and SRBs.
NASA's solution? Create a space plane that is entirely reusable, and doesn't require rebuilding/recycling SRBs with each mission and constructing a new external fuel tank.
So when a shuttle is destroyed by a technology known to be problematic, the House Science committee recommends... suspending effort on a project to remedy those problems?
<sarcasm>That makes a lot of sense... really</sarcasm>
Cuttings in space programs would probably seem less risky (in terms of reelection) than messing with cuts in social services, health benefits and pensions in the present economic climate.
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.
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.
Here's a nice opinion piece suggesting that we go back to using capsules, like the Russians and now the Chinese are using. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me - if a "reusable" craft like the shuttle costs orders of magnitude more than one-time-use capsules, why not just make a bunch of capsules instead? You wouldn't have to worry about retrofits, upgrades, wear and tear, etc.
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.'
Apparently Robert Zubrin, manned Mars mission advocate, is going to testify as part of this review. At the moment the US is spending $3 billion/year on the shuttle, and an unknown amount on the new OSP (Orbital Space Plane), all without any clear objective in mind. It is very hard not to feel, at least as far as manned exporation goes, NASA is floundering at the moment.
It is me worth re-posting this related extract from a piece posted on www.space.com, by Robert Zubrin - an advocate of reform in the US space program - interesting reading...
In the recent Columbia hearings, numerous members of congress continually decried the fact that the US space program is "stuck in Low Earth Orbit." This is certainly a serious problem. If it is to be addressed adequately, however, America's political leadership needs to reexamine NASA's fundamental mode of operation.
Over the course of its history, NASA has employed two distinct modes of operation. The first, prevailed during the period from 1961-1973, and may therefore be called the Apollo Mode. The second, prevailing since 1974, may usefully be called the Shuttle Era Mode, or Shuttle Mode, for short.
In the Apollo Mode, business is conducted as follows. First, a destination for human spaceflight is chosen. Then a plan is developed to achieve this objective. Following this, technologies and designs are developed to implement that plan. These designs are then built, after which the mission is flown.
The Shuttle Mode operates entirely differently. In this mode, technologies and hardware elements are developed in accord with the wishes of various technical communities. These projects are then justified by arguments that they might prove useful at some time in the future when grand flight projects are initiated.
Contrasting these two approaches, we see that the Apollo Mode is destination driven, while the Shuttle Mode pretends to be technology driven, but is actually constituency driven. In the Apollo Mode, technology development is done for mission directed reasons. In the Shuttle Mode, projects are undertaken on behalf of various internal and external technical community pressure groups and then defended using rationales. In the Apollo Mode, the space agency's efforts are focused and directed. In the Shuttle Mode, NASA's efforts are random and entropic.
Imagine two couples, each planning to build their own house. The first couple decides what kind of house they want, hires an architect to design it in detail, then acquires the appropriative materials to build it. That is the Apollo Mode. The second couple polls their neighbors each month for different spare house-parts they would like to sell, and buys them all, hoping to eventually accumulate enough stuff to build a house. When their relatives inquire as to why they are accumulating so much junk, they hire an architect to compose a house design that employs all the knick-knacks they have purchased. The house is never built, but an adequate excuse is generated to justify each purchase, thereby avoiding embarrassment. That is the Shuttle Mode.
In today's dollars, NASA average budget from 1961-1973 was about $17 billion per year. This is only 10% more than NASA's current budget. To assess the comparative productivity of the Apollo Mode with the Shuttle Mode, it is therefore useful to compare NASA's accomplishments between 1961-1973 and 1990-2003, as the space agency's total expenditures over these two periods were equal.
Between 1961 and 1973, NASA flew the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Ranger, Surveyor, and Mariner missions, and did all the development for the Pioneer, Viking, and Voyager missions as well. In addition, the space agency developed hydrogen oxygen rocket engines, multi-staged heavy-lift launch vehicles, nuclear rocket engines, space nuclear reactors, radioisotope power generators, spacesuits, in-space life support systems, orbital rendezvous techniques, soft landing rocket technologies, interplanetary navigation technology, deep space data tr
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
The problem is that NASA doesn't have the same backing as it did back in the 60's. We went to the moon because it was a priority, and a lot of money and effort was thrown at it. Now NASA is constantly struggling to make as much as they can out of a diminishing budget. I believe that this, more than anything else caused the accident.
If you are an administrator at NASA and you are told that their might be a problem with the age of the fleet and you know the odds of getting funding for a new project are near zero, do you keep that fleet flying? Of course. That's hardly the safest thing to do, but it's either that or close up shop and go work the chinese space program.
NASA puts safety as first as it can afford to. You can argue that NASA is an inefficent bureaucracy, but we seem to have no trouble financing the inefficent military bureaucracy. It's the nature of government, cope.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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...