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Shuttle Fleet Upgraded
angel'o'sphere writes "Space.com reports that the shuttle fleet will be upgraded with more technology, like new sensors to detect debris hits on the wings, etc. Also, the foam causing the Columbia accident (intended to insulate the tank and prevent the formation of ice) will be replaced by: heaters. I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea."
Shuttles also now equipped with new space-aged stress relief.
You definitely can heat up a tank with liquid oxygen when there's a risk of ice... if it's that cold, there's no risk of the tank becoming too hot. The cool thing is, heaters can be turned off when you don't want them on. :)
I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea.
Yes, it is. Very bright.
They could upgrade the fleet with some people smart enough to use some cameras to look at a shuttle wing before reentry after a HUGE ASS PIECE OF DEBRIS very obviously slams into one of their shuttles. Just a thought.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
The foam insulation is supposed to keep the tanks from getting too cold (with all that liquid oxygen and hyrdogen). If they are able to use heaters that don't stay with the tanks on launch, it will reduce the weight. Even if the heaters are included in the launch weight, they might weigh less than the foam.
They blow it again and its over. Frankly I am not worried about them actually performing the technology based changes, those are easy. I do not see them making the administrative changes. Oh I see new glossy surface polishing, but underneath what will really change.
The is Government, they weren't accountable when Challenger blew up, and I doubt anyone was held truly accountable for Columbia.
Ditch the damn shuttle. All it does is hamper any possibility of real space usage. It is nothing more than a modern day spruce goose. It has so many things that can go wrong something will. I don't know if the nation has the stomach to lose another 7, and I don't want to find out.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'm sure they'll get it right. Considering the number of flights, the two big accidents (Challenger and Columbia) were tragic to be sure. Statistically they're doing alright. The math shouldn't be too tough. It does sound funny, but every time they fix something, that's one more thing that hopefully won't go wrong in the future. I for one have high hopes for the future of our space program.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
While it is probably a step in the right direction, I find it saddening that we must have disasters to begin upgrading certain aspects of the shuttles. In my opinion, every aspect of the fleet should always be tested, simulated, improved, and tested some more every single month. Who's to say that another shuttle won't go down in a decade or so due to a problem that was never considered?
A blog like any other.
This is just avoiding what many people see as the obvious conclusion: the space shuttle in its current incarnation needs to be replaced. It was designed before I was born.
Unfortunately it looks like NASA is moving in the wrong direction, cutting the funding from their shuttle replacement project. Of course, I'm all for making the existing shuttles safer, and what they're doing now is a good idea.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
You can thank the NIMBY's and the treehuggers for the Columbia accident....If the fission-hydrogen rockets had been allowed it would not have been an issue (more thrust, therefore more weight, and a REAL reuseable rocket and we might actually be on Mars by now.....
http://www.lascruces.com/~mrpbar/rocket.html
blah
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"Those changes will be included as the direct result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report, released in August, which detailed 15 recommendations NASA must do before resuming shuttle flights"
I, for one, am appalled that it took a spectacular explosion, mass media coverage and the unfortunate deaths of shuttle crew to be able to reach this point. Is this really what is required to be able for technology to advance? I once heard in a movie once, that the shuttle was the result of "the cheapest bidder". These are scientists that forsaw this coming a long time ago, and just to save their jobs and pride they kept quiet about the failures in the previous shuttle. Lets hope these boys grow some backbone in the newest version, and not try to cover it up with bells and whistles just to satisify the publics anxiety.
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Ditch the damn shuttle. All it does is hamper any possibility of real space usage. It is nothing more than a modern day spruce goose. It has so many things that can go wrong something will. I don't know if the nation has the stomach to lose another 7, and I don't want to find out.
And you didn't think more things could go wrong? The Apollo missions were a suicide run, if you compare the technology. And even in the future, it's likely that people will die in space. They're pioneers. Look at the recent Mars flop, where they can't get contact with the probe. Anything similar with a crew onboard would be fatal.
The US has a serious problem with lives lost. Not that it is not a bad thing and should be avoided, but sometimes there are risks involved. Like e.g. stationing troops in Iraq, and sending men into space. You must be able to accept some losses in the name of peace, progress and prosperity. Fair? Nope. But it never was, was it?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's not a technical but an organizational Problem
You don't need more technology to read an email from a technician or engineer who warns because of missing or destroyed isolation foam.
The NASA has to change the way on how to react on such warnings.
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Practicing my posting must be working: I'm finally inspiring incoherent insanity when I post, the hallmark of success.
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The Space Transportation System (STS), which is essentially the shuttle main engines + the big tank in the middle and the two solid fuel boosters on the sides, is a fantastic heavy lift vehicle which has undergone significant testing (all shuttle flights) with one failure from which much was learnt. The take-home fact:
The STS is capable of lifting over 100 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit, or throwing 40 tonnes to Mars (with an appropriate small upper stage).
Capacity like that means humans to Mars in a decade or doubling the size of the current ISS (into something useful) in ONE THROW. Or, having an Apollo-class launcher ready for the let's-go-back-to-Luna folk.
The Shuttle, on the other hand, the Winnebago of space exploration, is a horrible hybrid device. It's essentially a portable space station, which is fine when you don't have one, but now we do. It's not a good repair vehicle (a capsule would be much better and hugely cheaper), it's not a good "escape pod" (not even the ISS uses it for that purpose), and it's not a good space transport system, because it itself weighs ninety of those precious, expensive, to-orbit tonnes.
My heart sank when I read that more space dollars were going to be spent "upgrading" this thing that has trapped us firmly in Earth's orbit for 20 years.
Come on NASA! Show some balls! Show us just a little bit of the "right stuff" you used to manufacture in bulk. Pick a destination, strip the shuttle off the stack, and GO THERE.
What difference would it have made? With a whole damned week to ten days - or maybe longer - maybe something could have been done.
NASA didn't even try to fucking look!!!!!!
Because they we're too damn lazy, cheap, or just plain fucking stupid to even look they doomed the astronauts. Because they wouldn't even take one lousy picture.
And I know no words strong enough to express my contempt for the lowly asswipes who doomed them.
And twits like you excuse such actions.
If keeping it from going below a certain temperature by insultating it is OK, then heating it to that temperature would be OK. Why would you think otherwise?
No shuttle missions ever flew from Vandenberg, although there were quite a few landings there.
Part of the reason is that the launch facility was rife with problems. However, the bigger reason is political, in my opinion. Basically, NASA needed the Air Force as reluctant partner in order to get funding from Congress for the shuttle program. From what I understand, the Air Force was interested in using the Shuttle to put spy satellites into polar orbit.
Polar orbit is not something that could be achieved from Kennedy primarily because NASA would never risk putting the Shuttle on a trajectory where early launch failure could result in the orbiter and boosters plowing into a populated area. One does not have such worries at Vandenberg with nothing but desert and Canadians in tehe way should the Shuttle fail.
The numerous problems with the Vandenberg facility (rumoured to have a Native-American curse on it), some really bad press coverage and changes in Air Force administration resulted in the abandonment of SLC-6. The Air Force figured that they could get their spy sats into polar orbit more easily and cheaply with Titans.
BTW: If a Shuttle had ever been launched from Vandenberg, I think it would have been the Discovery. If I am remembering correctly, as part of the deal NASA struck with the Air Force, they actually got ownership of the Discovery. I apologize if any of this is factually incorrect, I am pulling straight from memory here. If you peruse the sci.space.shuttle newsgroup you'll find some truly informative articles there from people who really know about this stuff because they were the ones who actually worked on the shuttle program.
space heaters?
What?
All of the posts seem centered on the fact that people died. Yes they did. People die. When they die in such a worthy endeavor they become heroes. People have been dying this way for a long time (centuries in fact). How will you die? The majority of /.ers will die and not be even heard about. These people die as heroes and published in the national press with parades in their hometowns. I can only hope to be celebrated in death so well.
Reality is that these people achieved greatness in the risk that they took to bring society ahead in terms of space exploration and thinking. They should be celebrated. They should be held up for all to see. I see it as unfair to stop or hinder the program that afforded them the possibility to become the pioneers that they are.
The discussion of details should be discussed, of course. The resoning that the research should be stopped based upon the fact that people (pioneers) died is against the philosophy of the fallen heroes.
P.S. - Wow - maybe too much eggnog
Stay tuned for new sig...
"I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea."
They had heaters *in* the oxygen tanks at least on the Apollo missions. Such a heater was in part responsible for the Apollo 13 near-disaster, though that was caused by a whose string of failures.
Space MUST keep going regardless of disasters. It's the nature of the business.
Do you guys wanna live on Earth when all its resources are deplited and the population is HUGE? Uh, no I didn't think so. Me, I wanna live on the moon base or Mars if I can live that long.
Hahahaha.. it's next retirement paradise for the dotcom guys/gals; forget Florida ;(
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
i attended a very informative presentation by doug oshroff (nobel laureate in physics and member of the shuttle disaster comission), who pointed out that they will do this. there were some bulky foam blocks attached to the bipods, to reduce the thermal leakage at this point. pieces had fallen off 7 times before from there (5 from the columbia), and before the accident nobody had taken the danger seriously (was on their to do list, though).
I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea.
Yeah, maybe NASA will finally get their shit together and check things with some random Java programmer before their next mission. NASA, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, COME TO YOUR SENSES AND CONSULT A RANDOM JAVA DEVELOPER ON THE TANK HEATERS, HUMAN LIVES ARE AT STAKE.
You assume the damned thing could change orbit and catch up with the ISS. It had enough fuel to do a de-orbit burn and that's it. Also, Columbia wasn't outfitted to rendezvous with ISS in the first place: that's NO DOCKING RING. So great, you've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting to ISS, after which you've now hosed your ability to "safely" de-orbit if possible and even then, the entire crew has to walk over to the station risking flying off into the wild black yonder. At the end of the day, you've got an untethered beheamoth listlessly dangling right next to the ISS with no gas.
That's like setting your brother Billy-Bob's R.V. on a hill pointing at your house with no brakes hoping that Bobby-Ray will show up with the truck to haul it away before it drives through your living room.
GREAT.
People will believe that if the sensors don't show it, it must not be there. The heating systems will complicate and potentially lead to other, new kinds of catastrophic failure (as anticipated by the /. editor Michael's comment on the wisdom of heating a large tank of liquid oxygen).
This article is must reading, I think.
Too cold? LO2 and LH2 have a defined temperature and pressure at which they stay liquid. The tanks keep it liquid by insulation inside the tank itself, and by keeping the tanks at high pressure (higher pressure==higher temp to boil, same reason water boils at lower temps at high altitude, PV=NRt).
The reason for the foam was to insulate an external portion of the tank, specifically where the tank connects to the shuttle to transfer fuel to it durring flight. Moving this fluid will rapidly move heat from the hoses and anything heat can be conducted through into the liquid (simple fluid dynamics and heat transfer), as temperatures try to equalize. Since the fluid is moving, it is staying at the same cold temp, thus able to suck more heat from its surroundings (in actuality it IS getting colder as the tanks empty, as it is also expanding). Once the outside gets cold enough, humidity in the air condensates, and eventually freezes on those parts. It was this freesing the extra insulation was supposed to prevent (and did), as falling chunks of ice are a bit more serious than foam (think of the difference in weight of the chunk of lightweight mostly air foam, vs the wieght of a similar size block of ice). The heaters will heat these external junctions, hoses and stuctures to prevent ice-buildup (similar to the heaters on airplanes, keeps control surfaces and wings from icing), to prevent chunks of ice from causeing the same thing the foam did, and without risk of more debris falling on the shuttle durring liftoff.
Tm
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These "fixes" are what we in the software industry call "kludges": solutions very specific to particular problems, and therefore not designed to detect, much less fix, even similar yet not identical problems.
The right fix is to architect a new system that is not vulnerable to these problems in the first place. But I suspect that will happen only with private spaceflight and resulting fiscal accountability.
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Aw, c'mon. It's not like this is rocket science...
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Lets start with the Saturn V rocket. The thing was designed by the Huntsville Germans. When you think of German engineers, think meticulously designed and crafted, expensive as heck, and reliable. Did they ever lose a Saturn (Saturn V or Saturn Ib) in flight? Titan was much cheaper than Saturn but hasn't had quite the same record.
OK, now consider the Apollo CM with its ablative heatshield and low-lift blunt-body design. And with a Max Faget solid-fuel tractor escape rocket. Compare with Shuttle with wings, and tiles, and computers flying the thing and with the Shuttle parallel to the tanks where stuff can fall off or blow up. In the Challenger explosion, the crew capsule remained intact and killed the crew when it hit the water. If something happened to the Saturn rocket, the Apollo crew had an escape rocket, they had space suits to survice a cabin puncture, and they had parachutes to make a safe water landing.
Sure Apollo was primitive by comparison, primitive in the sense of Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Safe). Oh, and Apollo had redundant space crafts so even when the Service Module was blown to shreds (as a result of ground handling to empty a balky oxygen tank by running tank heaters until the insulation burned off), they brought back to crew, although one guy had a 103 F plus fever from a urinary infection because he didn't think they had enough electric power for him to take a leak often enough.
Give me Apollo primitive over Shuttle any day.
for all the people asking why it is that NASA isn't making changes until an incident has happened, i.e. why not change things proactively...
there's a saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
this phrase is especially insightful for situations where change can be disastrous. there is risk associated with every change, i.e. something can go wrong or the change may have unforeseen problems.
given that the space shuttle for the most part has been relatively reliable, i don't think anyone at NASA is prepared to stick their neck out and say we should introduce a lot of changes.
not only that, changes cost $$$. and somehow, i don't think NASA has much of that to spare as it is.
this is not my opinion, i'm merely trying to see things from NASA's perspective.
my own opinion is that more work should be dedicated to developing a more appropriate modern shuttle. the person who posted and said that NASA should design a lighter shuttle that takes advantage of the fact that we have a space station, and that the current shuttle's weight takes up too much of the precious thrust payload has the right idea.
also, if they could build a modular space station, why can't they build a module space shuttle? and if the space station can be an international effort, why can't a space shuttle? humans in space should be a global effort, not the effort of any one country; cooperating and sharing our development efforts and resources would certainly accelerate our progress. (this is a bit idealistic, as i can understand that tensions between countries would make such cooperation difficult).
http://www.floridatoday.com/space/explore/special/ slc6/slc6.htm
It's not really the energy that's the problem - if you've got a good nuclear reactor.
The problem is propellant. Where you gonna store the propellant? Much of your first half of the store of propellant is expended in accelerating the second half along with the ship.
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"Also, the foam causing the Columbia accident (intended to insulate the tank and prevent the formation of ice) will be replaced by: heaters. I wonder if heating up a tank with liquid oxygen is a bright idea."
:)
Hate to burst your bubble, slashdot, but the foam being replaced is NOT the foam surrounding the entire tank. That foam was not the problem.
The foam that caused the problem was a spray-on foam surrounding what NASA calls the "bipod region" - the connectors attaching the External Tank to the Orbiter itself. Moisture beneath this spray-on foam, according to failure analysis, undermined the structural integrity of the foam itself, causing it to break off during launch, which struck the Orbiter's leading edge - as I'm sure you already know.
However, only that spray-on foam will be removed from the external tank. Additionally, the only heater being installed on the External Tank will be a strip heater for only those connectors between the External Tank and the Orbiter - to keep ice off of the surfaces, which is a potentially bigger hazard than foam chunks.
How do I know? My dad's the NASA on-site chief engineer at the Michoud Assembly Facility, which builds the External Tank. So... I guess it really doesn't take rocket science to know that the simplest solution really is the most effective... does it?
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