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Hurricane Threatens Shuttle Program
evenprime writes "Hurricane Frances may end NASA's space shuttle program. John Logsdon, a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the head of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., has said: 'If there were serious damage to one or two of the orbiters or the facilities needed to
process and launch the orbiters, I think it would raise a very large question about
the continuation of the shuttle program.'"
Let's not get our knickers in a twist here, ya? The shuttle program is in its twilight years regardless but it's not the end-all be-all. There's a Return to Flight program.
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This is supposedly the...
Worst
Hurricane
Ever
That's why they're worried. They only built their facilities to withstand common hurricanes with less power. e.g. The article states that the shuttle hangar can withstand winds of 110 mph. This hurricane could be a LOT worse.
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What idiot reporter came up with the idea for this story. Hasn't Cape Canaveral ALWAYS been in Florida. Hasn't Florida ALWAYS gotten hit by hurricanes. Hello McFly?
RTFA:
The space center has never experienced a direct hit by a hurricane, though there have been a few close calls. The outlook for another miss is looking bleak.
To my knowledge Volusia and Brevard county have never been hit by a storm like this, at least not in the last 50+ years. I heard through my mother who still lives in the area that the newscasters say that this is a 100 years storm for that area.
IMHO I honestly can't see building like the VAB surviving a storm like this....
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Hurricane David smacked head-on into Cape Canaveral in September of 1979, and not much damage to the Space Center. Nothing to worry about.
Same with aircraft and spacecraft.
sPh
But one positive by-effect would be that NASA would be forced to consider better booster solutions.
One of those better booster solutions is sitting on the pad right now. It is even more vulnerable to damage than the shuttle orbiters. The Delta IV heavy or derivative is a likely candidate for a post shuttle manned booster. It would be bad news if it were damaged.
an ill wind that blows no good
H2O (water for the few who may not know that...) is a very low energy state for hydrogen. In order to get usable energy from the hydrogen in H2O you first have to split off the hydrogen. This takes energy. Now when you burn the hydrogen you are probably going to burn it with oxygen, producing H2O and energy.
So the cycle would go:The energy you get back will be no more than the energy you put in. Actually, it will most likely be a lot less because of thermodynamics and inefficiencies. If you get back 50% of the energy you used to produce, store, and transport the hydrogen I would be amazed.
At best hydrogen is a fairly clean way of storing energy. You still need to get that energy from somewhere. Today that energy most likely comes from burning fossil fuels. Hopefully in the future we can use beamed microwaves from space stations or other clean methods of producing the energy, which we then store as hydrogen and burn cleanly.
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Well, I am in Hurricane Warning, and the storm is going to hit us. My shutters are up and all. At least this time, NASA didn't have a shuttle on dock. With past hurricanes, they always had to move those. NASA is already ready, but I don't think they will have much damage. They put the sattelites in plastic bags and it's original packing *insert joke here*
s p?loc=usa&seg=StormCenter&prodgrp=TrackingCharts&p roduct=HurTrack1&prodnav=none&pid=none for a Hurricane map, path, etc.
See http://www.intellicast.com/Local/USNationalWide.a
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I'm sure you already know this, but to clarify: Not only will you not get much energy, you will lose energy. The energy released in burning a molecule of H2 in O2 is the same as that used to split one molecule of water. Thermodynamics says you can't even recover all of it.
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I believe one major reason that NASA's and the Air Force's launch facilities are in Florida is a combination of lots of open ocean for downrange safety and testing, and the physics of orbital insertions that put the likely launch routes over that open ocean. Supposing Challanger had been over , say, Georgia when it disintegrated, and dropped all that debris on downtown Atlanta?
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To answer that question, you would have to ask how much it would have cost to build a structure that could withstand a direct hit by a cat 5 hurricane when the structure was built. Now take the difference between the cost of the current structure, and the cost of that theoretical structure. Pick an x% interest rate for the number of years since the structure was built. Estimate the current damage, being sure to factor in depreciation values for the current crappy shuttle program. Which is greater? who knows, but I wouldn't write it off as a poor gamble quite yet...
It's in Florida because that's the closest part of the US to the equator, so it's the best place for space launches.
The Florida coast allows KSC to launch into 39 to 57 degree orbital inclinations.
The one thing Florida can't do is polar and retrograde orbits. Those are launched from Vandenburg AFB on the California coast.
Originally, a single Gulf Coast area near Matagorda, Texas, was being considered to be the Shuttle launch facility, which would provide downrange safety for all types of orbit insertions, but the decision was made to go with a dual east/west coast model with existing KSC and Vandenburg sites.
After the Challenger disaster, a decision was made to end any Shuttle operations from Vandenburg.
Disney survived Hurricane Charley in August without much destruction other than landscaping. The rest of Orlando had more problems. Disney closed for a couple of days mainly because many employees were cleaning up at home.
What's keeping the fragile space progam in Florida anyway? Politics?
Momentum.
No, seriously.
You see, the Earth is spinning. As we live on the Earth, we are therefore also spinning. At the poles, you are merely rotating around your axis and it is not very interesting at all. On the equator, on the other hand, you are being whipped around at about 1 circumference of the Earth per day, which is a fairly good clip. If one wants to get into space, the centripetal force pushing one outward is increased greatly the closer you get to the equator.
Naturally, NASA wants to take advantage of that, as it makes a measurable difference in payloads and fuel. You'll notice that the ESA and most private space agencies launch from places like Equatorial Guinea. The closer to the equator, the better. It's only the cold-war space programs, such as USA and Russia's, that keep their space launch centres within their own borders.
Unfortunately, they will continue to do so for now, because they've invested so much infrastructure there.
But the fact is, if they're going to move, it wouldn't make sense to move to Arizona. They would move to the equator like all the newer space programs have done.
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Latitude is one reason, well-explained by other replies.
Another is safety. Rockets must launch to the east (or lose the advantage of the earth's rotation). If there's a problem with a lunch from Florida, the debris crash into the ocean. Launches from western states could crash into eastern states.
From the NASA web site...
An interesting article regarding NASA preparations for Frances.
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It'a an urban legend. Read the real story at snopes.com.
However, even as a layman I can point to the weather as the single greatest reason the US Space Program needs to relocate.
Wrong. The most important factors are access to useful orbits and downrange safty. Cape Canaveral is well situated for geosynchronous launches because of its low latitude. Orbit plane changes take a lot of energy. It is also well situated for servicing high inclination orbits, like the one used by the space station, and Molniya orbits used by some intelligence satellites. The only thing you can't do well from the Cape is launch to polar or sun synchronous orbits. That is why we have Vandenberg in California. Together these launch sites provide superb access to space and unmatched range safety. The American south west is a lousy choice because so many people live along the ascent path.
an ill wind that blows no good
But your comments about the relative saftey of Soyuz versus the Shuttle are complete bullshit.
I wasn't talking Soyuz vs. Shuttle, but disposable vs reusable (where the Soyuz and Shuttle happen to be high-profile examples of each kind).
Furthermore, the USSR skimped on safety spending, yet had similar levels of danger, because of a fundamentally safer design. The safest of all would be a Soyuz-like design (meaning unguided re-entry), with USA levels of redundant spending.
The Soyuz has killed all its passengers more times than the shuttle has - look it up.
Ok, I looked it up. The Soyuz has killed all its passengers twice, exactly the same number of Shuttle disasters. That adds up to 4 people lost on Soyuz, versus 14 killed in Shuttles. So... what was your point, exactly?
One minor part of the Shuttle's excessive risk is caused by the winged landing: To land the Shuttle, you need a aircraft pilot, who's otherwise useless. His presence onboard adds mass, and increases the number of lives that would be lost in an accident.
DRAG is not the word you want. Try again.
I wondered if you'd jump on that. FYI, the definition of "drag" is "an impediment or burden". But if you'd like it to only mean "retarding interaction with a fluid medium", then I'll rephrase: "The wings were a drag on liftoff, and their mass uselessly increased the thrust needed for both liftoff and orbital accelerations"
I don't even like the Shuttle, I wanted to build the gigantic space plane
Any kind of spaceplane is still a bad idea. "Planes", by definition, are only useful in an atmosphere. Putting any kind of plane is space is just wasteful mass and excessive complexity.
Not currently. Under the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, NASA is prohibited from paying the Russians for anything -- even for extra Progress vehicles. President Bush would either have to certify that Russia was no longer providing missile technology to Iran or grant NASA a waiver because of a threat to the station's safe operation.
Takes at least three days to load it on the 747. All three are in the progress of being re-fitted.
Gorkman
Their shuttle project was a failure
No it wasn't, Buran (Buran is the name of one of the orbiters, not the class of spacecraft) flew in space successfully, and unmanned (US orbiters have never flown in space unmanned). It only flew once however simply because the money ran out.
There were at least 2 other space-capable orbiters in the mid to late stages of construction at the time the programme was shelved.
The russian orbiters were technically superior, although that said, still not a brilliant way of getting to space.
It's all moot now though as aside from some Energia engines that may still be made servicable (I believe they are mothballed somewhere), Buran itself is (I think still) buried under the Baikonur roof collapse, and the next most complete craft was stored outside and is in no way servicable any more if it hasn't already been broken down for scrap.
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