Space Shuttles Survive Hurricane Frances

maggeth writes "In an update to a previous story, NASA damage assessment teams have begun work at the Kennedy Space Center, which was hit by Hurricane Frances. It appears that there was no damage to any of the space shuttles, according to the first word from NASA. Although more details still are to be released, we know that Frances died down in strength before making landfall, limiting the amount of wind damage." Reader knix writes, though, that "It looks like NASA did have quite a bit of damage from Hurricane Frances," pointing to an AP story which adds some detail, and noting that besides a knocked over Mercury-Redstone rocket, the massive VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) had 1000 panels missing after the storm hit. According to the AP, "The holes left by the missing panels created 40,000 square feet of 'open window' on two sides of the building."

Comments

Good News!

[AKAImBatman]

This is extremely good news! As I said previously, if we had lost any of the orbiters, the shuttle program would be over. And if the shuttle program is over, manned space flight as we know it would be over. While many think that the shuttle is a very poor vehicle (actually it's amazingly engineered, but always lacked a real purpose), having it around pushes Congress to fund something simpler and cheaper.

Glad it happened now

[bblazer]

Given the safety cord and lack of oversight, it is good that if this had to happen, that it happened now, rather than when the shuttles were on 'active duty.' Now at least there isn't the pressure of a pending mission, and hopefully the engineers can have some time to thoroughly go over the orbiters to verify that there has been no damage.

They Haven't Gone Anywhere

[reallocate]

Well, the X-Prize folks haven't gone anywhere yet and the Russians can barely afford their current feeble effort and don't seem to have any plans to pay for the design and development of new spacecraft or missions outside LEO.

(I'm deliberately discounting that little coast up to 60 miles. I want to see the private sector put payloads on the order of at leat 100 tons in orbit. That's the kind of capability we need to actually go somewhere.)

Re:I should hope they would survive...

[Sylver Dragon]

The problem isn't the wind, the problem is the big objects traveling at 100+ MPH carried by said wind. Moreover, hurricanes tend to spawn tornados. One of those could do some real damage to an orbiter. Now we just have to hope that Ivan either misses Florida, or also manages to not do any damage.

Re:Protection

[PPGMD]

Exactly it's about money, but more than that time. It takes about a week to plan and implement a cross country shuttle flight, and since they only have two operational 747 ferry aircraft, it would take about 2 weeks to fly all the orbiters out of Florida to Edwards AFB.

Unfortunately you can't plan out that far for hurricane hits at this time, so instead of flying them out for every false alarm they take a chance with the orbiters in Florida.

Besides it's safer to have the orbiters buttoned down well in Florida, than have them caught off guard by a fast storm like Andrew with one of the orbiters still in process to be mated with the aircraft.

Re:affordable

[GileadGreene]

Interestingly enough, the cost per pound to put something in orbit was significantly lower for the (expendable) Saturn V than for the (reusable) Space Shuttle. Even when you take inflation into account.

Re:Why did they choose Floridia?

[goldmeer]

we don't have colonies like europe you know..

Guam

Saipan

The US Virgin Islands

Peurto Rico

American Samoa

Nah, the USA dosen't have any colonies...