Space Shuttle to re-launch in May

Goeland86 writes "CNN reports that NASA is on it's way to prepare for a shuttle launch in may. Considering the damage caused by the Hurricanes this season, I think it's quite impressive that they're even thinking of a launch next year altogether."

Comments

The Shuttles are Being Phased Out

[Smoo_Master]

From the Article:

The shuttle program has 28 flights remaining on its books before the orbiters are scheduled to be mothballed toward the end of the decade. All are in support of the International Space Station, which remains under construction.

The shuttles are back, but only temporarily. Work on their replacements is likely being done now.

Re:The Shuttles are Being Phased Out

[pudknocker]

Replacements for the shuttle won't be flying anytime soon. The X-33/VentureStar was canceled a couple of years ago. The X-38/Crew Return Vehicle/Space Taxi, which was being considered as a crew module atop an expendable rocket, was canceled even though development seemed to be proceeding well.

And then there is the new CLCS (Command and Launch Checkout System) a replacement for the shuttle launch consoles and computers which was also canceled after 100's of millions of dollars.

NASA should fund Burt Rutan (if he'd take the money), then something would get done.

Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years

[rhsanborn]

If I remember correctly, his ship never went into orbit and went about 1/7th the height. It also never gets to the shuttles 17,000+ mph speed and thus doesn't have to deal with all that heat slowing down. It also has a small fraction of the amount of fuel. I'd rather they take their time and avoid burning men because they decided they had to hurry.

Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years

[angusr]

when it takes Burt Rutan 4 days to get his ship back into orbit Bit of a fallacy here - Rutan is doing nothing even vaguely similar to the Shuttle (or even later Mercury flights).

SpaceShipOne was nowhere near going into orbit. Orbit requires horizontal speed, not vertical height, and - more importantly - a way to safely bleed off that speed on re-entry without burning or breaking up.

SpaceShipOne is not capable of going into orbit, and never will be - it has neither the power to reach the Mach 25+ speeds required for orbital velocity, nor the ability to withstand the heating required to lose those speeds on reentry.

It's the equivalent of the early Mercury-Redstone flights from 1961(Freedom 7 and Liberty Bell 7) - short sub-orbital hops. The difference is that with a new booster (the Atlas) Mercury was capable of re-entry from orbital speeds.

Re:What we need to do...

[Macgruder]

Then you have no idea how the space elevator works.

It's not anchored (structually) to the surface of the Earth. It's connected, but that's only to keep the lower end from moving around do to the effect of the atmosphere (wind)

The anchor is a point in geo-synch orbit, the midpoint of the full length of the elevator. The lower terminus is at Earth's surface, but its upper end is as far away from the midpoint as the lower end is (think equal mass). The whole thing actually orbits the Earth just like a geo-sync satellite.

Re:We need a newer, cheaper alternative...

[LWATCDR]

The shuttle was a good idea. To get into space cheap you need a reusable space craft. Think how "cheap" your german smart car is if you have to replace it after every trip to the store.
The Shuttle should have been an experiment. We should have been working on it's replacement the day it first flew. The improved shuttle should have flown in 1992 and another improved shuttle in 2002. The shuttle was GROSSLY under funded from day one. The Goverment traded lower development costs for higher operating costs. Here are some of the concepts that where turned down due to cost of development http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/p219.htm

If you want to learn what the Shuttle might have been take a look at this
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/ch8.htm
Ide aly there should have been two programs one low risk maybe expendable launch vehicle and one high technical risk shuttle that pushed the state of the art.
We are not going to get anywhere with Big Dumb Boosters. But we are also not going to get anywhere with the goverment cheaping out on development at the cost of operation expence like it did with the Shuttle.

Re:Scrapping the Shuttle?

[Rei]

> I assure NASA's manned space program nothing
> innovative to help the next breed

You assure wrong. NASA has done a *huge* amount of R&D in the last decade - in fact, they're the biggest space R&D spender in the world. They've developed dozens of kinds of ion/plasma propulsion systems (and are working on getting a better power/mass ratio). They've developed dozens of new fuels, lightweight alloys, and new structural materials. Heck, even without changing the shuttle's basic design, they've notably upped its payload even while adding in more safety features due to their advances. They've lowered the cost of shuttle maintinance (although its still very expensive, because - cue the "they don't do enough safety work!" people - they go so far as to dismantle the SSMEs each time for inspection, and SSMEs are very complex beasts). Just last month I was reading about a new method they developed for using CVD to deposit a liner on the engine nozzles so that there's no clear surface break for it to erode at.

Here - here's a google search for NASA's site just for the word "novel" (it occurs a lot in publications):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-88 59 -1&q=site%3Anasa.gov+novel&btnG=Search

Note the 9,980 results for this search alone. NASA does a *TON* of research, on all aspects of space.

> they get paid pretty much the same whether the
> do anything or not

Apparently you've never heard of something called "budget cuts". Or "change of administrators", for that matter.

> Burt Rutan

Please excuse me while I go outside to laugh... ... back. :)

Please tell me you were kidding in your suggestion that someone who built an unscalable craft out of epoxy and didn't even make his own engine has accomplished much of anything toward getting craft to orbit and back. Please address the issues of delta-V, reentry heating, and manufacturing of the materials involved.

> "Black Sky" ... was deceptive concerning what was actually accomplished. SS1 is a manned sounding rocket. That's it. It didn't even go that much higher than the V2 did, for YHVH's sake (and had a lower payload even when you add in the ss1's weight of the pressurized cabin).

Re:By the grace of God, let's hope NASA's fixed th

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up....

I heard it straight from the horse's mouth. I attended two talks in the last week presented by Allan McDonald (although there were MANY engineers who initially called for the halting of Challenger, Allan was the head of these). The facts are:

Allan and his company at the time, ATK Thiokol, had actually given the "no go" for launch due to many concerns... cold weather affecting o-rings, high wind shear forcasted, and the SRB retrieval team was leaving their post due to high sea swells. What did the management do? They called a midnight meeting between the engineering heads and the Mission Management Team. They then would not accept "no" as an answer, and finally got a "go" after an anonymous vote among Thiokol engineers (note: anonymous meant any one individual could not be blamed). Anyone see a major problem here? The bigwigs wanted to launch at all costs. Similar problems occurred right before Columbia.

Face it people, NASA has become a "Prove that it fails or we will launch" rather than a "prove it will work or we won't launch" organization. Slight difference in wording, but huge gap in meaning.

Meanwhile in Russia

[bbc]

The Russians seem to have started building their Kliper lifting body space craft.