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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."
IMHO it was never bad engineering, but bad quality management. All the big catastrophes, be it on NASA's or ESA's side, could have caught by a rigorous net of quality management processes. But these net don't seem to exist in either of the two organization, at least not the extent where it makes them find errors.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
They may hate the shuttle but due to the short sightedness of the last few administrations they have no other viable space lift vehicle available. And they have contractual obligations on the International Space Station. The poor Russians (bankrupt as they are) are pulling more than their share and might get fed up soon if NASA doesnt start pulling its weight. After all the Russian part of the ISS is built independently. They can just close the doors and jettison all the US modules.
**Life is too short to be serious**
A lot of those failed attempts could have been avoided if the launch supervisors had just listened to the engineers. There have been times when the engineers are saying that the weatehr is too bad, or that a certain component is questionable for launch.
:-)
Let's not blame the engineers...blame the safety inspectors, or the launch supervisors if we're blaming someone.
The shuttles are nearly thirty years old, from the beginning of development to today. Each launch costs taxpayers nearly 1/2 billion dollars. Isn't there a better alternative? Can't we use technology to our advantage to design inexpensive machines similar to the shuttle? In my mind, the shuttle is comparable to bulky American 70's cars, while what it is really needed is the German Smart Car. Pardon the analogy.
A blog like any other.
It's not bad engineering....blame the politicians and bureaucrats behind the scenes saying, "DO IT!" when the engineers are screaming, "NO!". That's why we lost the first shuttle...
Okay peeps:
1) Replacing the shuttle. yes we should. No we haven't. But we've got that great big investment up there called the ISS. Shall we just abandon it? Didn
't think so.
2) 'Disasters' - We've had two. Fewer than the Apollo program. They suck. Really they do. And they have been attributed to the 'make it work anyway' group. Who, I might add, are usually under $$$ pressure from those who are screaming for better "return on investment for the taxpayer". This is still, contrary to popular belief, exploration, and *THINGS WILL HAPPEN* - it is not airflight.
3) 'We should develop -insert your favorite space technology here-', Some of those technologies do need testing in space now.
4) 'what about spaceship-one' - what was the payload capacity? 200kilo? Roughly?
yes, NASA has problems - but contrary to popular belief - we really need the shuttles flying, if only to develop the replacements!
NASA has a good record of recovering after a tragedy.
If you take the Apollo program as an example, the very first Apollo mission was a disaster with three astronauts killed. And yet after that, the Apollo missions were great successes (although Apollo 13 was a close call, of course).
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched with a faulty mirror, but this was fixed and Hubble's become a great success, too.
The shuttle program will probably go the same way.
I mean all the pooh-poohing about how old it is and how slow they are to get it running and how in the hell can Burt Rutan build a time machine that in 3 days and all that shit.
Well what's your "Jesus H. Christ this cost so much goddamn money that could be better used elsewhere" plan? How much should a very heavy reusable lifter cost and how complicated should it be?
Rutan didn't orbit, didn't carry a payload, can't dock with anything and at 20 million dollars per 175 pound man launched costs what the Space Shuttle costs.