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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."
I thought they were scrapping the shuttle? This might of been interesting if it was 20-30 years from now and they were taking their "restored 57 Chevy" out into space. Personally I am to the point where these shuttle flights are a big waste of money "if" they are not doing anything innovative to help the next breed of space capable crafts.
I was under the impression that NASA may be considering a move away from the Space Shuttle projects. Could this be one of the last missions, or are the rumors greatly exaggerated?
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
I really don't think the space elevator concept will work. You have a massive ball and chain attached to a most likely ocean going platform that is mobile. This mobile platform is all that is connecting this giant ball that is trying to hurl itself away from the reaches of gravity to the earth. I see a couple problems with this. One, the platform getting picked up, two the platform getting pulled along the worlds oceans out of control by a giant ball on a cable. Finally three, what is to keep this giant ball directly above the platform. They want to use centripital force to keep tension on the line so that thing doesn't fall to earth. I can only see this little ball going faster or slower than earth's rotation and the cable pretty much trying to wrap istelf around earth.
Other replies here have noted that S-S-1 didn't go into orbit, but it's worth emphasizing the difference between "touching space" and getting into orbit. If you do the sums, and work out just how hard it is to achieve 5 miles/sec when your propellant only leaves the nozzle at about 2 miles/sec, you'll see how staggering an achievement it is - a single stage craft would have to consist of approx 85% fuel by mass.
Burt Rutan's achievement was remarkable for the fact that he achieved what he did for less money than NASA spends on shoe care. But in terms of achieving orbit, he's going to have to solve the remaining 90+% of the problem.
Not that I don't agree with a lot of what you said! :-)
Exactly 1 since the dawn of U.S. manned flight has ended up in the ocean before nominal mission end.
One was scattered all over the South.
One caught fire on the launchpad.
A pretty fucking remarkable record if you consider that a rocket is nothing less than a million pounds of high explosive in a tin can.
Considering the damage caused by the Hurricanes this season...
What damage? The VAB lost a number of sheet-metal panels. The tile fab shop lost a roof. Some other buildings sustained minor water damage. The OPF lost power once or twice. NO FLIGHT HARDWARE WAS DAMAGED. The schedule slip was due as much to the hurricane preparation exercises as to the repair activities. Schedule impact was measured in weeks, not months.
From then on NASA has been falling behind. Since Congress prohibited paying cash to Russia, they will use barter again. Now American taxpayers should expect astronauts to work on Russian projects.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
"[W]e've got that great big investment up there called the ISS. Shall we just abandon it? Didn't think so."
Think again. If I take a thousand dollars in cash and throw it down a sewer drain I don't call it an "investment". The ISS has been so scaled down that even if completed its science value will be negligible. This is a pig in a poke, the countries that have pulled out have done so wisely, and only our pig-headed obstinance (or steadfast resolve, if you're on that side of the aisle) keeps us throwing billions at that turkey.
"'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."
I am admittedly not a space fanatic but I remember the Apollo 13 cockup -- which didn't kill anyone but really, really should have given the circumstances -- and the Apollo 1 fire, which killed three. 13 had a hardware fault, which is going to happen occasionally despite the best intentions and zero-defect policies. 1 suffered from a combination of poor engineering design (an inward-opening hatch? Oy) and the schedule-pushers whose successors killed the two shuttles.
Both shuttle accidents could have been averted if the engineers had been listened to by the managers. The Columbia report revealed that NASA didn't learn a goddamned thing from the Challenger disaster and I bet a dollar to a doughnut the Endeavour report will reveal that NASA didn't learn a goddamned thing from the Columbia disaster. (Not to pick on Endeavour, the next killemall shuttle cockup could just as well be one of the other two.) NASA's management culture is not capable of changing.
"[W]e really need the shuttles flying, if only to develop the replacements!"
Why? Not being snarky, but why will the presence or absence of shuttle flights assist in the design, manufacture, and testing of a next-generation (yet equally superfluous) orbital vehicle? Obviously NASA will _use_ the shuttle, if only to justify its continuing existence, perhaps to fly parts up and let them undergo the shake, rattle, and roll of a launch, but what makes the shuttle a _necessary_ part of the design effort?
I have made and continue to make a relatively unpopular statement. I'm not trolling or baiting or trying to be funny, but I feel strongly about this: De-orbit the ISS. Ground the shuttle fleet. Put all that money into the unmanned program and flood the solar system with rovers and parachuting probes and orbiting instrument platforms. They don't have to sleep a third of the time, they don't need air, or food, or water, or as much radiation shielding.
We won't, though. The US as a whole has an enormous amount of national ego built into its status as a space-faring nation. It's like cities that don't feel "world class" without a professional sports franchise writ large. Never mind that we spend way too much, go nowhere, do little of value, and periodically kill everyone onboard.
Perhaps things will change.
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While one certainly can say that for the Challenger disaster (there was pretty much a universal engineering consensus that they shouldn't launch, but political pressure due to budget cuts led to a launch anyways), you can't say that for the Columbia disaster. In fact, I'm only aware of a single engineer, out of the tens of thousands who have been involved on the Shuttle in some way or another, who raised the foam issue to NASA administrators. You'll probably get more criticism about the orbiter's toilet than that.
Part of the problem was that not only does foam seem like it wouldn't do damage, but if you do the calculations, it doesn't pack very much force either, even at the speeds it was falling. The problem turned out to be its impulse. At those speeds, the foam behaved as if it were rigid, and so imparted all of its force to the RCC leading edge in a tiny fraction of a second. Few working on the project knew about this property of the foam, or even really suspected it.
A more comprehensive testing suite could have caught this. However, NASA engineers aren't gods; they don't know in advance what will be the problem. To expand the testing suite would have made the project more expensive - and people are already complaining about shuttle costs.
There's always that nasty balance between economics and safety.
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
And Rutan has done what that would enable him to get to orbit or survive reentry?
He competed for a prize for which the requirements were in the range of his experience. I.e., it enabled him to do what he always did, build small craft out of epoxy with normal control surfaces, et al. He didn't even build the rocket engine himself - SpaceDev deserves the credit for that one (although we can go into why SpaceDev doesn't have the qualifications either for the next rocket engine if you want...)
I hate sounding like a broken record, but SpaceShipOne wasn't even a tiny fraction of the effort to get to orbit, and was hardly even a step in the right direction. 90% of SS1 doesn't advance the goal of getting to orbit, because it's specific impulse is just far too low for its required tank mass. You need to scrap the tanks, the engines, and basically everything but the cabin - and that's all *before* you deal with the reentry problem.
POTUS Witch Hunt tracker: 75 charges filed against 19 witches, 4 witches cooperating and 5 witches have pled guilty.
And it would be nice if they'd explain acronyms so that those of us who are not in the know can increase our knowledge. What does ITS stand for, anyway?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.