Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
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.
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.