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NASA Prepares Discovery for Launch

Posted by Zonk on from the up-up-and-away dept.

eggoeater writes "Yahoo! reports that Kennedy Space Center is buzzing with excitement over the likely launch of Space Shuttle Discovery this Spring. It's been just over two years since the Columbia tragedy and the Discovery has been outfitted with many new safety features, including the removal of the foam from the external tank and pressure sensors on the wings that would detect an impact. Quote from launch director Michael D. Leinbach: 'It's all converging on what looks like May 15 to start flying the shuttle again.'"

15 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds good, but expensive. by bigtallmofo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm glad the shuttle program is going back online but with the price of launching a Soyuz being about 1/25th the cost of a shuttle launch, I'm not sure how much we should depend on the shuttle.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
    1. Re:Sounds good, but expensive. by jokumuu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Real problem is that while the shuttle was being built (and fought over in budgets) NASA intentionally tried to stop all other forms of space flight to keep the shuttle program alive. The end result was the the shuttle had to fullfill so many missions that it became a "jack of all trades, master of none." So currently US does not have anything approachng Soyuz in capacity as alternative to the shuttle.

    2. Re:Sounds good, but expensive. by Docrates · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A Soyuz doesn't have the cargo capacity that the Shuttle has, which is why ISS construction has been halted and supplies are running tight.

      The real question is if America should continue supporting the construction of the ISS. Circumstantially I think she should, even if the scientific and engineering profit from the program is limited.

      --

      There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
    3. Re:Sounds good, but expensive. by willith · · Score: 3, Interesting

      By contrast NASA is wasting $500 billion on CEV this year alone and they wont get ANYTHING for it other than pretty computer generated images. Building CEV is going to cost at least 36 times as much as Kliper and is scheduled to be 4 years later for its first manned launch, 2010 versus 2014.

      That's because CEV's intended role, as a platform that can be used for interplanetary expeditions, is much broader than Kliper's intended role as a bus to ferry people and cargo to LEO. The competing CEV design teams have a lot more complicated problems to solve, like, how do we keep the crew from being fried by radiation while they're hanging somewhere in the spaces between worlds, and how do we engineer a complex, multi-role vehicle that can launch, go to Mars, send down a lander component to deliver people and cargo, lift back off and rendezvous, and then return those people and cargo to earth?

      You're not just comparing apples to oranges; you're comparing apples to 747s.

    4. Re:Sounds good, but expensive. by willith · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You'll note the capsule is a pathetic little thing nearly identical to the one Apollo had 40 years ago. In fact the whole lunar plan is just a regurgitation of Apollo, excepting they are missing one key component the Saturn V

      A capsule is an extraordinarily efficient way to design anything that you're going to be de-orbiting through earth's atmosphere. Heat spreads evenly over the heat shield, and it's self-righting. By comparison, the shuttle is a monstrously inefficient, draggy beast. For lofting crew and eventually returning through the atmosphere, capsules are where it's at.

      They're re-using the design because it works, and because it's a thousand times easier than designing a wasteful space-plane.

      I'll go ahead and out myself here--I work for, um, one of the companies we've been talking about, directly on the current shuttle and station contracts. If you don't see anything substantive in the pretty-pictures public web site, it's because the public web site is a sales pitch.

      And multiple launches for multiple components is indeed the order of the day. Delta IV Heavy's launch in December cleared the way for it to be the Boeing team's prime mover, at least during Spiral One, but I wouldn't be suprised if something bigger comes to the table eventually. Nobody said we had to loft the whole freaking assembly in one go.

      Believe it or not you want to get the habitat to the surface and leave it there so making it inflatible and like a LEM is not a great idea.

      Baby steps, man. Baby steps. First we gotta go there, then we get out and walk around and come back, and then we gotta stay there. Besides, those habitat mods link up, like LEGO, or like those multi-robot Transformer uber-robots, except minus all the destruction and ch-ch-ch-ch-ch noises.

      If you see elements of Apollo recycled in the new Moon/Mars plans, it's because those things worked. LOR works, and it works well. So, LOR is the way to go. By extension, MOR ought to work well, too. The LM design worked--you need four legs to support the weight of the craft when it lands, because three isn't enough and five is too many. That's why you've got a lander with a descent stage that looks like the LM.

      If Kliper flies, great. I'm all for it--I'm all for anything that continues space exploration, even if it's not my employer doing it, because we must go. But right now, all Kliper's got are some engineering plans and a mock-up, and the mock-up isn't done yet. They're not planning for it to fly until 2010, which is two years after the completion of CEV's first spiral.

      Whatever works, as long as it works.

  2. Best scientific quote ever by rbarreira · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Several important matters remain unresolved, including what to use for in-flight repair of the thermal tiles, which protect the shuttle's nose and belly from temperatures of more than 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit upon reentry.

    Five methods are being studied, including a giant caulking gun that dispenses pinkish-orange goo.

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  3. Re:Oh finally! by luvirini · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nope, as NASA has become a bunch of scared old folks basically. Every mission they do has to follow a set of safety standards, among them the fact that the shuttle has to have the option of evacuating to the international space station. Hubble's orbit makes this impossible, thus no direct resque missions.

  4. Re:BOFH? by digitalchinky · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Doesn't snopes or one of those other urban legend sites have something about that pen, fully privately funded by fisher, nothing at all to do with NASA. Price tag was 2 million as well.

    The russians also use 'pens' by the way. Pencil dust and all.

  5. Big Dumb Boosters by Peter777 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anyone remember from 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', that Heinlein predicts rocket tech will have evolved into something far simpler that what we have today (or back then even)? His summary of space tech for the next couple of hundered years went something like:

    1. Exceedingly basic and unreliable.

    2. Exceedingly complex and expensive.

    3. Basic, reliable and cheap.

    I wonder when no.3 will arrive...http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byte serv.prl/~ota/disk1/1989/8904/8904.PDF

  6. Re:BOFH? by dbIII · · Score: 3, Interesting
    As Americans, we over engineer
    I think you'll find the phrase is really "micromanage and change direction often". Also the basics are not looked at sometimes. After reading "Dragonfly" about american astronauts on Mir, it appears that the psychological testing which I always thought was the only non-fiction part of "I Dream of Jeanie" was also fiction. People that were not suited to the task of working in a closed environment as a team for months were sent into space without being tested to see whether they were suitable or not. One glaring example of the management problems at NASA some years back was that the people who knew about the fault that led to the challenger accident did not have a way to get that inforamation to the people at the top of the organisation without going through an outsider that had a Nobel prize (so had some serious credibility).

    The pen story was a myth anyway - reality is far worse - components assembled at greater cost in different states for the purpose of political pork barrelling.

  7. And more seriously... by art6217 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Taking into account the launching rocket, the whole setup is not fully reusable. And the shuttle is indeed very bulky. If they get rid once of the launching rocket or make it smaller, the reusable ships might possibly become a relatively cheap and comfortable way of traveling to the Earth orbit.

  8. Finally by EaterOfDog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am glad to see we are making some kind of effort to get our manned space program back online. These massive overreactions to shuttle crashes are a bit ridiculous. I realize some great folks died, but these people were pioneers, and the price of being a pioneer is sometimes your ass. I say we salute them and we get back out there any way we can.

    --

    Crushing my karma one post at a time.
  9. can the orbiter make it to the moon? by dizee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i was brimming with pride when i annouced to the other guys at work that nasa was prepping discovery for launch.

    the new guy said, "what?"

    "discovery. you know, the space shuttle?"
    "where is it going? the moon?"
    "uh, no. it's going to the same place it always goes. into orbit. it can't go to the moon!"
    "why not? it's a rocket isn't it?"

    a rocket. :/

    more conversation continued, in which i exclaimed that the orbiter can't make it to the moon and back without shitloads of fuel. but then i began to question that, as i suppose it's possible to fit the cargo bay with additional fuel.

    so, it begs the question, can the orbiter make it to the moon and back? what about landing on the moon? obviously without an atmosphere, the fact that it is winged makes it quite useless as a traditional aircraft.

    comments from aerospace experts?

    -mike

    1. Re:can the orbiter make it to the moon? by Moschaef · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Funny you asked. I toured the NASA facility at Michoud TWO DAYS ago where they build the main fuel tanks. The fuel used buy the shuttles main engines is liquified oxygen and liquified hydrogen. At full burn the main engines use over 1600 gallons a second. Although this sounds impressive, the overwhehlming majority of the thrust is provided by the solid fuel rockets strapped on either side. The shuttle's main engines are used primarily to keep the whole craft pointed in the right direction and nudge the vehicle into the appropiate orbit. So why not just strap a few more solid feul rockets onto the shuttle?? Simply not possible, but even if we thought we could figure it out, who's going to sit in that shuttle the first time it goes up, NOT ME!!

  10. Re:Oh finally! by endersdouble · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ....and private companies which have no interest in science at all, but instead are *officially* in pursuit of the bottom line, as compared to congress which at least in principle should want to do science the right way, will do that much more science? I'm not saying private spaceflight is evil; it's just that privitization isn't the solution to everything. Virigin Galactic or the like, frankly, doesn't give a shit what the universe looked like 14 billion years ago, and have even less reason than Congress to fund a telescope to find out.