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NASA Plans Discovery Launch May 15
Haxx writes "More than two years after losing the space shuttle Columbia and its seven crew, NASA said Friday it has set May 15 as its target date for once again launching shuttles into space." Reader gollum123 writes points out Reuters's version of the story, which says that "May 15 was chosen as the launch date for Discovery and its seven-member crew because of lighting conditions and thermal issues related to the shuttle's launch and docking at the International Space Station."
They fired all of the engineers and outsourced to India.
Russia can't handle the ISS. The shuttle is the only vehicle that can handle lifting the larger parts of the station. Russia can only resupply and and lift small items for the ISS. Until the shuttles get back into it, ISS constuction is on hold.
I'm somewhat frightened by the prospects of this and future launches. I have a friend who works at NASA, and he was telling me the other day about the "mandatory changes" list that NASA had implemented; basically, a list of things that had to be finished before the next launch.
He said that what started as a daunting list started shrinking as items were eliminated or down-played due to budget or time contraints. It started with small things, but as pressure was put on NASA to launch again, bigger and bigger items began taking on secondary or even non-existant importance.
The bottom line: this shuttle is launching with things that should have been fixed not fixed at all. What's scary to me is that this is the same situation that resulted in both previous shuttle explosions: problems that were known about but downplayed as unimportant. As history tells us, this was hardly the case, resulting in the loss of two shuttles.
My friend's analysis of the situation fits with some of the studies done on the NASA disasters; NASA should be allowed to do its job without budget or political pressure, for without this they can assure the safety of the people sent into space on their vehicles.
Unfortunately, this will likely never happen, and even the most brilliant of designs will be rushed out the door or underfunded. Tragic, really.
I think most in the USA have a "been there, done that" attitude towards our human spaceflight programs. Sure, the space station is supposedly laying the foundation for future manned exploration missions, but right now, all we're essentially doing is a repeat of the 1980s. Weren't they doing 0 gravity experiments back then too? And what do we have to look forward to? Mr. Bush's plans to boldly return where we went 40 years ago? And after that grow some money trees so we can somehow get to mars?
Unmanned spaceflight has made great strides and clearly had a far, far greater impact on the public's love of space than our boring, so-tired manned spaceflight program. It's time to get creative, or else leave the mission to the robots.