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Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat
Masq666 writes "Tiny rocks, paint flecks and other fragments of junk whizzing around the Earth pose the greatest threat to the shuttles and the astronauts on board, according to the preliminary results of a new NASA risk study.
Even coin sized fragments can cause great damage to a shuttle, and the damage can be lethal, if it hits the windows or the heat shield."
Didn't you ever see Apollo 13? Haise pees into a relief tube in one scene and then activates the urine dump, looks out the window and says "The constellation Urion..."
... but NASA transcripts sort of bear that out as well.
Later in the movie they said that they couldn't make any more waste dumps because even that small vector would serve to push them off course.
Of course, it's a movie...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Several years ago I partook in an online discussion regarding the future of space flight, hosted by Jerry Pournelle (sci-fi writer and hobnobber with NASA people.) Prior to my question being posed, a female assistant asked me what my question was, and I voiced something along the lines of 'doesn't all the debris accumulating in orbit amount to a danger' then I posed to question to Jerry and he poo-poo'd my worries with some analogy of a coconut in the pacific ocean. (He did seem to overlook the idea that the analogous coconut would be moving at a few miles per second and could really ding a ship with such some force) .
Afterwards I told the female assistant I thought he was a daft bugger. She told me he was smarter than I thought and she was his wife.
A few months later the infamous paint-chip nearly punctured a shuttle window.
I don't think Jerry was the only one who didn't get it, I've felt there was a valid concern about doing our utmost to limit orbital debris. At the time there was alleged to be a catalog of 8,000+ known objects in orbit, including a power screwdriver. That last item could easily doom a shuttle.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You did read the tidbit that pointed out it would be cheaper to build a NEW Hubble based on the same plans, upgrade it before launch and launch it, then to do a repair mission to it, all things considered, right? Personally, if they put money into "hubble" it should be Hubble 2, as we could get a LOT more years out of a rebuilt one than with a repaired old one.
On a side note, I'm not sure why the government doesn't take a "mars rover" approach to more space missions, building and launching more than one of the same craft, and launch them one week apart. This would have saved all the science on the previous (doomed) mars lander, as they would have messed up on the first one, realized their mistake, and landed the second one with adjusted calculations. The incremental cost for a second or third craft will be MUCH lower than the first one, and potentially twice the science can be had from them (think being able to look at two objects instead of one with two hubbles).
We're still in the very early stages of spaceflight. It's still dangerous, and it will continue to be dangerous for decades to come. And debris in orbit is only a small factor. The Challenger wasn't hit by debris in space. Neither was Columbia for that matter. Should we stop going into space because of some debris? No. Should we stop going because of the other dangers? I'll tell you what, if we come to a point where the astronauts who are risking their lives, decide it's too dangerous, then I'll start to listen. After all, they're more acquainted with the exact nature of the dangers they face than any civilian or politician (John Glenn excepted).
You want to talk dangerous, go be a soldier in Iraq. That's dangerous. Why don't we outlaw wars, particularly unjustified, needless ones.
And while we're on the topic of dangerous, let's talk about automobiles? They're not a great deal safer than the space shuttle.. Why don't we actually make driving tests difficult in the U.S. and outlaw people who can't drive? That will really save lives.
Space flight is certainly not going to get safer if we stop doing it. The only way to improve is to just continue doing it and making improvements as we learn. Will some astronauts die? Of course. And they know that. It's the risk they signed up for. Why not let them be the ones to decide whether or not it's worth it.