Space Shuttle Goes Back to Work

dalewj writes "The Discovery rolled over from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center this morning. May 15th is the scheduled launch for STS-114. I was at NASA last month and got to see the payload for the space station thru lots of glass and I have to wonder, how far behind is the space station at this point?"

Comments

Feynmann predicted 1/50 rate of failure

[PxM]

when he was part of the Challenger investigation team. Hopefully, this means that the chance of another accident is improbable given NASA's desire to phase out the Shuttle and replace it with something more 21st century. Hopefully the winds won't change and the Shuttle will be replaced with something better before the next accident. NASA should really start pushing for more private groups to do this rather than just handing out paltry prizes. Or maybe the Chinese will end up giving NASA the drive it needs to get a working space program. China's economy isn't on the rocks like the USSR during the space race so they would actually be able to compete with us.

--
Want a free iPod?
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof

Like a batter at the plate...

[Stanistani]

NASA only has one strike left before they're out of the game.

If they lose one more shuttle, they'll never fly again.

My prayers will be with the astronauts.

It's waaaay past time to build those unmanned heavy lifters and redundant crew vehicles.

Didn't count?

[StratoChief66]

From the NASA site: The last shuttle mission to visit the ISS during 2002 was STS-113, which delivered the Expedition 6 crew and the P1 (P-One) Truss. The STS-113 crew performed three spacewalks to activate and outfit the P1 after it was attached to the port side of the S0 Truss. Expedition Five returned to Earth on Endeavour, wrapping up a six-month stay in space. Following the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded. Four crew exchanges have occurred since then using Soyuz spacecraft instead of Shuttles. NASA is targeting no earlier than Spring 2005 for Shuttle's Return to Flight with Discovery flying for STS-114. Ok, STS-113 in 2002, crash in 2003, now the next one is STS-114? What is the designation for the one that crashed? Is it only counted if it lands? Not Flamebait, just curious. Did the other crash not count?

Re:Didn't count?

[Bad Vegan]

If I recall (brother of a good friend is an astronaut), the flights are numbered when they are scheduled and sometimes the schedule changes, but the numbers don't. Think of it like a project plan, with each task given a separate number. The task may move within the overall schedule, but to make sure you're all referring to the same task you use the "absolute" number assigned, even if it's out of order with numbers of tasks that occur before it in "relative" terms. Man, I just used way too many characters to explain that.

Re:Didn't count?

[tmortn]

Eh I can't say I think they shouldn't have been used for science missions at the time. Just pointing out that using them as such was far from what they were designed for... and most of their limitations as a science platform were founded in the fact the thing just wasn't designed to be used that way. That it was used that way for so long does not mean it is now a good science platform or that it was a good use of shuttle. It just means it was a shelter in a storm. It is what was available at the time. All things considered they got alot out of them, but it was a jury rig system none the less.

I just think that once we got back to the idea of building a permanent platform for science that we should have dedicated the fleet to do that and trimmed any excess. That didn't happen for largely political reasons and the nail in the coffin of the idea was that columbia couldn't get to ISS orbit with much of a payload (it did dock at station one time and was scheduled to do so again after a diet program refit). So at that point the question was whether to mothball, strip it of excess weight, or continue to fly what we had planned YEARS before even though it made little sense with a partially online ISS facility that was STARVED for science work. In the end it was supposed to fly that last fatefull science lab mission, then be stripped of any excess weight that could be stripped then used for a couple of oddball missions to speed up core complete and finally, mothballed.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and it seemed harmless enough to just let the inertia of the planned missions peter out. Only reason I say anything about it at all is I said many times before STS-107 that the science missions that were still happening after the activation of ISS in 2001 were a waste and a distraction to what NASA said was its primary goal for manned missions. The one exception in my book was Columbia's earlier mission to service Hubble. That was a real mission and real reason not to use shuttle in support of furthering ISS at the time.

But I am not saying that would have prevented columbia or anything... well other than mothballing it (but that would mean that ET would have been used on another orbiter and we might be three orbiters down now). It probably just would have fireballed on an ISS mission, or perhaps the now defunct hubble mission. Either of which would have had more meaning in my eyes than running one last make work shuttle science mission.

Re:So, going to repair the Hubble?

[Martin Blank]

Unless you have some poll data to back this up, I would tend to disagree strongly with you. Hubble has been one of NASA's biggest PR coups, and ranks up with the Mars rover missions in terms of overall public success. We've seen the destruction of two shuttles on live TV, whereas Hubble continues to return spectacular pictures at which people still marvel, even if they are touched up a bit for public viewing.

Re:The Space Shuttle is such a waste

[Rei]

Shuttle payload: 27,500 kg to LEO
Shuttle launch costs: Varied; generally believed to be 350-450m$
Price per kg: ~15k$/kg
Price per kg for Pegasus: ~25k$/kg
Price per kg for Saturn-V: ~20k$/kg (modern dollars)
Price per kg for Ariane-V: ~10k$/kg
Price per kg for Proton: ~7k$/kg (modern dollars)

Honestly, for when it was designed in the US, it's only so-so in terms of cost effectiveness. It doesn't beat Russian costs by a long shot, and European costs are cheaper too (although they benefit from modern rocket design, unlike the old Protons).

Now, lets mention the shuttle's orbital maneuvering capabilities and cargo return capability (something that has really been problematic for ISS - Soyuz has been unable to take its trash back as fast as it builds up), and the fact that it's man rated.

Then, lets mention how shuttle launch costs are calculated. They take the shuttle's annual launch budget and divide by the average number of launches per year. However, there's a problem with that: a sizable chunk of the shuttle's budget goes toward research on improvements (which will have benefits to its successors); in short, part of the shuttle's ongoing costs are really just R&D.

Most importantly, however, is to look at the history of the shuttle. Its budget was almost halved during development; it's pretty impressive that they came out with anything at all. The reduced capital costs led to most of the problems they've had so far: instead of a titanium frame, they used aluminum, which gives a ~40% worse payload ratio and requires an elaborate, espensive to maintain, and damage-risky TPS. They used SRBs because they pretty much already existed. They used a nonflyback main tank because it was cheaper to develop. Etc.

A next gen reusable, if given proper capital costs, should be an incredibly impressive vehicle. You get a greater payload, almost no fatigue wear, a very simple (and cheap to maintain) TPS, greater resistance to debris damage, and many other benefits that will hugely reduce cost per kilogram. Combined with a reusable main tank, next-generation engines (there have been a lot of advancements in reduced maintenance and performance since the SSMEs were designed), etc, we're looking at cost per launch being a small fraction of what it is presently.

The shuttle should be seen as a test bed; they've done a lot of great research in the shuttle program (especially concerning engines - a lot of the modern, low-cost US rockets have really benefitted from SSME research), and now it's time to move on to a next gen reusable craft. Some people argue that disposables are the only answer; however, even if you can justify mass production of a single rocket line, there's only so far you can go with disposables. There are too many parts to be machined, too much labor, too much material, etc. Fuel is incredibly cheap by comparison, and there is no reason why the maintenance costs on reusables can't being lowered greatly.

Core Complete

[J05H]

This Station has two theoretical "finishes": Core Complete and a more nebulous Assembly Complete. Originally, the station (Reagan's Freedom) was to be finished in 1994, then 1998, then it got redesigned. It has only gotten more complicated since then. It may be like Fusion power and Commodore's release schedules - station will always be finished 10 years from now.

At this point, it really depends on what you define "Core Complete" as.

There are some potential roadblocks toward getting the European Columbus, Japanese Kibo and the US Centrifuge flown. NASA is already looking at mothballing the first two (finished) modules and not building the Centrifuge. The Shuttle has been having groundings for various reasons since the late 90s (maintenance, fuel line cracks and Columbia RIP) - there is no guarantee that the fleet can fly through 2010.

It's time to stop talking about "The Space Station" and start talking about space stations. Bigelow Aerospace is about to one-up the X-Prize with the America's Space Prize and their Nautilus inflatable stations. They want to sell the final modules to any party that can afford one, all backed up by a billionaire with some Vision. The idea of the One True Space Dock is so Cold War. We are quickly approaching a new age of exploration and human frontiers, companies like Scaled, Bigelow, SpaceDev and SpaceX are going to enable this. NASA needs to stop doing operations and get on with exploring, or their going to get swept aside -- lead, follow or get out of the way.

Re:Core Complete

[tmortn]

Very very good points. Almost wish I hadn't been posting so I could mod you up.

Also can't say I disagree with the mothballing. Without the already scrapped Crew Hab, if we launch COF and JEM we will have one lab per Crew. And if the Russians actually built their facility we would have more labs than crew. Considering that as is it takes about 2.5 crew to run maintenence we might have more maintence hours than crew time available unless they don't sleep.

If they want to do this I think NASA should be all over those inflatable habs. Hell it is their idea to begin with and this guy has gone and built them. Try one out. If it works BAM, crew hab or if nothing else it might provide a space for tourists and solve the probelm of NASA getting its panties in a wad whenever the Russians sell a seat on a Soyuz flight.

Re:Still has uses...

[Altima(BoB)]

On top of all that, it's a superb launching point for the mass exodus of the rich and famous to the Illuminati's colony on Planet X when the engineered Bird Flu virus becomes a pandemic.

But really, despite stupid jokes made at 2:30am, I think that research on extended stays in zero G are practically essential for the future of the spacefaring human race. In zero G, the structure of bone itself begins to weaken and deteriorate along with muscle atrophy due to the sheer ease of movement in zero G. The reason we've had no problems with that is because no one has really stayed in space for all that long. Any trip to another planet (Probably Mars, certainly anything further) will have definite health risks for all crew involved once they come under the influence of gravity again. On top of that, I think psychological studies on the ISS would be valuable, because of the rather unique environment there. Even though human beings have explored in less-than-comfortable vessels before, the kind of physical and mental isolation in space must be fairly unique, and I'd imagine it would be a huge pressure for anyone up there too long.

Anyway, whatever research the ISS has or hasn't done in the past, we can't forget its potential, and for me the most fascinating potential is studying Space's relationship with the human body and mind.

Re:ISS Schedule

[deglr6328]

7 years ago when that site went up initially it had the finish date as being this year. Now, everything past the next two flights is "under review". nice. Prediction of time remaining untill cancellation of project completion by congress (a la SSC): 2 years. Prediction of time remaining untill cancellation of all project funding and decision to deorbit: 5-7 years.(though I hope I'm wrong) When the first parts of the ISS started to go up I was in high school and while I can't say that I actually found the mission exhilirating, I did think it fascinating and thought it held promise for real scientific discovery. ~8 years on and it's seeming more and more like giant waste of money. I follow space science and astronomy/planetary science very closely but if I were asked to name even one major accomplishment of the ISS thus far, I would be very hard pressed to come up with anything at all. In the end it will be seen as an almost entirely uncharismatic venture that the public could'nt have cared less about, and that will be the cause of its final demise. sad.

Re:The Space Shuttle is such a waste

[rbanffy]

He3 is not a very good idea - you would have to process hundreds of tons of rock to extract just a tiny little bit. And we still don't know how to do it. Solar + fission makes more sense on the Moon. Energy-efficience plus safer fission and Deuterium fusion make more sense here. Perhaps solar transported by hydrogen (solar electrolysis of water and using hydrogen as a storage/transport medium) also makes sense.

The far side of the moon seems a natural place to put radiotelescopes that would not suffer any interference from Earth sources. Optical telescopes also could be assembled on the Moon and the lunar poles are a natural place to put infrared telescopes.

Assuming we could build automated self-contained raw-material processing factories, we could use local materials to build most parts of them (at least structures). This would be a big incentive to develop such things and could enormously reduce the costs of assembling and launching spacecraft both to the outer solar system or to Earth orbit.

Optical and radio interferometry also could easily be done with ground-based equipment. If the equipment is within a reasonable distance from a settlement, it is far easier to fix and upgrade. Just imagine having a dozen Hubble telescopes working in concert and that could be serviced on a next-day basis.

Other side benefit would be the development of the technologies and procedures required for a successful Mars mission. If something goes awfully wrong on the Moon, a rescue mission could be there in a week. Nothing can go wrong in a Mars mission as a rescue mission would only be there to pick up the corpses a couple years after the mishap.

Most important of all, it increases our very remote chances of spending some time there.

And, perhaps for the current US administration, making people look to the Moon may avoid having them look to Afghanistan, Iraq, the soon-to-be-done mistakes on Iran and the mistakes already not done in North Korea. It's just... convenient.

Re:How far behind

[lostchicken]

Russia's "old-tech" rockets are far more reliable/effective/economical than the shuttle could ever hope to be. The shuttle was supposed to drop launch to LEO/GTO from $150mil to $10mil. Instead, it costs $500mil to fly the thing, and you don't get nearly the payload of a heavy-lift booster, nor the reliability. The shuttle hasn't been used for commercial or military launch in quite some time. That's because of one simple fact.

It's really hard to get shit out of space. We've got the launch thing down (light a big fire at the top of a cone, and go up for a while, then go over really fast), but it's really hard to get things back. Both shuttle failures have been as a direct result of their reusuable nature. If you didn't need to reuse the SRBs, you wouldn't need the field-joint O-rings to come on and off, and STS-51L would have flown safely to orbit. If you didn't need to bring back the same vehicle you launched with, you wouldn't need the giant delta wings, nor the overly complex thermal protection system, and then no amount of falling foam would have done jack to STS-114, and they'd be fine.

People like SpaceX have the right idea. Keep it simple, keep it cheap, reuse what you can, but what goes to orbit stays in orbit except for what you absolutely have to get back (i.e. crew). Yes, a reusuable spacecraft would be nice. However, right now, it's just not the way to go.