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The Shuttle Mission No One Wants

Posted by timothy on from the no-one-in-my-room-anyhow dept.

Fourmica writes "USA Today (by way of TechNewsWorld) has a surprisingly insightful look at the planned 'rescue option' for Discovery's upcoming launch. The plan, which has been mentioned here before, is to have the crew hole up on the ISS until Atlantis can launch to bring them home. My question is, why shove everyone into the ISS? Why not just dock with it, and share the life support supplies between the two systems, instead of cramming everyone into the station?" See this earlier story on the same topic.

4 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    rutan hasn't reached orbit he has just barely scraped the edge of space on an up and down

    for orbit you need LATERAL velocity as well as vertical velocity (with just vertical you will either escape completely or go up and back down you will not orbit).

  2. You've got it wrong by dsanfte · · Score: 5, Informative

    Burt Rutan never got his ship into orbit. Not even close.

    --
    occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
  3. Re:RC Landing? by covertlaw · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not so easy. It would require a complete redesign of the entire landing gear system and compartments. The reason why they never designed the LG for remote deployment was in case of a systems failure that would cause the doors to open too early causing loss of the vehicle.

  4. Re:NASA has no choice by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is true that the Russians are doing more than their share in terms of getting hardware, supplies, and people into orbit. But remember who's paying for those rockets. As long as they get enough money to cover their costs, the Russians are not going to bail on us. They can't afford to!