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The Shuttle Mission No One Wants
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.
Because the shuttle is only a supported flight platform for a very narrow range of parameters on a given mission. Yes, even with all the contingencies. We *know* the ISS is a predictable, stable environment, as opposed to a failed shuttle (whatever the failure is) requiring extended docking with the ISS.
Therefore, living in cramped quarters for a while and losing/abandoning a shuttle is far desirable to potentially losing a shuttle due to yet-unknown circumstances, *and* the ISS, and all of the occupants of both.
Better cramped and (relatively) safe than comfortable and (perhaps) sorry, no matter how remote the chances of a catastrophic event caused by unknown/unmanageable failures, even on orbit.
Finally - jokes aside - wouldn't you think NASA knows at least marginally what it's doing here?
Or maybe they can use...
...the *military shuttle*!! (Hello, WW fans.)
They may hate the shuttle but due to the short sightedness of the last few administrations they have no other viable space lift vehicle available. And they have contractual obligations on the International Space Station. The poor Russians (bankrupt as they are) are pulling more than their share and might get fed up soon if NASA doesnt start pulling its weight. After all the Russian part of the ISS is built independently. They can just close the doors and jettison all the US modules.
The shuttles are masterpeices of engineering.... circa 1980. Unfortunatly they invested $$$ in a short production run vehicle that seems to still serve the original purpose. If you were to start building one new replacement it would take a long time and cost big bucks.
If they were to start off with a new design they could apply modern techniques/materials to create a lighter, stronger, more reliable system (i.e. a carbon monocot frame, carbon heat shield skin, computers that have more than 640k of ram, etc)
After working out the kinks on paper they could build a few dozen (price per unit should go down with increased volume) and launch more regularly. But then again, I'm just smoking crack here, NASA will never see that kind of budget again. Unless we can convience the public that Bin Laden is camped out in his secret moonbase.
NASA has a good record of recovering after a tragedy.
If you take the Apollo program as an example, the very first Apollo mission was a disaster with three astronauts killed. And yet after that, the Apollo missions were great successes (although Apollo 13 was a close call, of course).
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched with a faulty mirror, but this was fixed and Hubble's become a great success, too.
This program will probably go the same way.
How many shuttles can dock with the ISS? If its one , do they draw straws to see who moves Discovery so Atlantis can dock?
The Russians seem to have started building their Kliper lifting body space craft.
If the shuttle's crew compartments are sufficient for long-term habitation, even if it requires borrowing power and such from the ISS, then wouldn't it make sense for the end of life plan be to leave them up there? Sure, they would need extra docking ports for the next generation system, but it might be a good way of providing more habitable space up there.
If I remember correctly, the Buran had the ability to land under remote control. Does the Shuttle have that ability? If the crew must ditch, it'd be neat to try to bring the Shuttle in with no one in it to see if it would make it or not.
I thought docked shuttles and supply ships were used to adjust orbits.
According to This Story a Russian supply ship was used to move it by 3 kilometers. As long as the shuttles OMS thrusters were working, it should have no problem maintaining its orbit. If the thrusters weren't working, well, they wouldn't be docking in the first place.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
ISS is capable of receiving routine and emergency visits from automated Soyuz and Progress vehicles. They can stay up there indefinitely, get parts to fix the shuttle, etc. A shuttle can only really "doc" with the Science Lab.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
FTA: By working around the clock seven days a week, technicians could have Atlantis -- which is scheduled to fly in July -- ready about a month after Discovery's liftoff. In such an emergency, NASA would consider setting aside some of the safety rules instituted after the Columbia accident. A requirement for good lighting conditions during launch, to ensure clear photos of liftoff, could be waived.
So, who would rescue the rescuers if something happens to Atlantis? Endeavour? And after that? I seriously hope it never comes to that, though. The whole world will be watching this, let's hope everything runs smoothly.
"wouldn't you think NASA knows at least marginally what it's doing here?"
No, NASA is terrified of losing life.
Along with too many Americans.
Here's the thing...when the 6 astonauts died in the last shuttle accident it was too bad. Terrible.
But...it was no more terrible than 6 anonymous people dieing in an accident on the interstate. Its the same thing morally.
In people's minds though, its worse...and it is, but mainly because of the loss of equipment. People are cheap and plentiful, shuttles are not.
And shame on NASA and the bureaucracy for not having the b*lls to find a nice way to say the truth.
So to answer your question, no, I don't think they use their best *scientific* judgement; they're concerned about image.
So, instead of spending the 80s and 90s designing better and more suited craft, they kept up the sham that the shuttle is the best way of getting stuff into space. If someone had had the balls to admit a mistake back then, things could have moved along a lot faster.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why shove everyone into the ISS and why only a backuup shuttle for the next two launches? Because there is a life boat, it's docked with the ISS, or at least it will be, hopfully by the time flight three comes around. First it will free fall captules, later to be replaced by sort of a "mini shuttle" if it is ever finished.
itself gets damaged during lift-off? Wouldn't it be safer/cheaper to use the Soyuz docked with the space station and send up a replacement?
Here come da fudge!
Which means that I'm obviously missing something. It probably has to do with the degree of 'wreckedness' of the shuttle.
Seriously though, if there's a good reason to not try to land it, I'm all ears.
-Holmes.
But what do I know about this, I'm not a rocket scientist.
Well, I suppose in the worst-case scenario, assuming the shuttle can get to IIS but life support or something is damaged, you can get rid of three mouths to feed by sending them home in the Soyuz lifeboat docked at the station. Of course, that means everyone else will have to ride home on the second shuttle, as you've just used up your last contingency plan for the station crew, so you'll be leaving the station completly unmaned, something that hasn't been done since the early construction phases. And heaven help them if the second shuttle runs into problems.
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What is interesting to me is that they want to ditch the *possibly* damaged shuttle.
:~)
;~)
Why? The programmers lost a fight to fully automate the landing; but the code is in the machine. Just have the damn computer land the thing. It already applies the brakes! If I recall correctly, pretty much the only thing the pilot gets to do on landing a the shuttle is tell the computer to put the gear down. Maybe parent can confirm/deny this for me?
Not sure about flight paths crossing over cities; I suppose that is probably the driving concern about tossing the shuttly in the water. That, and how would it look if the damn thing actually landed fine?
Um, have you ever compared the size of the ISS and Mir? How would you get the pieces of the ISS into orbit without the Shuttle? Have you noticed that none of them are being brought up by the Soviets, or Deltas, or anything else? They can't.
Err, yes we can. When we implemented autopilot landings the system was so precise that the engineers had to go back and randomize the landing area; every single landing was basically right on top of the last, pulverizing that area of the runway. Not saying that we use these on commercial flights yet, but the technology is out there.
Yes, they are used on commercial flights almost as much as pilot guided landings. The first aircraft that could autoland, including descent onto runway and flair, was the BAC Trident 1C in June 1965 at Heathrow, London, UK. This system is fitted as standard on most modern aircraft.
Possibly, but remember that most Shuttle RCS thrusters are unavailable close to the station because they would endanger the structure.
On the gripping handNice reference. Lets have more motie engineering and keep the idea alive
In such cases, people think way outside the box, equipment gets used for alternate purposesTrue, but in space, shit can happen in ways just not possible on Earth. The mudguard example is a good one, as is the CO2 canister in A13. The real problem is that death can come so suddenly through decompression or impact with a fast moving body. Much of the time nothing can be done.
In the shuttle program we have had one fatal accident 70 seconds into launch and one during aerobraking. My bet is that the next will be a major engine failure on the pad. Probably one SRB fails to light completely and the other pulls the stack apart.
One thought I had was that the Orbiter would have been better thought of as an evolution of the Apollo service module. The flight deck would be a normal Apollo command module with a hatch through the heat shield. In the event of an emergency the command module can separate from the orbiter and make its own way to safety. Given an escape tower this configuration could make many more failure modes survivable.
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Wrong orbit inclination. The ISS is in a high inclination orbit for servicing from Russia (I can see it rom my house in Virginia when it launches to the ISS if it's at night and clear.)
The Columbia mission was a science mission, in a lower inclination orbit to get more payload into orbit. They didn't have enough delta v to get to the ISS.
Having said that, if the Columbia problem had been propagated throughout NASA, there WOULD have been a rescue mission. And every single astronaut in service would have volunteered to be on it. You can bet serious money on both of those if there happens to be a repeat.