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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.
"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.
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.
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?