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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.
Sounds good to me. It ain't like this shit is rocket science
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.
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).
The ISS can only dock one shuttle at a time. Discovery would stay there, and be remotely undocked prior to Atlantis getting there.
Seems someone else has thought of this:
"If Discovery were damaged during launch or in orbit, Mission Control would determine whether the shuttle is capable of safely bringing the crew home. If not, the astronauts would be forced to take refuge aboard the space station and wait five weeks for Atlantis and its crew of four to come get them.
The damaged shuttle would have to be jettisoned before a rescue vehicle could arrive, because the station cannot accommodate two shuttles. Mission Control would command Discovery to unlock from the station and fire its steering jets, which would send the vehicle plunging down into the atmosphere. If all went as planned, the remnants would splash into the Pacific Ocean far from any land."
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.
Burt Rutan never got his ship into orbit. Not even close.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Also remember that Burt Rutan (a personal hero of mine) is able to do this BECAUSE of the shuttle and other accomplishments of NASA. As he himself has pointed out. All the variables have been found out. You can't make cheap things without somebody making an expensive version of them first. Do you think Ford would have been able to make cheap cars without other people having made cars before him.
Also remember that the Burt Rutan space ship is a LOT more dangerous than the Shuttle. The Shuttle's track record is better than anything humans have ever designed before. And that is one of the reasons why it is expensive. In government spending a fatality is unacceptable. In private industry well... Shit happens.
Mind you, that last wouldn't be pretty, but this is already an emergency scenario. In such cases, people think way outside the box, equipment gets used for alternate purposes, and plans get modified. Sometimes literally.
Disclaimer: I am not an astronaut, I just work with one.//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
They're not solar panels, they are radiators. The shuttle must have the cargo doors open while in orbit to radiate the excess heat generated onboard.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
First off, the mass is not the critical issue; it's the resistance. In fact, more massive objects tend to decay in orbit slower because cross-sectional area tends to rise O(N^2), while mass tends to rise O(N^3)
At extreme speeds, resistance tends to be proportional to the cross sectional area - it's the main reason that you'll see the fuselage of modern, very fast aircraft/spacecraft often "pinch" near the wings. So if the shuttle is aligned with the orbit of ISS, it won't make too much of difference in terms of resistance. Now, the increased mass will make the ISS's fuel less effective at boosting orbit, but even still, it's not a major issue.
Decay isn't *that* fast or that hard to compensate from. At the very least, the incoming shuttle can provide ample replacement fuel, in addition to boosting the orbit itself. ISS is at a very high orbit, as far as LEO orbits go. It has a long way to go if it is to reenter; I'd imagine that irreversible orbital decay with the shuttle attached would take more than a year, and would probably be closer to a decade.
Margaret Thatcher died the other day. It was a sad day, but I like to think that she's looking up at us right now."
Granted, the Shuttles goes into a much higher orbit,
If by that you mean AN orbit. Spaceship one is a dinky little 3 man craft that didn't achieve orbit in the slightest. The space shuttle on the other hand is a giant bus that can haul tons of payload into orbit. It's like the difference between a bicycle and a Mack Truck.
it, like every bureaucracy, has become an entrenched special interest, more concerned with preserving its budget than in actually moving the cause of space flight forward.
Nasa has quite a small budget, and more than just a mission of space flight. The main mission Nasa is pursuing is one of science. The secondary (and FAR more costly one) is manned flight. Nasa simply doesn't have the budget to develop next-gen spaceflight (Rutan is pursuing yesterdays spaceflight at cheap prices, a VERY different goal). No politician in there right mind wants to give Nasa the huge amounts of money it'd take to develop these new technologies.
The shuttle monopoly has strangled the development of alternative launch vehicles,
The shuttle has done about nothing either way to the development of alternative launch vehicles. Satelite launch technology has been steadily developed. If you're talking about manned missions, lack of public interest in the whole endeavor is what killed that. Public interest == money. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
A lot of people had predicted we'd not only have launched a manned mission to Mars by now, but set up a colony.
A lot of people are idiots and don't realize how much more difficult Mars is compared to the moon.
Until there's a serious shakeup among the upper echelons of NASA bureaucrats, expect for the U.S. manned space program to creep along rather than soaring.
No, until the majority of the public gets motivated to dedicate massive funding to Nasa the manned US space program will creep along. During the 50s and 60s the US was motivated by the Cold War. We reached the moon, and defeated the "bad guys". After that everything was just anti-climactic. Now that we've been to the moon and the Cold War is over, what's motivating the public?
AccountKiller
"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.
Whatever. Flying on a space shuttle is considerably less riskier than many jobs out there (police officers, construction workers, etc.). I don't even know why such a huge deal is made of shuttle accidents. There has been what, 15 dead astronauts in the last 40 years? Compared to thousands of traffic fatalities a year? Thousands of dead and injured soldiers in Iraq? Sure, flying on a space shuttle is not the safest job in the world, but it's not unacceptably risky.