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NASA Postpones Shuttle Launch
Mictian writes "NASA has decided to postpone Discovery's upcoming Return to Flight (STS-114) by a week to May 22. This is done in order to give the agency more time to finish paperwork, analyses and reviews of safety changes made. The delay came as no surprise, since the original May 15 date was always considered preliminary. The current launch window extends from May 15 to June 3."
Concerns about shuttle safety have been largely responsible for 22 major changes in the orbiter's design and as many as 40 more minor changes. "All of the redesign is complete," with a few exceptions, said Wayne Hale, deputy manager of the space shuttle program.
Last minute code release! Always a smart move....
The Custom Mary
I mean, true, we really do need to get back to our normal routines of spaceflight, but we also need to make sure it's safe and that we're not going to lose any more shuttles due to microfractures or falling ice or whatnot.
Of course, this is also why I think that more effort needs to be put into commercial space vehicles, so as to make spaceflight more commonplace.
They have to wait because the Google website logo with the little space shuttle in it wasnt ready yet.
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
NASA is just waiting for their paycheck to clear so they can afford to fill up that gas hog. That Shuttle makes a Hummer look like a Prius when it comes to MPG!
Always delays... what are Nasa doing? I mean come on, it's not rocket science...
This is done in order to give the agency more time to finish paperwork
WTF is it with paper these days? I mean really! We spend more time doing paperwork then we do anything else. Is it REALLY that important to document every little tiny fact of a pointless job? All I hear from the police is "We need more people or we need less paper work" and it seems it applies to everyone.
Would you rather NASA spent hours and hours filling out paper saying how many pins they heard drop this week and how many screws they may have put in the test models or would you rather they spent that time improve technology so we can all bugger off this planet?
I like muppets.
The technology created by NASA over the years has saved many lives. Going into space and leaving this planet is the only way mankind will survive the next billion years.
"NASA is super bloated and the shuttle is the biggest waste of tax payer money!!! Ohh with all that money spent on the shuttle, we could have had 20 cures for AIDS and 42 for Cancer!"
That's an even worse waste! What were those other 60 teams thinking?
PHB: "Hey, let's cure AIDS/Cancer"
Bod: "Sir, that's already been done!"
PHB: "STFU, we've got Space Shuttle money to spend!"
I'm glad to see we're heading back to space. I hope they can start working on more exploration now... like maybe we can send some people to the moon for the first time in my lifetime. The space program needs to really take off (no pun).
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Photos of the shuttle from boingboing.net's article on it.
They were all hung over from the Apollo 13 ground crew party!!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
As annoying as it is, that paperwork is important. We cannot make another saturn V because some of the paperwork has been lost. Of course if you wanted to create a new Saturn V you would start from scratch because you want modern technology, but still it would be helpful to know how any why the Saturn V was done the way it was, and what problems they had to work around.
Even when the paperwork is obsolete it is useful to get a picture of where you were.
Paperwork is your checklist. Many times in my life I thought everything was done until I went through the checklist. If you don't do the paperwork you don't know if you checked everything. It would be really a bummer to find that the main fuel tank was never filled, only "topped off" to replace evaporation/leakage while waiting on the pad. (that is just enough fuel to get off the pad, but not enough to get into space) Only by running through a checklist can you be sure that step was done.
Remember the saturn Moon probe of a few months back where they forgot to put turn the radio on in the checklist? The radio wasn't turned on. There are plenty of major mistakes that only doing the paperwork (annoying as it is) can prevent. Of course doing the paperwork won't find problems that aren't in the checklists. The sheare volume of things that need to be done mean that for minor things you sometimes hope someone did it, but live with it when someone forgets.
As far as I'm concerned, nasa does not really have a good track record for safety, despite all their efforts.
Before challenger blew up, the engineers tried to scrub the launch citing a possibility of the o-rings leaking. Pressure at the highest levels made sure it went as scheduled because before then, they had a flawless record and it was just a possibility and they had their image to maintain.
Of course, there was the investigation and they ultimately had to go lick their wounds. Years later and especially 9/11 later with budget cuts and the space program being scoffed at due to being essentially a money pit when it could be 'better spent', it's not surprising that a few years ago columbia vaporized on re-entry.
It may very well be damaged heat tiles by sheets of ice falling off the main fuel tank during launch which is the official story, but (...dons tin foil hat...) what might not be official is that due to such cuts and possibly a bit of politicking, pressure was put on all sectors of the space program including the 'garage' that inspects and repairs the heat tiles. If it's possible that the garage was under enormous pressure to get the aging columbia ready on time, they might have let a few suspect tiles go which they might not normally have let got and had they been replaced properly, they might have withstood the impact of the ice falling.
The russian space program seems to take the licking, learn from it and move on. Nasa to me seems to shuffle their feet for a while saying to themselves, 'how can we stop *THIS* from happening again?', but should instead ask the question, 'How can we stop accidents from happening again?'.
next billion?
2 questions: why does mankind have to surive the next billion years, or rather, why is it the job of an agency of the US governement to assure such a thing?
2) since multi-cellular organisms didn't really take off until almost half that amount of time ago (600million years ago), primates didn't walk on 2 feet until 4 million years ago (1/250th of that billion years), what in the world^H^H^H^H^H universe makes you think humankind will be around a billion years from now? Whatever is around then will be well beyond our capability to understand or predict. I mean, our species is only 50k years old (1/20,000th of that billion) and already in that span of time has evolved *considerably*. We don't even look like we did 200 years ago, much less 2,000. Do you really think we'll be anything like this 50,000 years from now, and that we'll be even remotely the same *species* as this a million years from now (1/1000th of that billion years). If not, who are you to dictate what their survival will require? Maybe within the next few thousand years we'll finally start doing population control, for instance. There's an idea. All other species seem to do just fine...we should be able to figure it out too, being "smarter" than them.
The shuttle Commander is a babe, too.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I find it amusing that at the same time everyone is hand-wringing over the safety factors of the pending shuttle launch, Soyuz is flying to ISS again without fanfare.
I think that says everything there is to say about the US space program.
We're putting a lot of effort to put a lame duck platform back in orbit that is going to be decommissioned in 5 years or so anyway with no clear successor and we just kind of ignore the fact that Russia has a time-tested (but not glamorous) platform with a far better safety record.
About a hundred shuttle launches, and only two failed. That's not a bad record if you ask me. The space shuttle is one of the most complicated things people have ever done, both technologically, and politically. The fact that it ever flew at all, much less 100 times, is pretty amazing to me.
Not to say that there hasn't been some silly mistakes (you can make a pretty good argument that the basic design of the shuttle wasn't very practical), but I think NASA's safety record is something for them to be proud of.
The political nonsense and bureaucratic mess has certainly made NASA far less useful than that large a group of intelligent engineers should be. There's plenty to criticize them on, but their safety record is pretty darn good.
Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense. They can stop accidents from happening again by shutting down. Other than that, you're going to have to accept that when you're firing rockets up into space, it's dangerous. There's a lot of trial and error on the forefront of technology. How many planes crashed before the Stealth Bomber was developed? A whole lot more than wrecked space ships.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I hear the astronauts were refusing to fly until they find out how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader.
This would not be a problem except members of the crew have already taked the "spoiler free" pledge.
Despite Initial protests from Mission Control, they decided that they rather watch fake spaceships blow each other up instead of blowing up another real one.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
it has a lot to do with genes; while not all of intelligence is genetic, a good portion of it is. There are all sorts of traits that make it more likely that someone will have both the financial resources, and the inclination, to create GM kids. Those kids will be the next step in our evolution.
That, and it's silly to say we're not evolving anymore, because we're industrialized or something. What part of "we're only 50k years old..." is hard to grasp? It took 600 million years for the multi-celled orgs to get to what you are today. Give evolution a little bit more of a chance than just what you've seen in your lifetime.
That, and look at the skeleton of someone from 10,000 years ago - we're different. We're much bigger, and our brain cavities are larger. We're definately still evolving.
1000:1 it will NEVER fly again.
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