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NASA Ponders Postponing Launch until July
BitFluid writes "According to Sun-Sentinel.com, NASA is considering postponing its Return to Flight shuttle launch because of 'ongoing concern about possible ice buildup on a liquid oxygen propellant line.' Apparently, that stuff turns into debris on launch, a risk they need time to investigate. If delayed, the target launch window becomes July 13 through July 31."
Hm. Since NASA is so afraid of ice debris, I guess we won't be landing on any comet that's on a collision course with earth anytime soon.
On the other side, there's enough ice on Mars, carrying the extra weight over there to make some cold Bailey's would just be silly.
Apparenly the delay is due to a sensor failure that occured during tank testing. The delay will assist with getting a few other things sorted too, like cleaning up a hydraulic fluid spill.
NasaSpaceFlight.com has a nice write-up about it.
Scientific research is a necessity to improve the quality of life for everyone on the planet. Human space flight is an important avenue for scientific research.
By the way, for the record, the 2003 US budget for food aid was $2.5B; for the Shuttle, the budget was $3.1B.
Granted but I still think those $3.1 would have been better spent researching a Shuttle successor rather than keeping those things in operation, they are way past their prime. If the USA can produce an aircraft like the F-22 which (if you believe the Pentagon's hype) has made all the worlds airforces obsolete in a singe sweeping stroke; why on earth is the USA still pissing about with 1970s technology for its space program? You would think the US aviation industry could come up with something better than the Shuttle in a matter of a few years.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
No, stop.
Think about what you just said.
There is a Huge, (and I mean huge) difference between the shuttle and man rated lauch vehicles.
orbital vs sub orbital
payload vs no payload
private orbital vehicles are at least 10-20 years off.
and you are a twit.
The Shuttle is the only vehicle capable of completing the International Space Station. If you stop flying the shuttle right now, the Space Station would be doomed. That's billions of dollars worth of hardware wasted.
Don't care about ISS? Then what about other countries? America convinced Canada, Brazil, most of Europe, Japan and Russia to pool its resources and focus on building the space station. Pull out now, and you will NEVER be trusted again. Even if ISS isn't worth the price of the shuttle, pulling a multi-billion dollar fraud on the rest of the space-faring world will hurt America for decades to come.
Oh yeah, and without the shuttle, there's no Hubble. Nasa's new administrator is still thinking about the pros and cons of sending a shuttle up to fix it.
No, the mature thing to do is to hurry up and finish the space station, then drop the shuttle. Which is exactly what Nasa is planning.
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The simple truth is the average American just doesn't care anymore. Congress is only concerned when NASA funding will bring pork and jobs to their districts. There's no long term commitment, funding, motivation, or fascinating technology there. The average Joe would rather watch SciFi, it's cheaper, less dangerous and fits his 60 to 90 minute attention span. Maybe it is time to scrap manned exploration for now and de-orbit that international boondoggle.
While your argument sounds good, you're using Straw Man numbers. The government is only one small piece of the pie.
The amount of aid given by private charities is many times more than what the governemnt gives. Consider how much is anually given by: United Way, Red Cross, the Catholic Church, 1000's of other Christian churches, etc.
Oh how I tire of liberals with government tunnel-vision. The private sector has always (and always will) do more food aide, and do it more effeciently.
-MrLogic
NASA is not going to launch another shuttle. They're just going to play the "One more thing" game 'till everyone gets bored with it and gives up. Even when the shuttles were working it was nearly impossible to plan a vacation around it: you'd wait on the intercoastal for 5 hours with your scanner listenening to rebroadcast NASA transmission only to have the launch scrubbed when the 2-minute hold goes into the launch window.
The moral is: never plan your trip around a shuttle launch. An atlas or titan launch, that's another story - you can get a bit closer since they're launched from canaveral rather than kennedy - though they delay those as well.
Florida Today has good coverage of spacey things. Scan the pages for upcoming launches. It's too bad you won't be in town on May 11. There's a delta 2 launch.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It may be a case of 20-20 hindsight, but trying to keep giant tanks of cryogenic gases cool and ice free in Florida seems a mistake. Granted, there are huge advantages to being located towards the south, so heat is a given, but the whole icing problem would have been reduced by launching from Edwards, Yuma, or White Sands.
I wonder if anyone has considered wrapping the tanks loosly in mylar and blowing dry air in to create a bubble. You'd get some thermal barrier effect and avoid ice. The trick would be to rip the mylar off in the seconds before launch, but some Vegas magicians could teach NASA how to do that.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Do not be in a hurry with easy solution folks. That is the kind of solutions that we saw put into place. Sadly those solutions were put into place by appointees, not by regular NASA people. Think in terms of the current solution on the hubble and the "high risks" that were being spoke about by the kean minds of the top NASA person.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"in the few years in between now and when the new man-rated launch-vehicle comes out"
If you are referring to the CEV its not a few years, its more like a decade. The only thing happening in a few years, maybe, is a test flight by the two teams of an unmanned tin can maybe in 2008 but it would be a miracle if they held that schedule, this is NASA, Boeing and Lockheed after all. The earliest there would be a manned flight is 2014 and that is pretty much a fantasy target.
Here is a biting editorial on the giant mound of contractor pork and red tape that is CEV. Transformational Space, the one fresh and innovative company in the early running, apparently pretty much abandoned bidding on it when they saw it was business as usual for NASA and structured so only Boeing and Lockheed could or would compete for it.
Even if a manned CEV ever flies which is a long shot given NASA's record with new manned vehicles since the shuttle, you are probably talking about a relatively tiny conical capsule, yes after a decade of new development and billions of dollars you are going to pretty much be back where we were in the 1960's, a tiny vehicle capable of carrying a few people and a tiny amount of cargo. The launch vehicle will be a derivative of existing expendable launchers and wont have anything close to the power of a Saturn V so every mission profile beyond putting a tin can in LEO requires multiple launches and docking all the pieces in orbit.
Bottomline is what is in NASA's pipe is less than what they had in the 1960's but at a staggering cost in time and money.
The international community would probably be way ahead scraping together the money to build the proposed Russian Kliper.
@de_machina