Space Shuttles almost Ready to Re-Launch

stagmeister writes "CNN and Space.com are reporting that the Return to Flight Task Group, the overseeing committee that determines when the Space Shuttles can go back into space, has reported that the only items blocking the Shuttles are issues 'related to tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair.' They plan to re-meet in later this month to finalize their decision. However, 'NASA has made clear it intends to resume shuttle flights with the repair capabilities it has in hand without knowing for sure whether they would work in an emergency.' Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?"

Comments

Definition of a non-story:

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFS:

...the Return to Flight Task Group, the overseeing committee that determines when the Space Shuttles can go back into space, has reported that the only items blocking the Shuttles are issues 'related to tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair.'

Um....aren't those problems the reason the Shuttles were grounded in the first place???

Also from TFS:

However, NASA has made clear it intends to resume shuttle flights with the repair capabilities it has in hand without knowing for sure whether they would work in an emergency.

Well...does this 'Return to Flight Task Group' have the authority to ground the flights?

From TFA:

It is unclear how much weight the panelists' opinion carries. NASA administrator Michael Griffin has said that he does not consider it mandatory to get the task group's go-ahead to fly the shuttle.

Apparently, they don't.
Remind me exactly why we had a 'Return to Flight Task Group' again...

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[oskard]

I'm pretty sure funding as well as government approval were on the reason list as well.

I could be wrong, anyone know?

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[LooseChanj]

Issues related to. The bipod foam, which caused the Columbia accident, has been eliminated. You're never going to be able to eliminate all tank debris. The OBSS is a done deal, but I think they're having some problems with work stabilization, that is, having an astronaut actually work on tiles and not send himself flying all over the place. They've installed sensors in the wing leading edges that will be able to sense an impact. So it's not like they've just been sitting on their thumbs this whole time.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Rei]

If you'd been following the shuttle progress thusfar, you'd be familiar with what they had accomplished and what they hadn't. What they have accomplished is a modification to insulation application techniques (which helps not only them, but every cryogenic-fuelled rocket in the world) which looks like it will produce almost no insulation shedding, and no shedding of sizable pieces. What they haven't accomplished very effectively is RCC and tile repair. This is no shock at all; these things are tough enough to make and secure in the first place here on Earth. They can patch small RCC holes effectively, but not large ones. The tile patching material works well on Earth, but last I heard, it still looked like in a vaccuum, microspheres in it could rupture during application.

One of the biggest problems is testing. It's not like we have an extra shuttle to launch, punch a couple holes in, and have reenter. They do the best that they can on Earth, and will be doing more in-space tests on the first launch.

As for "what authority" the task force has, NASA safety boards generally have a lot more independence and authority than the equivalents in Russia, even before the accident. Without the board signing off, Congress won't be happy at all. There have been a lot of problems on ISS involving the Russians doing things like bring unapproved batteries onboard, or firing Progress rocket engines for an attitude-changing maneuver before the gyroscopes had been confirmed to be off, etc, that have led to a lot of major safety concerns.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the people who signed off on the safety of the Columbia launch: every other safety board in the shuttle's history, including those during the ones early in the Shuttle program. Furthermore, most, if not all, other hydrogen-fuelled rockets (for example, Arianne) have used similar insulation systems, and while most haven't had side-mounted payloads, they have had components that foam could have damaged. It's a good thing that this research is being done.

They've had a lot of blame heaped on them, when the shuttle has overall had a pretty darn impressive safety record - about equivalent to Soyuz (same % of craft losses, greater total casualties but far greater human launches). Its cost record, of course, is something different all together, and that is what justifies replacing this first-generation reusable with a second-generation craft that can take advantage of everything learned.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Mac Degger]

"What they haven't accomplished very effectively is RCC and tile repair"

Which makes me wonder, especially that last bit, "why?". I remember that guy who made the bearproof suit later developed some kind of foam/coating which disapated heat like a madman (he had a vid of him holding a piece of wood with the coating and a lit blowtorch on it...nothing happened!). Now I know that creating a bearproof suit isn't really credentials...but it worked (and was proved to do so...he got himself attacked by a bear and he survived without a scratch), but apparently there was quite the industry interest in the coating...especially because it was cheap to manufacture and 'made from simple items...you wouldn't believe what it's made of!'.

So what I wonder is this: with the amounts of research having gone into material science and thermodynamics, why is the shuttle still using the most innefficient method available? In the thirty years since, there must be some better way of thermal protection than the oh-so-labour-intensive-each-block-custom-made-and- only-fits-there method they still use...

BTW:
"Honestly, I feel sorry for the people who signed off on the safety of the Columbia launch: every other safety board in the shuttle's history, including those during the ones early in the Shuttle program."

This sentence is missing something...could you please clarify that? I can't really make it up from the context.

And BTW2: I still can't believe that the US has seen so many generations of new bombers, and most likely a successor to the SR-71 blackbird...and you're still only on the first gen of a !partially! re-usable orbital launcher. Good luck militarising space :smiley(but a sad one at the same time):

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[poor_boi]

Maybe because atmospheric re-entry is somehow subtly different than holding a blowtorch up to a log for minute or two? : P

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Rei]

some kind of foam/coating which disapated heat like a madman

It did not. It was an insulator, not a dissipator (and there are much better insulators out there). There is a huge difference. On the skin of your craft, you must radiate the heat away; there is no concievable way that you could simply insulate from the orbital energy that you build up.

Shuttle tiles are still the best thermal radiators in existence. The reason is that they use a ceramic which is a good radiator on its own, and have it be made of fine threads in a very porous style so that it has a huge surface area.

this sentence is missing something

Yeah, I noticed that after I posted. It should have continued "signed off as well".

still only on the first gen of a partially re-usable orbital launcher

Well, it has changed a lot since its original form, but yes. However, look at the development cost of the shuttle in modern dollars. Few military projects have that sort of budget (although a few do...). Then look at how much money the US military gets in comparison to NASA (a very sad fact, in my opinion). It's no real surprise :P

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Shuttle tiles are still the best thermal radiators in existence. The reason is that they use a ceramic which is a good radiator on its own, and have it be made of fine threads in a very porous style so that it has a huge surface area.

That's not how they work.

You can't lose significant heat by radiation during reentry- you're surrounded by plasma at ridiculous temperatures, to lose heat you would have to be as hot or hotter than that. Bad, bad idea, you're trying not to get hot!

No. Here's tiles 1.0.1. The ceramic shuttle tiles have high temperature resistance, but very low heat capacity. When they are at red heat because of the low heat capacity you can pick them with your bare fingers (provided you hold it by the corners!) because there's little energy there and so your fingers can conduct the heat away without burning; your fingers cool the ceramic down rather than it heating your fingers up. They also have reasonably low thermal conductivity which helps. The idea is that the tiles get hot, but not as hot as the plasma, and the vehicle conducts the small amount of heat away. So they don't radiate, they just don't absorb much.

All very clever, but it's been a disaster, the tiles are too flipping fragile (they would be destroyed flying through rain), they get damaged on every flight, and they are outrageously expensive to replace. Some tiles can take a week to replace because you have to work from the back of the wing forwards, removing all the tiles, fix the tile and then put them all back again.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Rei]

That's not how they work

That IS how they work. For god's sake, read before you post. The part of the shuttle that is an insulator is called the "thermal blanket"; it prevents the heat that isn't radiated away from getting to the frame, which being an aluminum alloy, is very temperature sensitive. The entire arrangement, of RCC panels, tiles, and thermal blankets is called the TPS (Thermal Protection System). Read about it some time, will you? I can get you as many references as you want, and can even direct you to an "Ask NASA" page if you still aren't convinced.

By the way, tiles are not nearly as brittle as you pretend. At the speeds that the shuttle flies on liftoff, rain would slice right through your hand as well. At high speeds, the water acts like a solid on impact. With a mass about a quarter of that of buckshot but a velocity about twice as high, it has the same total kinetic energy, focused on a smaller point.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Read about it some time, will you?

Thanks for the suggestion. It means so much more coming from an expert like yourself. I mean everyone else in the literature who has looked at the problem thinks that radiation is a more or less negligable effect, but presumably you will publish your groundbreaking research proving them all wrong soon? Can't wait to read it!

By the way, tiles are not nearly as brittle as you pretend.

Oh well, I take it all back, the tiles have been a complete success then. And you can fly through rain, and you can't damage it with your fingernail at all. And they are extremely cheap. Isn't that wonderful?

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Rei]

I gave you a link. How many more do you want? I'll get you as many as you need. There are no people in the literature who "think radiation is a more or less negligable effect" - the tiles were designed *specifically* to be radiative - that is why they have such a large surface area.

Look, is it really worth my time to baby-step you through Space Shuttle 101? If references aren't good enough for you, ask a NASA scientist (but first search for "tiles" to see where they already discuss it). I'll quote some of the answers that they've given:

"Jessie from Jacksonville, Ill., age: 14 asked the following question of Mission Specialist Andrew Thomas

Question: Why doesn't the space shuttle burn up on its way through the Earth's atmosphere?

Answer: The space shuttle, Jessie, is encased in some very fine silicon ceramic tiles, which are able to take a very large amount of heat. And they absorb the heat and radiate it back out into space so that the space shuttle does not burn up due to the friction of the atmosphere. "

Congratulations, a fourteen year old now knows more about the shuttle tiles than you. Bet that makes you feel great?

Here's another:

"Rachiel fengstad, of Lethbridge Alberta asked the following question of Linda Ham, lead flight director

Question: What properties of ceramics are the most useful in space shuttle technology?

Answer: The light weight and quick heat dissipation rate of the shuttle's ceramic tiles are pretty useful qualities. Also, quite a few electronic components make use of ceramic packaging which is a good insulator. Original Response"

One of the answers refers to the TPS information page . From the overview:

"The HRSI tiles protect areas where temperatures are below 2,300 F. These tiles have a black surface coating necessary for entry emittance (second definition)."

you can't damage it with your fingernail at all

Mechanical properties of FRCI-12 tiles (why do I have to do all the work for you?). Tensile strength - 107 psi (737 kpa). For comparison, a study of bridge concrete failures when testing a repair method found the average failure tensile strength to be just over 500 kpa (concrete starts out higher, but decreases with age). In short, it has the tensile strength of old concrete (but is far, far lighter). Yes, what we really want is hardness, but I don't have time to hunt that down.

extremely cheap

June 27, 2000 QuestChat with George Raiche, Research Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
"RE: [Bertus] Sorry I send the same question twice...How much does one of this plates cost about in dollars??
To tell you the truth, I don't know how much one tile costs. The material costs are very small--the real expense was in the research costs to invent the tiles. Also, the labor costs to inspect and replace the tiles are far greater than the material cost. It's like repairing a car--the labor charge is usually much more than the parts."

If you have any more questions, ask NASA (I gave you the link) or actually do a web search yourself - I'm not your babysitter.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Anonymous Coward]

Link correction: The second definition of emittance had a space in it and didn't copy right. A corrected URL is here.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Anonymous Coward]

...Here's tiles 1.0.1...

FYI: "something 101" (pronounced One-Oh-One) is a reference to common course numbering used in higher education. Often introductory-level courses are numbered near 100, the most introductory usually being numbered 101 and closely related follow-up courses numbered consecutively. Distinct introductory-level topics usually have non-consecutive numbers, such as 110, with more advanced courses numbered in the 200s, 300s, and so on.

"1.0.1" (interchangeably pronounced One-point-Oh-point-One, One-point-Zero-point-One, One-Oh-One, or One-Zero-One) is a reference to precise version numbering schemes often used for computer software and other technical products, indicating a minor update to an initial, major release version which would have been named 1.0 or 1.0.0. The increment to the third digit indicates that the version containing no new features over the major release, something like a bug fix or compatibility update. The version number of a subsequent release would increment only one of the digits, with digits to the right of it, if any, becoming zero.

So please be advised that the phrases "tiles 101" and "tiles 1.0.1" have totally different implications and cannot be used interchangeably: Get it right motherf***er.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[WolfWithoutAClause]

That's not right, certainly it's wrong for the leading edge tiles, those are behind an opaque plasma; you can *see* it lapping past the windows on the Columbia tapes.

It's vaguely possible that the flaky ceramic tiles might be in a transparent plasma, because they are subject to rather lower temperatures, but I'd be rather surprised; I've seen pictures of reentry taken from the ground and it certainly doesn't look like it to me.

Nah, you've just got the 10c tour from those link, the $10 tour I took involved reading the previously classified paper by the guy who invent bluff body reentry that included the stuff about convective heating, boundary layers etc. I can't imagine that they'd want to explain that stuff to school kids; so they simplify. Trouble is, you're assume that that's all there is to it; wrong!

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[Rei]

That's not right

I'm quoting NASA engineers. Are you telling me that they don't know what's going on? Seriously?

it's wrong for the leading edge tiles

There are no "leading edge tiles". The leading edges are RCC, which is completely different (a dense carbon fiber reinforced high temperature resin, as opposed to a light fibrous ceramic). Please read the TPS overview on NASA's site that I provided you the link to. Once again, if you don't know what you're talking about, why are you debating?

previously classified paper by the guy who invent bluff body reentry

It's called "blunt body reentry", his name was Julian Allen, and he died of a heart attack on January 29th, 1977 at the age of 66, well before the Shuttle's first flight. Try again. And if you have a paper to anything of relevance, you better link it.

I can't imagine that they'd want to explain that stuff to schoolkids

Are you trying to claim that the concept of radiating heat away is simpler for a child to understand than insulating? And at the same time, are you trying to claim that the TPS page, which is distinctly *not* designed for schoolchildren, is just wrong?

Seriously - if you don't believe me, ask them yourself - that's why I gave you the link. Tiles work by radiating the heat back into the plasma. I'll further provide you as many links as you need to prove the point. I mean, heck, it's plastered all over their site, and the site of every organization that manufactures, tests, and researches ceramic TPS materials. Ceramics, by the way, have been used for their radiative properties since the bronze age. Large forges and kilns are lined with ceramic blocks known as "refractory brick", so given the name because it radiates the heat back into the kiln.

But to reiterate: ask them yourself. I could give you a hundred links to NASA's site, and you'd simply say that they're all mistaken. I think the only way you'll be convinced is to talk to them yourself.

Re:Definition of a non-story:

[rsynnott]

Am I right in thinking the Buran didn't have this issue? (Due to lack of tank). They should have bought it.

The Only Things?

[geomon]

Tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair have been the "only things" that have stalled a return to flight since the disintegration of Columbia. The Discovery Channel (or The Learning Channel, I can't remember which) spent the entire hour of its program on the return to flight discussing exactly these problems. So what has changed?

NASA needs to recognize that, despite its technical sophistication, the shuttle is too dangerous to operate. It would be better to ship smaller components into space and assemble the equipment in low earth orbit with robots rather than continue to force this orbiter to operate in a manner that risks humans.

The idea that if NASA abandons the shuttle that human spaceflight will stop is crap, despite what the television special claims. I'm sure that the NASA shuttle managers would like everyone to believe this propaganda, but the Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, and others are unlikely to give up on space flight just because NASA dumps the shuttle.

Re:The Only Things?

[RhettLivingston]

"the shuttle is too dangerous to operate"

Considering that we've only lost about 1 in 50 shuttles, I'd say its an extremely safe machine for what it does. The losses of ships in the early settling of the new world were far greater than 1 in 50. If our ancestors had felt 1 in 50 was too dangerous, the new world would never have been found.

If the shuttle were designed to provide a one way trip to orbit, I'd bet you could find plenty of takers.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

...I'd say its an extremely safe machine for what it does.

Which is what? Put payloads into low Earth orbit?

Can you tell me that the shuttle is safer than other payload delivery systems?

Re:The Only Things?

[Wyatt Earp]

Yep. People need to look at early exploration like Magellan

On August 10, 1519, the fleet of five ships under Magellan's command left Seville and traveled south from the Guadalquivir River to San Lucar de Barrameda at the mouth of the rivers, where they remained more than five weeks. Spanish authorities were wary of the Portuguese admiral and almost prevented Magellan from sailing, but on September 20, Magellan set sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 270 men.

18 men returned to Seville with the Victoria in 1522

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan#Th e_circumnavigation

Re:The Only Things?

[toddbu]

NASA needs to recognize that, despite its technical sophistication, the shuttle is too dangerous to operate.

Actually, it's the "technical sophistication" that's the problem here. We make this stuff too hard to fly. If you look at this history of the program, the shuttle got it's initial funding because it was thought that it could fly every conceivable mission. That's like saying that you need a car that can carry people, haul dirt, and move cargo. Sorry, but we build different land-based vehicles for different tasks, so why not for space?

Personally, I find it interesting that most of the new designs on the board look like Max Faget's old Mercury design. KISS rocked in those days. If we could fly to the moon on barely more computing power than is in the watch on my wrist, do we really need all this sophistication to get to LEO?

Re:The Only Things?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate when people compare the obvious benefits of imperial conquest with the uselessness of the Space Shuttle.

Re:The Only Things?

[TheKidWho]

yeah actually its the safest thing out there for delevering cargo into space.

Re:The Only Things?

[phoenix.bam!]

This obsession with using robots to replace people in space is absurd. On Earth robots are either used for repetetive possibly complex tasks in a controlled enviroment like assembling a car. Or for very simple tasks in a dangerous uncontrolled enviroment like cutting pipe at deep ocean depths. The robots are always very specialized. A human is extremely versitle with a small bag of tools. If something goes wrong, humans can improvise, robots cannot. Sure humans die during spaceflight. It's a dangerous gig. They aren't ordered to go. These people sign up knowing that there is a 1:50 chance of the spaceship disintigrating around them. The real problem is not that we use humans for space missions, but that we use the shuttle. I agree that the shuttle is a terrible terrible machine. NASA needs to design a cargo ship like the Progress supply ships the Russians use and a human transport ship like the Soyuz with 8-10 capacity. The insane cost of launching the shuttle could more than cover several launches of specialized vehicles. And a specialized human transport ship could be made much safer and cheaper than the shuttle. It wouldn't even have to be reusable to be cheaper either! Just dump the crap in a museum after every flight. Bleh

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

This obsession with using robots to replace people in space is absurd.

Yeah, those stupid Mars rovers.

Re:The Only Things?

[TheKidWho]

wtf?

Yeah the Zenit-3SL sea launch currently uses is pretty cool, but umm its only been flying since 1999, the shuttle has been flying since the 80s.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

Yeah the Zenit-3SL sea launch currently uses is pretty cool, but umm its only been flying since 1999, the shuttle has been flying since the 80s.

The Saturn V flew in the 1960s and didn't lose a single passenger during flight.

You asked whether there were safer delivery vehicles and I gave you one.

You don't like the one I gave you, then tell me why it isn't acceptable (other than the fact that it hasn't flown as long).

The fact that it doesn't require a human passenger makes it inherently safe.

Re:The Only Things?

[TheKidWho]

The fact that it doesn't require a human passenger makes it inherently safe.

How so? Vehicles that carry humans aboard have to be human rated. Ie they have to be designed with much stricter tolerances, much more paperwork, higher quality, and so on. Not to mention the Russian Kliper is most likely going to be launched on top of a Zenit rocket anyways. The fact that it doesn't require a human passenger just means that no one is going to die unless the rocket explodes on the pad or crashes into someone's house.


You don't like the one I gave you, then tell me why it isn't acceptable (other than the fact that it hasn't flown as long).
I didn't say it wasn't acceptable, but like I did say, the Zenit 3S-L has only flown about 12 times, the Zenit-2 less then two dozens flights where it HAS blown up at least once. Not to mention, the Zenit only carries about 10tons into orbit, while the Space Shuttle Stack carries well over 130tons into orbit!(30 or so tons of payload)

You should also not forget that Columbia didn't blow up during launch, it failed during re-entry. Only Challenger was lost during launch and that could have easily been avioded if they decided to wait until it had gotten warmer(Although they did make the shuttle stack more reliable after that event)

Re:The Only Things?

[dubdays]

Yeah, those stupid Mars rovers.

Yeah, I agree that the rovers are GREAT robots. But, currently, they're the best tool for the job. If it were more feasible to put men on Mars, then I guarantee you that they would produce more good science than the rovers. While robots are great for certain things, they are no substitue for human instinct, intuition, and intellect. Simply put, robots aren't always the right tool for every job.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

How so?

It can't kill anyone if it doesn't carry anyone.

The fact that it doesn't require a human passenger just means that no one is going to die unless the rocket explodes on the pad or crashes into someone's house.

Then there isn't *any* launch vehicle that is safe under that criteria.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

But, currently, they're the best tool for the job.

Which job? Launching payloads into space?

I don't see how you support that statement with facts.

If it were more feasible to put men on Mars, then I guarantee you that they would produce more good science than the rovers.

A little proof would be helpful.

Tell me which of the various Mars programs past an present would have been better with a human involved. The only thing that *I* could come up with is petrographic sampling.

While robots are great for certain things, they are no substitue for human instinct, intuition, and intellect.

When did those become essential for delivering payloads into LEO?

Simply put, robots aren't always the right tool for every job.

Neither is the shuttle, yet that is precisely how it is being used.

Re:The Only Things?

[cowscows]

The original comment said that the Shuttle has a very good safety record for what it does. It carries people into orbit. Your Zenit doesn't do that. So your comparison doesn't exactly work.

The Saturn V did well. How many times did it fly? A dozen? Maybe a few more? Fire off a hundred of them, we'll see if the record stays consistent.

It's sort of silly to make comparisons of that sort to the shuttle, because there's not really anything else like it. I think the parent comment's main point was that, while not 100%, the shuttle is pretty damn good in the safety department, and seems to be within the realm of acceptable risk. And if you're not down with acceptable risk, then space flight is not the business for you to be in.

There are plenty of reasons to replace the space shuttle, but safety is not at the top of the list.

Re:The Only Things?

[cowscows]

Yeah, and don't forget one of the biggest contradictions in the space shuttle. It has to not only be controllable in space, it also has to be maneuverable in the atmosphere. Two entirely different situations, each causing problems for the other. I don't know why they didn't just go all out and make it work underwater as well.

Really, if you want a kickass spacecraft, make something that only has to function in space. Then wrap it up inside a big rocket, and have that put your ship up into space.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

The original comment said that the Shuttle has a very good safety record for what it does. It carries people into orbit. Your Zenit doesn't do that. So your comparison doesn't exactly work.

The original comment did *not* address getting people into space. My comment had to do with delivering payloads into low Earth orbit.

I don't know what you are comparing.

It is not essential for humans to be in the spacecraft to deliver payloads.

Re:The Only Things?

[poopdeville]

Which job? Launching payloads into space?

Yes, because the Mars rovers launch payloads into space. Can you atleast try to keep up with your troll?

Re:The Only Things?

[Rei]

Neither is the shuttle, yet that is precisely how it is being used

Quite true. On the other hand, when even the budget of one craft design was cut dramatically partway through, how could they have afforded multiple craft designs?

The big problem is that reusable was seen as a big win. Sure, you'd have higher initial costs, but the incremental costs would be small - or so they thought. It was pictured that we could reduce maintenance costs down to very low levels that never materialized. With these "ultra-low cost" launches predicted, but with limited development funds, a "do it all" craft was seen as needed.

The next craft (CEV) won't be a "do-it-all" craft. But there are things that the shuttle does that nothing else does. For example, it is by far the largest dockable craft out there (the DART program will hopefully make automatic docking more of a reality). It also has by far the largest cargo return. Cargo return isn't just for "repair and relaunch", although that has been done, very economically, several times. It's not even about experiment return. It's also about things like junk and trash removal. Again, ongoing research may really help with this - inflatable reentry chutes, cables passing through earth's magnetic field, etc. But for now, the shuttle is the only/only realistic option for these tasks.

Re:The Only Things?

[HD Webdev]

18 men returned to Seville with the Victoria in 1522

I'm glad that those 18 men aren't here to witness our present stance towards exploration - IF THERE'S MUCH OF A CHANCE PEOPLE WILL DIE DON'T DO IT, INSTEAD WATCH THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL!

You know that they'd be jeering 'hey ya pussies, why aren't you on Mars yet?'.

Re:The Only Things?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what? Put payloads into low Earth orbit?

Actually, the key feature the shuttle has over most systems that can put payloads into low earth orbit is that it can return them.

Which is not to say that alternatives for returning manned payloads don't exist, of course.

Re:The Only Things?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the shuttle is too dangerous to operate"

That's like saying that automobiles are too dangerous to operate because of all the car crashes. Nobody put a gun to the astronaut's heads and forced them to launch. The people who fly on those things know the risks, and they accept them, or they would stay on the ground. If you think the Shuttle is too dangerous, don't launch in one! But if others are willing to brave it, don't take that away from them, and don't take away the Shuttle's benefits to society because you won't let those poor astronauts risk their own lives. I think the mistake you're making is, it's not up to you whether they risk it. It's up to them.

"assemble the equipment in low earth orbit with robots"

Great idea, get back to us on that when we have the technology AND it's cost effective. Say, 15 or 20 years. In the meantime, we'll work with what we have: people.

Re:The Only Things?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

If the shuttle were designed to provide a one way trip to orbit, I'd bet you could find plenty of takers.

Sure, it has made one-way trips twice before.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

Oh, come on! your position is indefensible...give in!

'the Shuttle has a very good safety record for what it does' This means getting crew, orbiter and payload into orbit and getting the crew and itself safely back. That's the only thing it can mean and that is what it does mean. The shuttle cannot be controlled remotely (unlike it's never-flown russian counterpart!). So any comparison to a non-crewed launcher is flawed.

"It is not essential for humans to be in the spacecraft to deliver payloads."

True....but only humans at this point can give neccessary feedback and handle unforseen circumstances...which are bound to come up when your talking about a frontier field like space flight. Even with our current state of the art robotics we'd not have seeen apollo 13 back. Your point that 'if it had been a robot, no-one would have cared' is beside the point: schumacher-levy has adequately demonstrated that it's insane to have all our eggs in one basket.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

Kinda like what Rutan is doing with his white knight combo? :)

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

The problem with putting people on mars is not that they wouldn't be usefull...it's that they can't be put there yet and robots can (partially due to the outdated shuttle).

Ask any NASA scientist and he'll tell you that all our question about mars could be answered within an hour by having a human on the ground there. We do it by robot because thats currently the only option. But that's expensive. And a robot won't tell you 'hey, this ground is moist!', or 'this looks odd, I know I can climb those rocks, I'll go take a look!'.

Sure, robots are safer. But all 'space'-scientists would like to put a geologist on mars, just for five minutes, to get some decent answers.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

Trash is not a problem. It is (in orbital terms) trivial to eject trash in such a fashion that it would either hit the sun, crash onto the moon or burn up on re-entry.

The rest (crew/experiment return) could be handled with what the Hermes was supposed to do. Burt Rutan has shown that the concept works.

When you think about it, there's only two (maybe three) vehicles needed, and they could concievably be unified in one design: crew transport, cargo transport and satelite transport.
I say just design a re-usable launch vehicle that can transport one standard shipping container (the ones they use to ship freight on boats) and all you have to do is design a container for each kind of launch...

Re:The Only Things?

[Rei]

It is (in orbital terms) trivial to eject trash in such a fashion that it would either hit the sun, crash into the moon or burn up on re-entry

Yeah, let me know when you develop that low-recoil low-mass low-energy incredibly high power rail gun for ISS.

Or were you unaware that if you have a delta-V of ~7,800 m/s at 400km, that you can't simply toss garbage down to intersect Earth's atmosphere (you'd need to lose probably around 1,000 m/s to have it intersect at a reasonable time), nor can you toss it out to the moon (+(3000?) m/s) or the sun (+3300 m/s). You're not "hovering" - you stay in orbit because you have the orbital energy, and so does your trash.

there's only two (maybee three) vehicles needed

Not even close. There are different vehicles needed for various mass, size, and shape payloads to get launch costs low (you don't want to launch a microsat on a Saturn-V, and you can't launch a hab module on a Pegasus). There are different optimal vehicle designs for different orbits (equatorial, polar, etc). In some cases, G forces on reentry matter, and in some cases they don't (and it's cheaper if they don't). Some things don't need reentry at all. There's man-rated and various reliabilitiy issues. There's all sorts of issues that make "one size fits all" not realistic.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

I'm aware of the physics of the situation. Which is exactly my point. Speed is not very important. No resitance means that (barring the gravity the ISS causes) your launch speed can be mere meters per second: the trash'll get there and doesn't have a reason for having to get there fast. Only when you shoot for re-entry burnup do you need a specific speed in order to miss satelites...and we can calculate their positions just fine, so I'd guess that low speeds would suffice even for that option.

As for the second part: think mass production. Think multiple microsats on one launch. Optimal vehicle designs only mean something if you have the money for it...point being that if you can build that re-entry vehicle cheaply enough, and keep launch costs low (which for a standardised, mass-produced vehicle is a pretty expectable thing), you design the payload to work with such a vehicle. That's how mechanical engineering for mass-production works: look at Ford. Look at tank production in WWII. Look at the Joint Strike Fighter: at least three designs on the same superstructure, translating into less money spent than if we'd done three seperate vehicles.
If you can get people and cargo into orbit, you're there. What, your cargo needs people to deploy it? No problem, we'll send two of the cheap ships, one with a crew module, one with the cargo...and that's feasable because both vehicles (appart from the cargo/crewmodule) are the same and we have built a hundred of them. Oh, you'r cargo need to be launched into orbit and then retrieved? We'll outfit a retreival arm into the cargo container. Different orbit? Again...we'll just fill this ship up to here with fuel...the extra fuel costs due to un-optimal fueling/vehicle design will be lost against the savings we have made by designing just the one superstructure instead of designing three different ships from scratch.

Now I'm not saying all differentiation in launch vehicles is bad/dumb/whatever. I'm just saying that for getting people/cargo into space, one all purpose, retaskable vehicle will save money. What I'm saying is take a space shuttle and strip it bare untill you have a launchplatform. Then add space to add either a cargo module, or a crew module, or a hybrid, or whatever. You'll end up with a ship which is more versatilke than the shuttle for a fraction of the cost. I mentioned the tanks and the JSF before...also look at what general motors and other car companies want to do with electrical/hybrid cars, or what they're already doing with modern-day cars: they're using a common base and differentiating from there (plug in an engine, a chassis and an interior onto the base, and you have a new model car). They do this because it makes sense: it reduces cost and makes different designs (from that common base) easier, cheaper and faster.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mattsson]

I agree totaly. Let the people taking the actual risk decide if its too dangerous.
Life isnt 100% safe.
Lets take a look at some risky business...

Astronaut - Rockets kill people.
Professional Diver. - Diving kills people.
Tandem Jumper - Parachuting kills people.
Race Drive - Sportscar accidents kill people.
Soldier - Bullets kill people.
Journalist - Bullets kill people.
Diplomat - Bullets kill people.
Lumberjack - Chainsaws kill people.
Miner - High-explosives kill people.
Teacher - Students kill people.
Etc, etc, etc...

If you find your job is to risky, go search for another profession.
But remeber that nomatter what your job is, theres always a risk youll die from it.

Re:The Only Things?

[fredrik70]

hey, even the old saturn had escape mechanism in case of break down on platform/early in flight. the shuttle has no way for the crew to escape.

Re:The Only Things?

[Bitsy Boffin]

Umm, no. SS1, just like the shuttle has to operate in the atmosphere near sea level and in very thin atmosphere at 100+km. White knight just carried it a little ways, just like the solid rockets carry the shittle a little ways.

Re:The Only Things?

[crawling_chaos]

It can't kill anyone if it doesn't carry anyone.

Everyone who has ever died in a pad accident would beg to differ with you, Einstein. It most certainly can kill people even if the payload is purely mechanical. Rockets are inherently very dangerous machines. The Zenit only uses one cryogenic propellant, so its fuel handling isn't as dangerous as some unmanned rockets, but it is also very difficult to get records of its early flight tests, so we really have no idea how many people died during the early development of the rocket during the Cold War. The original design dates back to the 1970s and was developed inside the closed rocket factories of the USSR.

Re:The Only Things?

[cowscows]

Sorta, but not exactly. I probably should've taken it further in my comment. Not only do you send your "spaceship" up there tucked away inside a rocket. Then you send your astronauts up seperately, in a capsule along with some supplies. They transfer to the spaceship, and do their thing. When they're done zooming around space, you leave the spaceship up there, and come home in a capsule or something.

A closer analogy would be Skylab. They didn't strap a bunch of boosters to it and fire it up into space like they do with the shuttle orbiter. If they did that, it would've needed to be designed to survive a trip through the atmosphere. Instead, they stuffed it all inside an extra Saturn V they had, and shot it up into space.

Actually, now that I think about it, the lunar lander from the apollo missions was pretty similar as well. It wasn't designed to function in an atmosphere, so it was well tailored to its true purpose, landing on the moon. It was much too frail to have been exposed to the atmosphere during launch.

What it basically boils down to is, the shuttle isn't as much a reuseable spacecraft as it is a mostly reusable launch vehicle. And, although I'm no rocket scientist, it seems to me that launch/rentry&landing are the most stressful parts of a mission. Designing the shuttle to survive and perform for the extreme conditions of the first and last twenty minutes of each flight resulted in a lot of compromises that made the shuttle much less effective and efficient for the rest of the mission in between.

Rutan isn't doing that, he's still sort of close to the orbiter/rocket-booster combo, just using a plane for the first stage instead of ginormous rockets. Not to poop on what he's doing, I think his progress is pretty exciting, since he'll eventually be offering tickets for a whole lot cheaper than the russians sell them.

Re:The Only Things?

[Anonymous Coward]

"No resitance means that (barring the gravity the ISS causes) your launch speed can be mere meters per second"

Please take a course in elementary physics before posting again.

Re:The Only Things?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Trash is not a problem. It is (in orbital terms) trivial to eject trash in such a fashion that it would either hit the sun, crash onto the moon or burn up on re-entry.

Umm, no. Trash ejected to drop on the Moon would require that you eject the trash at a speed of 2 miles/second. With a precision similar to an Apollo, but without the midcourse correction as a fudge-factor. For reference, the main gun of an Abrams tank can eject an APFSDS penetrator at almost one mile per second.

Ejecting trash to the Sun. Hmm, off the top of my head, looks like you'll need a deltaV of about 15 miles per second. Rather more than an entire Apollo/SaturnV stack can manage.

Burn up on re-entry? Yes, that we can manage. Requires only a few hundred meters/second deltaV. Of course, we might have better things to do with our payload than carry along garbage rockets.

Seriously, it's generally easier to just carry the garbage home with you. Which is what we do now. The garbage problem in orbit is mostly little bits and parts that fall off of things. When you drop a nut when working under your car, it hits you on the head (the perversity of the Universe being what it is, that happens nearly every time) or falls to the ground out of reach. Drop a nut in orbit, and it just stays in whatever orbit you put it in. Which means you may be seeing it again in an orbit or two, if it got out of reach before you noticed it.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

Oh, come on! your position is indefensible...give in!

Give in to what? Having my comments and positions misstated? No thanks.

I said that the shuttle was a crappy tool for delivering payloads into low Earth orbit.

Read my original post. It said *nothing* about crews.

>>"It is not essential for humans to be in the spacecraft to deliver payloads."

True....

Looks like my position is MUCH better defended than your initial claim.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

Everyone who has ever died in a pad accident would beg to differ with you, Einstein.

You forgot to count all of the employees of the various missions who died on the way to work in car accidents, Feynman.

I guess you lost the focus of my original point.

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

Yes, because the Mars rovers launch payloads into space. Can you atleast try to keep up with your troll?

The *original* post had nothing to do with Mars rovers.

I guess you can't follow a tread.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

Is a bachelor in applied physics enough? Please remember we're launching from the ISS, not earth.

Re:The Only Things?

[Mac Degger]

I think I do get what you're getting at :) That's kinda why I mentioned Rutan, even though I know what he's doing isn't what you mean, at least he's getting there in terms of a fully re-usable first stage and a second stage which doesn't need to fly up but just has to deal with re-entry. Sure, he doesn't go orbital, but he is seperating launch stages into discrete stages which are designed to perform in their seperate environments.

What's interesting is what Rutan is planning after his next launcher: orbital in seperate re-usable stages. SS1 and WK are just neccessary steps in the production process.

Re:The Only Things?

[crawling_chaos]

No, I didn't. You claim that a rocket is inherently safer merely because it does not carry a human payload. An unmanned hypergolic rocket is in fact often as dangerous as a man-rated rocket in that leakage from the corrosive and poisonous fuel and oxidizers can kill as many people as an explosion on the way to orbit. Those people did not die in accidents unrelated to the launch of the rocket (unlike your car accident victims), and due to the minimization of such propellants on manned rockets (only used in the OMS thrusters on the Shuttle and their equivalent on Soyuz) the risk of such an accident is far lower.

For two otherwise identical rockets, it can be argued that the unmanned variant is inherently safer, as there is always a non-zero chance of the loss of the crew. I am not aware of any launchers that currently meet those criteria, as the Energia booster/Buran shuttle is no longer in production.

Re:The Only Things?

[tompaulco]

When I toured the NASA facility in January, they had a long thick wire running from the gantry down to the ground quite a distance away. The tour operator said that was in case they needed to evacuate the platform in an emergency. I think they got into some sort of vehicle which would run down the wire at something like 50 MPH.

Re:The Only Things?

[tompaulco]

I say just design a re-usable launch vehicle that can transport one standard shipping container (the ones they use to ship freight on boats) and all you have to do is design a container for each kind of launch...
Those containers are designed to stack X high and are thus very strong and very heavy. I like your idea, but would say that we should make it where it doesn't need to have stackable strength at all. More like the ones that are used in wide body airplanes (and even those can be stacked a couple high).

Re:The Only Things?

[geomon]

An unmanned hypergolic rocket is in fact often as dangerous as a man-rated rocket in that leakage from the corrosive and poisonous fuel and oxidizers can kill as many people as an explosion on the way to orbit.

Which makes any launch dangerous.

For two otherwise identical rockets, it can be argued that the unmanned variant is inherently safer,...

Which is the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately my point was lost in the noise to "save the shuttle!".

The shuttle is expensive, dangerous to the crew, and unnecessary for payload deployment.

There are cheaper, safer, and more efficient means for deploying LEO payloads.

Re:The Only Things?

[poopdeville]

The *original* post had nothing to do with Mars rovers.

I wonder who even brought the Mars rovers up... Oh yeah, you! Someone then said they agreed that the rovers produced good science and are currently the best tool for the job. To which you replied:

Which job? Launching payloads into space? I don't see how you support that statement with facts.

That's just idiotic! Hell, you broke his post down point by point, saw that he was talking about the Mars Rover, and still said that. He was agreeing with you! And Irony of Ironies, you accuse me of not being able to keep up with a thread, when it's perfectly obvious to everyone but yourself that your reading comprehension needs work.

I love your lame excuse too. "The *original* post had had nothing to do with Mars rovers." Well that's great. I wasn't replying to the original post. I was replying to a post in which the Mars rovers were the topic of discussion.

Re:The Only Things?

[fredrik70]

ah, I meant something like the soyuz got:
soyuz 18a and soyuz T-10-1

There Anything Left?

[Keystroker]

Since Mars really isn't that interesting anymore, what is NASA going to do in Space that the public will actually care about? Sure for us geeks there are a plethora of things to be discovered but it is is the red-blodded American that is keeping NASA in the limelight. Unless we find ET on the moon, or we can figure out how to get to a planet, we're toast.

Re:There Anything Left?

[cdelta]

Why exactly isn't Mars that interesting anymore? In the past year, we have discovered that the planet was once covered in liquid water and could have supported life. We have two rovers there now, a few orbiters, and the ESA's Mars Express is about to start their radar mapping of the subsurface to see if there are any large aquifers present. If there is an abundance of water, human exploration and settlement will be that much easier. And as for getting to a planet, we've been going to them for the past thirty years. Cassini is in the Saturn system right now. The only difference between that and sending humans is a larger spacecraft, life support systems, and more fuel.

Re:There Anything Left?

[Keystroker]

If you were Joe who mows lawns for a living, would you have understood that post? I don't think so. Unless they discover some life forms or something that moves, funding is probably going to decrease. I've been wrong before, but that's just my opinion.

Re:There Anything Left?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an astrophysicist, and I am stunned every time I realize how strongly "Joe who mows lawns" supports space exploration and sending humans farther out from Earth.

I lose sight of it often, because it's part of my every day life. But, the American public seems to massively support this.

Re:There Anything Left?

[HD Webdev]

Why exactly isn't Mars that interesting anymore?

Mostly because we've recently discovered that the sand traps will make golfing pure hell on Mars so we need investigate elsewhere.

Re:There Anything Left?

[mparar]

Plus the little matter of highly energetic cosmic rays including solar storms and the heay nucleus inter galatic radiation. It seems in the earth-mars trip one of these nucleii will have passed through each and every cell in the body. Shielding will be heavy and expensive. The cost of an earth-mars manne d mission will probably bankrupt the space programs of all space-capable economies.

Re:There Anything Left?

[O2H2]

Going to Mars does not HAVE to bankrupt anyone- it all depends on the architecture and mindset. If NASA is allowed to levy stupidities that have no bearing on real safety and reliability then it will leave them gutted. The effort will exhaust their resources and public good will long before first manned flight. It is critical that the astronaut core and informed engineers actively fight these no-value-added requirements. Then maybe we might have a chance to really explore a new planet.

Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lot.

[barc0001]

I certainly wouldn't want my children to do it, as a parent. But I also realize that there are quite literally tons of people who if you presented them with the option of a shuttle flight and told them up front there was a 5% chance they wouldn't be coming back, they'd do it.
Let's face it, if the human race was as careful about other dangerous endeavors as it has been about space flight, we'd still be debating about whether it's a good idea to put those dang horseless carriages on the road, seeing as they don't think for themselves and all..

Omlettes and unbroken eggs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?" "

You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

BROOKLYN.

Cue Helen Lovejoy!

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

Won't someone PLEASE think of the childen!

Re:Cue Helen Lovejoy!

[climbon321]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested? Everyone knows where they were when the Alpha test failed.

Re:Cue Helen Lovejoy!

[FrenchyinCT]

Oh screw the kids. Let's send George Bush up in the next one!!!

Re:Cue Helen Lovejoy!

[thogard]

I watched all the the moon landing Saturn V take off and I knew many of the people in the early NASA program. That was when NASA had the attitude that we are building the best we can but at the end of the day, you light the candle and go for the ride of your life. At some point in the last 30 years NASA went from pushing the envelope to being the most expensive bus drivers in history.

I still want to see a shuttle take off. I've heard its impressive but somehow I don't think it will compare to Apollo 17 which turned the night sky blue.

Re:Cue Helen Lovejoy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, park him under the launchpad....

Heck Yeah

[OS24Ever]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?"

Screw the kids, I myself would climb aboard in a heart beat.

Did you see Contact? Remember the scene where Jody Foster sees something outside for the first time and they morph the childs face & voice onto her's as she describes what she is seeing?

I'd risk my life to see that, because I know we won't be living on the moon like I thought we would be in the 80s when I was in Jr. High.

Re:Heck Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw the kids

Uh... I think that's illegal.

Re:Heck Yeah

[TheKidWho]

Not unless you're name is Michael Jackson

Re:Heck Yeah

[adrianmonk]

I'd risk my life to see that, because I know we won't be living on the moon like I thought we would be in the 80s when I was in Jr. High.

OK, like it or not, you've triggered a story:

When my sister was in Jr. High (which would've been 1979-1982 if I've done the math right), she had this woefully out of date science textbook. It had all kinds of crazy and laughable things in it, but the pinnacle was a little sidebar on space travel, which talked about the challenges man faced and what we had accomplished. The last sentence was intended to inspire students to dream about ever greater achievement and exploration. It read, "Who knows, someday man may even reach the moon."

Hey, well, good to know that education is such a priority that the powers that be are willing to spring for a new set of books every now and then.

Re:Heck Yeah

[tompaulco]

The last sentence was intended to inspire students to dream about ever greater achievement and exploration. It read, "Who knows, someday man may even reach the moon."
Sadly, that book is no longer outdated. Who knows, someday maybe that book will be outdated again.
I am man enough to admit that when I saw the Saturn V in the museum at NASA, and thought of what we had once done, and can no longer do, I got tears in my eyes.

Netcraft confirms it

[KaptNKrunchy]

The shuttle program is dying.

Hello, welcome to reality

[gerf]

NASA, by its very essence, isn't able to test things in completely realistic environments. They spend huge amounts of time and energy doing what testing they can, but how in the world (or outside the world) can you test fixing a wing on a space shuttle? There are so many variables that it's insane to attempt

Sure, this makes NASA dangerous, but that's been known for decades. Space travel isn't as easy as driving to the supermarket just yet. Get over it.

Re:Hello, welcome to reality

[toddbu]

but how in the world (or outside the world) can you test fixing a wing on a space shuttle?

Get rid of the wings. There are many designs that don't rely on wings that have nearly the same maneuverability as does the shuttle with much greater overall reliability. Is it any wonder that the Russians are the only nation with a regular spaceflight capability when what they're flying is essentially a sphere?

Re:Hello, welcome to reality

[TheKidWho]

because they just can't get rid of the wings from the space shuttle... That would require building a new vehicle entirely. Which if you haven't been paying attention is called the Crew Exploration Vehicle which has no wings. The Northrop-Boeing design is a capsule, the Lockheed design is a lifting body, and the t/space design is also a capsule.

Re:Hello, welcome to reality

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many designs that don't rely on wings that have nearly the same maneuverability as does the shuttle with much greater overall reliability.

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Re:Hello, welcome to reality

[CrimsonAvenger]

Of course, Shuttle has flown more times than the entire Russian Manned Space Program. 113 Shuttle flights, to 93 flights in all manned programs for the Russians.

Much less that the Shuttle has carried 689 people to orbit, as opposed to the Soviet program's 231 (or fewer)...

Beta-testing

[FleaPlus]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

Screw that. If the chance of coming back alive is at least as good as it was on the 100+ other shuttle launches, I'd give almost anything to go myself. I guess some additional beta-testing might be nice, but how much will it cost?

There will always be risks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi - this whole safety mania regarding the space shuttle is silly. Yes, it is tragic that two crews have died so far, but lets face it - when traveling in those atmospheric conditions at those speeds and temperature extremes there will always be a risk, even if NASA managers are under pressure to be able to claim it is now entirely safe.

I mean, there are terrible airplane crashes every year, but do we shut down all commercial airflight until we can make it certain that flying has no risk?

On the flip side, we should do more to acknowledge the risks those space shuttle crews take every time they go up for even a "routine" mission.

TWR

Re:There will always be risks

[geomon]

Yes, it is tragic that two crews have died so far, but lets face it - when traveling in those atmospheric conditions at those speeds and temperature extremes there will always be a risk...

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects carried out all of their accomplishments without losing a single crew member during flight operations. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed during testing on the ground. Apollo 13 nearly lost a crew, but the efforts of the mission control staff pulled their bacon out of the fire.

Space flight is risky, but nothing equals the loss of two crews in the shuttles.

It is time to shitcan the shuttle. We don't NEED a space truck (despite what Deep Purple would like us to believe).

Re:There will always be risks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the soyuz crew that died on reentry. Maybe the soyuz should habe been 'shitcanned' back in the 70's since it has a 1 in 75 failure?

Re:There will always be risks

[geomon]

Maybe the soyuz should habe been 'shitcanned' back in the 70's since it has a 1 in 75 failure?

If Soyuz's mission could have been accomplished with less risky means, then yes. I don't think long-term human habitation experiments could have been accomplished without Soyuz.

Can you truthfully say that the shuttle is the only vehicle capable of launching LEO payloads?

Re:There will always be risks

[KaptNKrunchy]

Your just not thinking beurocratically enough. Seriously, don't you know how many millions of dollars each of those crews cost to train.

Re:There will always be risks

[VeganBob]

I mean, there are terrible airplane crashes every year, but do we shut down all commercial airflight until we can make it certain that flying has no risk?

Actually, if two of the same type of plane used for commercial flight go down due to mechanical/technical failures, they all get grounded until the problem gets solved.

Re:There will always be risks

[LooseChanj]

Two in 75 actually. Soyuz 1's parachute didn't open, ouch. And 11 had a valve open that shouldn't, asphyxiating the crew.

And just as a data point, I believe the shuttle has flown more flight between its two accidents than soyuz has total.

Re:There will always be risks

[learn fast]

Hey, fun. There are two categories here. "No risk" and "Risk". There is "risk" in air flight; there is "risk" in space shuttle flight; therefore, if we allow passenger air flight we should allow the space shuttle to fly.

Great logic. There will "always be a risk" and the only alternative is to "make certain that flying has no risk."

Surely a more efficient googler can come up with a better number, but the annual number of flights flying in or out of the Baltimore/Washington International airport alone is 266,450 (based on an average of 730 per day times 365, clicky). Now, we know that there have been 113 shuttle flights. Of which, 2 have crashed. That's a failure rate of about 1.8%. You can guess which calculation I'm going to do next. If air flight was as safe, we would see 4716 air crashes annually just for flights coming in and out of BWI airport.

Trust me, if that were the failure rate then we would indeed shut down all commercial air flight until we could be sure it was more safe.

Stop being ridiculous, and save the bad logic for political reasoning where it belongs.

Re:There will always be risks

[aXis100]

1) Try the numbers again per passenger death - it might come out closer.

2) Multiply the allowable risk factor on shuttle mission by 10. I mean, this is bleeding edge frontier stuff - a certain amount of additional risk has to be accepted.

Re:There will always be risks

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects carried out all of their accomplishments without losing a single crew member during flight operations. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed during testing on the ground. Apollo 13 nearly lost a crew, but the efforts of the mission control staff pulled their bacon out of the fire.

Space flight is risky, but nothing equals the loss of two crews in the shuttles.

Do you know how to count?

Go add up the number of number of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flights. What is the ratio of successful (as in no deaths) to unsuccessful missions? (And no, I don't give a damn whether they died in a pad test on the ground or in space... Apollo 1 was unsuccessful.) Now, compare that to the ratio of successful to unsuccessful shuttle missions.

Go ahead, do it.

Is it really true that "nothing equals the loss of two crews in the shuttles?" And, I'm giving you a handicap: I didn't ask you to compare the ratio of lives lost, since Mercury and Gemini only had one or two crewmembers per flight, respectively, compared to Grissom, White, and Chaffee all dying in an Appllo CSM.

Go get a goddamned clue.

Re:There will always be risks

[geomon]

Do you know how to count?

Go ahead, do it.

Go get a goddamned clue.

I take it you aren't interested in anything other than your own opinion, so why ask me for mine?

Re:There will always be risks

[Anonymous Coward]

if NASA loses another shuttle, it may very well be the end of NASA. The government is looking to dismantle ANY government body which competes, either directly or indirectly, with the private sector.

I may not agree with 98% of the things they determine as better served by private, profit driven businesses, but the matter of space exploration and travel may very well be ideal for such things (much of science fiction already views the capitalization of outer space as inevitable). The X Prize alone has produced bigger strides in a few years than NASA has accomplished (in terms of pure and practical space travel) in the past decade.

So the issue isnt really risks at this point, but rather reputation. The Russians are currently doing more with their low-tech (but highly dependable) rockets than the US is doing with their high tech but unreliable toys.

An amusing anecdote- both NASA and the Soviet space program needed a writing instrument which could write without gravity. NASA spent a lot of money developing the 'science' of the pen, and at last developed the apex of ballpoint technology, the gel ink pen.

The Soviets just sent up pencils.

Re:There will always be risks

[learn fast]

You need this to come out thousands of times less.

Re:There will always be risks

[Mac Degger]

"We don't NEED a space truck "

EVERY single telecom company will dissagree with you. As will every national intelligence agency. As will quite a few material scientists I know of.

Dude, you are full of shit. Not only that, but you are risk averse (which might not be a bad thing, nesseccarily). If it where up to people like you, there'd be no cars, no trains, and no european discovery of the americas. It's people like you who take all the fun out of life. You /are/ that grey old lady who is against any and all progress, because it might be dangerous. Just don't keep your kids in the house for ever 'cause 'the outside world is dangerous!'...they'll die of shock when they do leave the house.

Re:There will always be risks

[Mac Degger]

Thing is...we're not talking about mere flight...neither are we talking about mere cars/trucks.

BTW run the numbers on that and I wouldn't be surprised if spaceflight is as hazardous as driving a car. Hell, top of my head says driving a car is more dangerous than just 1.8% mortality rate. So who is applying "bad logic for political reasoning"?

Re:There will always be risks

[Anonymous Coward]

An amusing anecdote- both NASA and the Soviet space program needed a writing instrument which could write without gravity. NASA spent a lot of money developing the 'science' of the pen, and at last developed the apex of ballpoint technology, the gel ink pen.
The Soviets just sent up pencils.

Oh, STFU with that old, tired, chain-lettered canard and read your freakin' Snopes already. Christ, some morons.

Re:There will always be risks

[FleaPlus]

"We don't NEED a space truck "

EVERY single telecom company will dissagree with you. As will every national intelligence agency.

I'm not sure if I understand this comment, but are you trying to claim that every single telecom company and every national intelligence agency launches payloads on the Space Shuttle? I assure you they most certainly do not.

Re:There will always be risks

[rufty_tufty]

Hell yeah!
Look at the stats for the number of dead people who have been in a car! Coincidence? I think not!

Humm was that pushing the bad logic idea too far?

Re:There will always be risks

[geomon]

Dude, you are full of shit.

That there are better, safer ways to launch payloads into low Earth orbit?

A little bit of evidence would be more convincing than your lame attempt at foot stomping.

Re:There will always be risks

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects carried out all of their accomplishments without losing a single crew member during flight operations. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed during testing on the ground. Apollo 13 nearly lost a crew, but the efforts of the mission control staff pulled their bacon out of the fire.

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo put ~75 people into space, on a total of 31 flights. The Shuttle managed ~690 on 113 flights. Note that Shuttle did not have an accident till flight 51. Mercury would have needed another 45 flights to get to flight 51. Gemini would have needed another 41 flights. Apollo another 36 flights.

The Soyuz has been the only manned vehicle in space that even approached the Shuttle's number of flights - 83 manned flights. Of those, two flights lost their crews.

1.8% of the crews (compared to Shuttle's 2%) lost, and 2.4% of the missions (compared to Shuttle's 1.8%). Of course, the Soyuz program had three other failed missions which did not result in loss of life...

Space flight is risky, but nothing equals the loss of two crews in the shuttles.

Come now. The Titanic lost over 1500 people. There are a LOT of events in the history of the world that are FAR worse than the loss of two Shuttle crews....

Re:There will always be risks

[CrimsonAvenger]

Don't forget about the soyuz crew that died on reentry.

Two Soyuz crews died on reentry. Soyuz 1 (one guy) and Soyuz 11 (three guys).

Re:There will always be risks

[Mac Degger]

I know...currently they use ESA and Sea Launch for their space trucks more than the shuttle due to lower costs, but sometimes they need the extra capacity the shuttle can provide.
I use the term space truck for any launch vehicle who's job it is to just deliver payload into orbit...much like a truck delivers cargo to an earthbound destination. And seeing the amount of satelites launched (appart from the fact that yeah, it's in space, it's more dangerous, and it isn't routine) I would call it a space-trucking business...now all we need is a true space truck (as pertaining to cheap launch costs).

Re:There will always be risks

[Mac Degger]

What, you think smoking kills? It's been proven that everyone who breaths will die :)

Re:There will always be risks

[tompaulco]

Actually, since the airplane industry likes to use "passenger*miles" to show how much safer they are than driving, NASA could use the same calculation for the shuttle and probably end up proving the shuttle to be MORE safe than an airplane.

Re:There will always be risks

[FleaPlus]

Oh, I see. Typically, when I hear somebody mention "space truck," what they mean is something more like the space shuttle: a jack-of-all-trades which not only takes payloads up, but also brings people up, and can recapture satellites and bring them back down. The consensus seems to be that going down that path tends to increase costs dramatically with little benefit.

I'm personally hoping that SpaceX will succeed in their goal of creating a cheap "space truck."

Re:There will always be risks

[ckaminski]

Challenger STS mission 51L was the 25th sequential shuttle mission, not the 51st. FYI.
<url:http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/shut tle/mi ssions/missions.html>

Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[SuperDuG]

Rockhound - "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

It seemed fitting ...

Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I've only heard it on Armageddon, I don't remember the guy's name

Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that quote was a ripoff of a quote from a real astronaut, don't you?

Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[sllim]

I realize this. But I have forgotten who the real astronaut was.
Mind reminding me?
Bonus points if you can deliver the acurate quote from him....

Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst...movie...ever

Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote ...

[Anonymous Coward]

John Glenn said it. But apparently he was paraphrasing Alan Shephard.

Stowaway to the moon

[Colonel Blimp]

From IMDB:

"An 11 year old boy, who has always been fascinated by space and astronauts, wishes he could go into space also. So of course it should be easy to get into Cape Kennedy, up the launch tower, and into the capsule. Naturally when something goes wrong on the journey, he will save the day."

You will laugh, you will cry, you will endanger the entire space program!

It reminds me of that very special episode of Webster, except without the whole stowing away to the moon part.

Re:Stowaway to the moon

[TripMaster Monkey]

Reads like The Early Times of Wesley Crusher...

^_^

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[fdisk3hs]

..."told them up front there was a 5% chance they wouldn't be coming back"...
It's probably more like a 5% chance that they WILL be coming back. Who cares? I'll go.
"Gentlemen, we need to know where we stand from a position of status. What do we got left on the ship that is good?" Gene Krantz

Alpha Beta...

[WordNA]

The testing probably goes all the way to Omega...

and back again.

want your children flying a space shuttle that ...

[WindBourne]

that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

Quite Honestly, I would go up in a heart beat. Those shuttles have been tested through and through. Now what is happening is the nit picking over every little detail. I would guess that my 3 year old nissan quest is no where near as safe as that ship is.

forget manned missions

[DualG5GUNZ]

Manned missions in space don't make sense from scientific or economic perspectives. For the past two years we've been spending mega bucks on making a lost cause (the space shuttle) safer, but for what? The fact is that metal things are much cheaper (if one blows up, nobody dies). Instead of appealling to peoples hearts and dreams (we went to the moon back in 1969 - when it meant something) we should focus on aquiring knowledge about the cosmos and the like. To do that we don't need people.

Re:forget manned missions

[Rydia]

You do need people, actually.

You need enough taxpayers to care enough about the program to be willing to fund it. Which is already hard enough to do with actual people going up and doing things, and would probably be impossible if you were talking about a robot or some guy in houston with a joystick.

This line of argument also discounts that there are still biological (human) tests going on in space, and the fact that we have a big ol' space station being worked on and lived in, which is a pretty important stepping stone if we're going to take peoples' (the same people whining about the shuttle program, often) dream of colonizing space and planets anywhere.

Perhaps pure science would benefit more from no manned spaceflights. But scientific knowledge isn't the entire point, and there are other concerns that need to be addressed about both NASA's operation and its long-term goals.

Re:forget manned missions

[LooseChanj]

Compare the amount of science we got back from the apollo missions to what we accomplished with only robots. Not even close. The trouble is you start off with a much larger price tag with a manned mission, which puts people off. The fact that you get back far more science for the buck doesn't stop the sticker shock from getting it canned.

Re:forget manned missions

[DualG5GUNZ]

A. In fact, you don't need people in space to get tax payers interested, take the Mars Rovers for example. The Mars Rovers have been HUGE successes for NASA from both Scientific and PR standpoints. In fact, though this is subjective speculation, I don't remember shuttle missions EVER getting as much press as the Rovers (minus the shuttle mission where everyone died) and certainly no shuttle missions have gotten such consistently positive press. Actually, when you take into consideration the Rovers' journey (from tense deployment to achievements, extended uptime, and other feats) their coverage really amounts to an epic tale. No, I'm pretty sure you don't need manned space flights.

B. The ISS (International Space Station) is a DISASTER. The astronauts in it currently aren't so much living in the station as they are trapped in it. As I recall, something went wrong with their AIR SUPPLY and they are on reserves. Further, unless by "worked on" you mean "every once in a while the Russians bring food" you are, unfortunately, mistaken. The program has hit a huge obstacle in that no nations (certainly not the USA) are on course with any of the modules (and they may never be).

C. Pure Science should be the aim, and NASA should then try to get us (the public) excited about it. Beautiful pictures of the stars, stories about searching for gravitational fields, and talk of "ion propulsion" should get someone psyched.

Re:forget manned missions

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, with Apollo we got some pictures, measurements and sample returns from 1 very close moon. Little if any of Apollo's results couldn't be duplicated with modern robotic lunar missions. With robots, we've got data from most every planet, dozens of moons, asteroids, comets, the sun and the fringes of interstellar space. We've obtained a lot more science from robotic missions than manned missions, at a fraction of the cost.

In other news

[MasterDirk]

[Grumpy]

All we need now is some super-strong string, maybe something made out of carbon or some such material, and we'll be good on our way to a space elevator.

Stating the obvious and well-known isn't "News for Nerds" even though it's about "Stuff that matters."

Getting tired of seeing non-news and reports about non-events or non-findings

[/Grumpy]

each flight costs $500 million!

[distantbody]

The space shuttle program was ruined in its early days by too many government/military/nasa requirements, in short they wanted it to be a "jack of all trades", but because most of the shuttles functionality and specifications are rarely used, it turned out to be "a master of none" because of all the bloat. each flight costs in the order of $500 million rather than initial projections of $10 to $20 million!

The Crew Exploration Vehicle appears to be on the right track, just as the shuttle concept was, lets just hope they dont make the same mistakes again! oh well, if they mess this one up too we can always look forward to the future European EADS Phoenix reusable launch vehicle!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle How a good concept turns into bad reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_Phoenix What the shuttle should have been. Leave it up to the Europeans to get it right! ;)

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[LooseChanj]

Except it's done a damn good, if expensive, job at being such an all around vehicle. What it's not so good at is measuring up to impossible hype and overselling. The shuttle flew more times before its first accident than Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo combined. It could be improved upon, what with 20 years of flying experience, but nah. Let's just throw it away because of a freak accident that destroyed our false faith in its utter perfection.

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[Waffle Iron]

It could be improved upon

Exacly. And it will be improved by removing the heavy, useless wings; by eliminating the unneeded large payload capacity; by greatly reducing the heat shield size and complexity; by adding a viable escape system; by getting rid of uncontrollable solid boosters; and by dropping the high-strung engines that need a total rebuild after every flight that costs more than new engines.

In other words, it will be replaced by a much more reasonable capsule-like spacecraft on a simple single-use booster.

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[mparar]

Dropping the astronauts and making it a one way ride for robotic instruments would get the cost down to $ 10 mill/mission or so. The shuttle is more than anything else a political instrument to appeal to the dreams and wonder of the masses. A man in space is so much more saleable than a bunch of lenses and computers. Ah well...

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[DerekLyons]

The space shuttle program was ruined in its early days by too many government/military/nasa requirements, in short they wanted it to be a "jack of all trades",

Ruined in it's early days? The Shuttle was concieved right from day one as a jack of all trades. It was never anything but.

but because most of the shuttles functionality and specifications are rarely used,

In fact, every one of the various functional specifications has been used. It's both launched and recovered heavy payloads, performed satellite repair, etc.. etc.. Even the much maligned high cross range requirement has turned out to be useful because it makes mission planning easier for aborts and recovery.

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[DerekLyons]

dropping the high-strung engines that need a total rebuild after every flight that costs more than new engines.

They stopped rebuilding the engines between every flight about 1990 or so, and stopped removing them between every flight (for inspection) about 1997 or so.

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[tsotha]

It's both launched and recovered heavy payloads

I remember reading the HST was originally supposed to be recovered by SST and put on display somewhere (the Smithsonian, I guess), but they decide not to do it because they thought SST couldn't handle the weight safely. Is there a large difference between launch payload weight and landing payload weight? Or was that just NASA being overly cautious in light of recent events?

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[BigFootApe]

In fact, every one of the various functional specifications has been used.

Read about the polar orbit launch pad that the Air Force built, but never used. In fact, the Shuttle was designed to go into polar orbit, but never has.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/sts _slc-6.htm

The Baseline Reference Missions are, in fact, the functional specifications of the Shuttle. Only BRM One (of a total of six) has been used.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sts_br m.htm

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[ckaminski]

An interesting anecdote to this whole story is that in 113 flights, only one had an SSME failure that required initiating an abort sequence which was an abort-to-orbit on Atlantis IIRC circa 1993 or so.

Re:each flight costs $500 million!

[LooseChanj]

No, that was ummm, STS-51F in July of 1985.

Your Nissan won't blow up on reentry to garage

[melted]

Your Nissan won't blow up on reentry to garage. Or when you drive on your driveway in the morning.

Re:Your Nissan won't blow up on reentry to garage

[Anonymous Coward]

And the likelyhood of any of the shuttles doing so for the next decade (or until retired) are even slimer.

Oh, is that all?

[Fritzed]

". . .the only items blocking the Shuttles are issues 'related to tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair."

Oh, so all that remain are the exact same issues that grounded the program in the first place.

So what have the actually done in the past couple years again?

-> Fritz

Actually... (Re:Obligatory Steve Buscemi Quote...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the quote is

Rockhound: Hey Harry, you know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has two hundred thousand moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good doesn't it?

Yes, I AM a geek.

Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?"

Oh fuck off. The astronauts know damned well what they are getting into... certainly better than you with your irrelevant software analogy.

Beta testing

[SamMichaels]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

We did beta testing already...many, many years ago. What we're dealing with now are design flaws for a very specific set of events, wear/tear, etc.

Besides, the only way to "beta test" the shuttle is to launch it. Simulators don't account for the real world problems that caused it to be grounded.

Re:N.A.S.A.

[LooseChanj]

Oh, I'd say they have plenty:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio_activemgmt.h tml

RSS Feed

[bdigit]

Dear Slashdot,

Update your RSS feed.

Thank You,

RSS readers

Why not name them all "Challenger"?

[Doc Ruby]

Didn't they send up the last Shuttle without the space arm camera, which prevented them from examining the shuttle after the debris damaged the tiles? Because they were rushing, over budget, or something that shouldn't be happening now that they've been grounded for years, relaunching amidst endless talk of big budget increases? I mean c'mon: this is rocket science, but they are rocket scientists! If this administration weren't so busy screwing up every other Federal activity into an irreversible boondoggle, I'd say they were singling out NASA to sink it forever.

Re:Why not name them all "Challenger"?

[Guppy06]

OK, if your heavy sprinkling of random bold text wasn't enough to flag your post as a troll...

"Didn't they send up the last Shuttle without the space arm camera, which prevented them from examining the shuttle after the debris damaged the tiles?"

The Canadarm is designed to manipulate items in the cargo bay. Why would it be long enough and flexible enough to wrap around and look at the undercarriage of the orbiter?

Ever notice how tough it is to wrap your arm around and scratch your own back?

Re:Why not name them all "Challenger"?

[Doc Ruby]

That bold text wasn't random - it's emphasis, reflecting disbelief. After the last Shuttle debacle, which grounded the fleet for years (try saying that in your head at a higher volume), NASA should be relaunching with utmost attention to safety details, not "taking their chances", as reported in this story.

As for your completely uninformed take on utility of the arm/camera, here's a free clue:

"the robot arm was not aboard the shuttle this time around. A camera mounted on the robot arm might have been beneficial for doing an inspection"

While you're unwrapping your various contortions to prove your preconceived notions about my post, you might offer an apology.

Re:Why not name them all "Challenger"?

[Guppy06]

"That bold text wasn't random - it's emphasis, reflecting disbelief. After the last Shuttle debacle, which grounded the fleet for years (try saying that in your head at a higher volume),"

I can't speak for others, but I tend not to think in a Carl Sagan-esque voice.

"As for your completely uninformed take on utility of the arm/camera, here's a free clue:"

Note the use of the word "might" in your quote. In a more pertinent quote I found here, the ambiguity is cleared up:

Regardless, the RMS simply cannot be manouvered so the camera on the grappler end can see the underside from the proper angles to determine the depth of any damage. It simply lacks the joint structure and lengths to certain struts to allow for this.

"While you're unwrapping your various contortions to prove your preconceived notions about my post, you might offer an apology."

Why? Because your over-reliance on bold (as opposed to, say, italics) makes your post look more like an email selling "herbal Viagra" than something to be taken seriously? I tend not to apologize for other peoples' actions.

Overly conservative bureaucrats...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?"

If my children were very well-trained astronauts who are willing to give their life to fly in space, yes.

Too many people are too conservative with respect to launching the vehicle. Imagine if King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to allow Columbus to "sail the ocean blue" until he could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that not a single sailor would be in any way discomforted. Imagine if Lewis and Clark or Magellan had similar burdens placed on them?

Be grateful that we have as impressive a record in space as we do. Challenger and Columbia amount to approximately a dozen deaths. Yes, each death is very sad and should be mourned appropriately (and they are), but I sincerely doubt the astronauts involved would want to cause a two and a half year hiatus.

Worst Spaceship Evar

[ArmorFiend]

I hate the god-damned Space Shuttle. Its been around now for 25 years. It was a bad idea 25 years ago. Its an even worse idea today.

Most orginizations at some point realize when they've built a white elephant and move forward. NASA just can't grasp that SS was a crap idea as concieved.

I think it has undue mindshare because it looks kind of like what a spaceship should look like. Not like those ghay capsules, that, oh, managed to get us to the moon and never killed anyone in flight.

We should throw the SS away. If that means ISS crashes into the ocean, well, that's fine. Its back to basics time for manned spaceflight. And by that I mean - less press releases, more actual *flight*.

Re:Worst Spaceship Evar

[cowscows]

No, I think NASA knows what the shuttle's problems are. They've been trying to get a replacement for a while. The thing is, it's not as easy as just saying, hey, let's make something new, and getting it done.

Ignoring all the technical and engineering compromises that went on in the design, just getting approval to design and build the thing sounds like it was quite the hassle to me. Everyone wanted to build a part of it in their state, because there's lots of money and nice jobs involved. There were engineers, politicians, military planners, administrators, all fighting over what features the shuttle would have, how much it should cost, and what companies would get paid to produce it. The fact that it happened at all is pretty amazing.

And all of those difficulties repeat themselves anytime NASA talks about a shuttle replacement, which is why it's been so hard to get one made. Unfortunately it took a second major accident to force non-engineers to consider alternatives. Hopefully some of the current initiatives will produce actual spacecraft.

Meanwhile, it's important politically for NASA to keep manned spaceflight going, partially for the space station, partially for national pride, and partially because they have to justify their budget to congress.

The story of NASA since Apollo has basically been a bunch of engineers, a bunch of bureaucrats, and a huge disconnect in between. The bureaucrats control the money, so the engineers can't get much done without them. Sucks, but that's one of the prices you pay to live in a democratic country.

But yeah, I'll bet NASA is chock full of people who'd like nothing better to have the STS stop taking all the funding. It's just not a simple matter to retire it.

Re:Worst Spaceship Evar

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the god-damned Space Shuttle.

If you had the chance to go into orbit on a space shuttle, would you really turn it down?

Re:Worst Spaceship Evar

[dthx1138]

Yeah, those INVINCIBLE capsules, which never killed anybody.

Oh, except the time that Apollo 1 burst into flames on the launch pad and the 3 guys inside died because somebody made a shitty hatch. Seems like you would have called for Apollo to be cancelled had you been bitching then.

Not to mention that on the second try for the lunar surface, the outside of the command module blew off and we almost lost 3 more guys.

Re:Worst Spaceship Evar

[KarMann]

Not to mention that on the second try for the lunar surface, the outside of the command module blew off and we almost lost 3 more guys.

Uh, I think you mean third try: Apollo 11 was the first, then Apollo 12, and third would have been Apollo 13.

Re:Worst Spaceship Evar

[ArmorFiend]

Uh, I did say "in flight", y'know.

Apollo 1 weren't casulties caused by a failure-prone overall design, they were caused by shitty hatch design, and the dumb idea of having the astronots breathe 100% oxygen. Those decisions would have killed people on any vehicle.

Re:want your children flying a space shuttle that

[xqcom]

Maybe we can look at "safety" in terms of (a) fatalities per million miles _or (b) fatalities per trip. I do not know what the numbers are, but i figure it should be easy to find out the total number of fatalities in US related to car accidents, the number of cars in the country and approx how many miles they travel annually. You can then use that to compute (a) and (b).

My gut feel is that cars would fare better on both counts. Of course, _your_ Nissan Quest could be an exception ...

cool

[Jafafa Hots]

so the only issues remaining are the ones that killed all of the passengers on the last flight.

Great. Where do I sign up?

Task Group CYA

[Urusai]

It's a blue-ribbon panel harrumphing and nodding as NASA does whatever it wants to. Did you expect something different from our government? I'm just surprised they don't have to consult the Flat Earth Society or put a disclaimer sticker on the Shuttle like:
" This spacecraft was designed using science. Science is an unproven theory, nor is it mentioned in the Bible, so weigh these facts carefully and with skepticism as you decide if you are in with Jesus enough to ride the Shuttle without blowing up. "

Re:Task Group CYA

[bondsbw]

Real science and the Bible have yet to conflict.

Taking a theory (Darwin's) and turning it into fact (today's "science" of evolution) without proof conflicts directly with science. Or, taking something that has been proven or is obvious (natural selection) and generalizing it into something different (macro-evolution) is also not science.

Keeping your mind open to suggestions, by allowing both to be theory when neither have been proven, makes you a better scientist and open to ideas and viewpoints other than those taught to you by a narrow few.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Christian and I recognize the same can be said about many Christians who close their minds to the narrow viewpoints they've been taught. I consider this an incredible weakness in ministry because even if they are right, the point of Christianity is not proving creation, the flood, or other miracles, but rather showing love to others. 1 Corinthians 13)

Re:Task Group CYA

[pnewhook]

I'm a Christian and I also believe in evolution. I honestly don't see a conflict in these two beliefs.

Bahh, put it up and stop being pussies

[aCapitalist]

Guess what...more people are going to die going to, coming from, and in space...surprise surprise.

I'm sick of this nancy boy, nurse ratchet mentality where there can be no risks in anything and when an accident does happen we have to spread the blame as much as possible. And I'm talking about society in general, not space flight.

author fails to understand nature of space travel

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many people take space travel for granted. Too many people take airplane travel to granted.

The very nature of these things are dangerous. Yes, I'm more likely to die driving to the airport than in the plane, but planes still crash, and will continue to crash. It's the nature of the game.

The quote "Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?" shows a lot of ignorance. There is NO such thing as 100% save space flight, and there probably will never be.

You guys should be saying things like "I cant believe the space shuttles flew so many missions and only suffered 2 disasters".

Misleading article

[MikeSty]

"Space Shuttles almost Ready to Re-Launch" Great ... but ... are they ready to land?

The real reason the space program is doomed

[Mike Markley]

Manned missions in space don't make sense from scientific or economic perspectives.

Manned space missions make plenty of sense from a scientific perspective, if your eventual goal is to put a significant number of people into space (and onto other bodies). But more on that later.

The reason that our space program is doomed is the second half of that statement. Manned space missions never made sense from an ecomonic perspective. That wasn't the point then, and it still isn't now. We're just not in a pissing match with the Soviets anymore, so the whole thing has become substantially less popular.

The point is discovery, knowledge, exploration, figuring out how to hedge our species' bets by getting all of our eggs out of this one fucking handbasket that we're already halfway to hell in.

You may not think that's worth the money, and you're well within your rights to do so. My worry is how many others in America seem to agree with you. Sure, that's democracy, but I can still decry the opinion.

What you might call pragmatism, I call a crying shame. All this civilization and advancement and the best we can do is worry about the fucking coffers.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[zippthorne]

two flights in a hundred. there is a 2% chance that you won't be coming back.. incidentally, it's probably lower.. the last one was round #50 ish. (STS-51, but probably fewer flights had actually been flown, they seem to go slightly out of order) Seems they get complacent around every 50 flights or so, so it's probably been reset. (We're gonna need a lot more data to prove my assertion though.. are YOU willing to volunteer when the count gets back up to 35-40?)

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[Rei]

2%. And that's darned good for orbital spaceflight.

You're strapping yourself to a gigantic tank of highly combustible fuel in containers made minimally thin (often so weak and with a taper that if you turn them upside down when full, they'd burst), pumped at ridiculous speeds into combustion chambers running hotter than the boiling point of iron, with the entire combustion chamber being gimballed at high speed to keep the craft stable, and hope that the vibration doesn't damage anything important.

In space, you're exposed to extreme temperature variations (and thus thermal expansion/contraction, brittleness, freezing fuel/hydraulic lines, etc), high radiation levels, parts and liquids shifting in zero-G, etc. On reentry, most of that energy that you burned off getting into space must be burned off by your craft, creating temperatures of thousands of degrees that would easily melt most materials, and give even many superalloys the texture of rubber.

Hundreds of thousands to millions of parts, each one with failure potential. Escape velocity requiring enough energy that even the highest ISP exhausts only leave the craft at a fraction of the velocity you need to end up going. A dense lower atmosphere. It's amazing that we can get people off this rock at all, as opposed to simple suborbital hops. :)

ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

..the Return to Flight Task Group, the overseeing committee that determines when the Space Shuttles can go back into space, has reported that the only items blocking the Shuttles are issues 'related to tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair.'

f*cking hell, sounds like they've made a lot of progress, eh?

Would you want your children . . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Climbing Mt Everest?
Hanggliding?
Engaging in unprotected sex?

Individuals take risks because they believe the REWARDS are great.

Safety is for the rest of humanity.

We've spent TOO much money making the shuttle safe. Strap me on a booster and let's go, baby!

Remaining bugs are the same

[Animats]

The remaining bugs are "related to tank debris, orbiter hardening and tile repair". Aren't those the problems that caused the last crash?

Re:Remaining bugs are the same

[ShoobieRat]

Yeah, this report definately sounds like a smoke-screen tactic. These ARE the same problems that have forced 2 changes in launch date and more work. Last time I checked, we're still looking at late July early August for a launch.

I did, and it's still a waste.

[glrotate]

Fine, we'll all concede that hundreds of millions of years ago there was some sort of protobacteria on Mars. Big woop. Can we stop wasting money on it now?

The fact remains that it's a big dead rock. There's a big dead rock a lot closer and we stopped visiting that one because we realized there really wasn't any point in it.

Get over your Star Trek fantasies and beam back down here to Earth 2005.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[NanoGator]

"The fact remains that it's a big dead rock. There's a big dead rock a lot closer and we stopped visiting that one because we realized there really wasn't any point in it."

Unlike our moon, the big red dead rock could potentially be a new colony for us. You may not care about that, but I personally enjoy the idea that man kind would no longer risk being completely obliterated by one nuclear war.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[KarMann]

Get over your Star Trek fantasies and beam back down here to Earth 2005.

You know what? I don't so much care about "Earth 2005", because I can state, with a moderate degree of confidence, that there's still intelligent life around on "Earth 2005" (OK, I'm not absolutely certain about this.). Since 2005 is pretty much a sure thing, I might be just a bit more worried about "Earth 2100", "Earth 3000", or even "Solar System 100,000 AD" or "Milky Way 100,000,000 AD". If there's no one around anymore to care about what "Earth 2005" meant, then what the hell significance did "Earth 2005" really carry?

Terribly sorry if I just can't bring myself to be as nearsighted as you.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[rachit]

did you ever stop and think that having a colony on another planet / moon makes nuclear war *much* more likely?

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a waste to try and find a way for the smart people to get off this rock. It is infested with people who have no vision and no sprirt.....time to go and found a society, or several, based on reason and science. The moon and Mars are a start.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[gl4ss]

all this colonization talk..

we can advance science on earth without burning money up in atmosphere, too.

now, i think(predict, whatever) that we'll have a colony in the mars eventually - but i also think that we're not there yet with technology. the technology goes on regardless of if we are putting up a huge project now to get to mars and getting to mars is as a consequence going to be a lot easier, safer and cheaper in 100 years time.

thing is that a lot of people would like to see it during their lifetime out of vanity i suppose, but there really isn't point yet.

and as to the shuttle.. just let it die. just use the damn soyuz and others and develope a new shuttle like should have been done.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[NanoGator]

Um... no. Explain that, pls?

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[rachit]

If using nuclear weapons is no longer a guarantee that it would be suicide and/or end the world as we know it, world leaders would be much more willing to use them.

Re:I did, and it's still a waste.

[NanoGator]

"If using nuclear weapons is no longer a guarantee that it would be suicide and/or end the world as we know it, world leaders would be much more willing to use them."

Unless they're pushing the button from Mars, that isn't terribly likely. Ppl like to save their own butts.

Sorry, not sold.

fix your feed link

[fbartho]

The correct link now is:
http://slashdot.org/index.rss

as opposed to the old:

http://slashdot.org/rss/index.rss

Whiners

[Poppageorgio]

You could tell me that I only had an 80% chance of survival, and I'd still strap that bad boy on and ride it into space! Any kind of space vehicle is going to have some kind of risk. Its hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel hurtling through the air. When is that ever going to be safe?

With great achievements, come great risks. It was true for the early explorers of this planet, its true for space too.

You win, but not by much.

[WindBourne]

Quick and Easy calculation:
Foale returned to Earth after spending 145 days in space, 134 of them aboard Mir. His estimated mileage logged was 58 million miles (93 million kilometers), can be used for an estimate of miles / days, which is in one day the shuttle does 400K miles (or .4 MILLION miles /day.). A typical mission is between 10 to 16 days. Lets use 10 days. That is then 4 millions miles on one mission. Assuming that 50 missions before the mishap, then it becomes 200 Million miles before 7 deaths.

Checking the data down below here, you will find that cars have one half the rate of the shuttle. IOW, the shuttle is more dangerous, but not by that much. And that does not consider the speed or the usefullness of the shuttle.

I would trust NASA and the shuttle.

Re:You win, but not by much.

[DavidTC]

That's an idiotic statistic. 99% of that '200 million miles' is doing nothing. Of course there are no accidents, it's just sitting in orbit.

There are only four places you can have accidents in space flight...sitting on the pad, takeoff, landing, and docking/launching/reparing satellites. (Aka, hooking up with other things in space.) An accident while travelling though space is about likely as having one in a parked car.

If you want to compare that to cars, you have to include them sitting in the garage. Yes, in theory, a meteor could hit a shuttle, but it could hit a car in a garage, too. Or a plane could crash into the garage. Those aren't car accidents, and a meteor hitting a shuttle isn't a space flight accident, it's just an accident happening in space.

Re:You win, but not by much.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doing nothing is the same way in an automobile. You spend 99% of your time doing little but going in a line at a constant speed. And yet, you run into other things or get hit by them. Same thing to be worried about with the shuttle. And yes, there are a LOT of VERY HIGH SPEED meteors (do note that the square is on the speed, not the mass; E=MC2) in LEO.

Re:You win, but not by much.

[DavidTC]

You spend 99% of your time doing little but going in a line at a constant speed.

Um, first of all, no, you don't. Almost no automobile travel can be considered 'moving in a straight line at a constant speed' for a period over, say, 5 seconds. (Of course, all lines are straight and all speeds constant if you measure short enough time intervals, like a hundredth of a second.)

You might drive at a constant speed on the interstate using cruise control, but it's rarely a 'staight line' in any meaningful sense, because you still have to steer. The road may be perfectly straight, but the path the car takes along it is not. There are constant directional adjustments. As evidenced by the fact you drift out of your lane if you do not steer.

Anyway, the space shuttle does not move 'in a line at a constant speed' for millions of those miles, it is PARKED in place. It's not 'moving' at all. The parking place is 'orbit' instead of 'the ground', but it is in fact parked. That's what 'stable orbit' means.

For a better analog, it is like a car parked on the back of a car carrier moving down the highway. It may move hundreds of miles, but it's not, in itself, very likely to get in an accident, because it is parked. Yes, it could roll off the truck, and yes a space shuttle could blow itself up, but these things are unlikely. (But look at Apollo 13 for the singular instance of that in the American space program.)

And the truck could get in an accident, and thus the car could end up in one sheerly by location...just like a meteor could strike the shuttle. That's not the fault of the shuttle, because there's not a damn thing anyone could do to protect against it, just like someone riding in the car on the truck couldn't stop the truck from crashing.

Of course, once you include 'orbital distance', the safest damn thing in existence are the Apollo landing modules we left on the moon. Apollo 11 alone has probably gone trillions of miles around the earth.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[fname]

The submitter should be modded down, "Will somebody PLEASE think about the children!" I wonder who the smart-aleck submitter would recommend as the 'beta testers?'

Shuttle should fly again when the known & knowable risks have been adequately addressed. A standard of "would you let your child fly on it" is silly & overly conservative. There are many risks not appropriate for children which are undertaken by adults every day.

Beta test

[Elf-friend]

...hasn't been properly beta-tested?

This is the beta. It's been going on for 25 years. The current space shuttles, as designed, were never meant to be a long-term solution, but lack of funding meant they began to be treated as one well before the Challenger disaster. Rather than realize this fact at that time, Congress has continued to refuse the funding NASA would need to move on to the next generation of shuttle (and really "go gold" with the program). The result was the Columbia disaster. If the program had moved forward as intended, Columbia (and the rest of these beta-shuttles) would have been long since retired.

As to the overall stupidity of that comment, believe it or not, someone has to do the beta testing here. Yeah, it's a tragedy when lives are lost, but that's the nature of the space program: risks have to be taken, because some things just can't be done without real-world testing. Even when the space program is no longer experimental, lives will still be lost, because space, in and of itself, is a high-risk venture.

Will they ever learn

[El Cabri]

These things have already killed 14 people, more than all the other space programs in the world combined. Will there ever be an end to this madness. It is a flawed, pointless program.

Re:Will they ever learn

[Anonymous Coward]

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
--Joseph Stalin

So, only 999,986 more people to take care of and we can fly them properly.

Re:Will they ever learn

[SPY_jmr1]

"200 people died in a bus accident today;... How do you get 200 people on a BUS?!"

Re:Will they ever learn

[CrimsonAvenger]

Of course, it's also put more people into space than all the other space programs in the world combined.

And its casualties have been just about inline with "all the other space programs combined" - twice as many people into orbit, and twice as many casualties.

Re:Will they ever learn

[ShoobieRat]

Take it to a 3rd world country. They'll show you.

Re:Will they ever learn

[ShoobieRat]

Out of nearly 700 people the shuttle has put into orbit, 14 have died. That's a 2-percent fatality rate. Multiply that a few times over, and you've got the fatality rate for driving a car.

Now really, how can you be so surprised by this? Why are you so upset at this 2-percent fatality rate? Can you think of no other jobs on the planet with the same (and much worse) fatality rates?

Drawing a blank? Okay, here's one example:

Crab-boat fishermen. Dozens of them die every single year. They drag in a huge profit for the corporations, and the only thing humanity gets out of this loss of life and corporate lust.....is crab-legs.

With the space shuttle you've got a group of people riding a highly complex machine into an environment they know is dangerous, they've benifited humanity and scientific progress in countless ways, they do it for the betterment of humanity, not just for profit, at a success rate higher than many other dangerous jobs, and you've got the audacity to complain about it?

Re:Will they ever learn

[SPY_jmr1]

That would be the other version of the joke... "400 people died in an explosion today!; Where, where?!; In Pakistan!; Ah, screw pakistan, I want one HERE!"

How about going back to the OLD FOAM?

[Banner]

You know, the stuff that WORKS? The stuff that was pulled out of service for some ridiculous and unproven green PC Bullshirt?

NASA became a worthless joke when they started practicing junk science and let the middle managers rule the roost. Time to shut it down and just fire everyone.

This is galling

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember years ago in the 70's when the shuttle Enterprise first flew, an article in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics that displayed some of the tools that NASA was developing to allow the astronauts to repair the shuttle tiles in space in case of damage. Two of the scenarios that I remember discussed, was using the robotic arm and/or the MMU to facilitate these repairs. It's a shame that NASA had the foresight to anticipate this scenario, but lacked the clue or the will to impliment it and make it part of the shuttle program. Yet again, NASA management has been responsible for killing a third group of astronauts. Too bad they never seem to listen to their engineers.

Human Spaceflight, History and Future

[Lucractius]

Firstly the reason spaceflight is dangerous is purely because we have no ability to gauge the dangers out there. Space (yes im aware that LEO is quite tame compared to say Lunar apogee during the new moon)is THE most hostile place for a human to go. zero gravity causes phsyiological stresses and potential damages from long term life under microgravity are very unclear despite decades of research. the removal of friction means that high speed debris are ALWAYS a risk, no matter where you are or what orbit, there is very strong chance your rocket will get hit with something, its an absolute certainty. The Shuttle is pounded by micrometeorites and other debri while in orbit. everything from pain flecks from saturn V's to frozen urine from appolo 13, along with the regular space dirt dust and tiny tiny chunks of rock.

I have always been interested in spacefligh and at one point considered Aeronautics to be my eventual feild of work. I do know what im talking about. IANAPRS (i Am not a PROFESSIONAL Rocket Scientist) So i wont claim i know Everything i should or need But im no average bystander with a casual interest in it.

The shuttle is Dying. Clear case point. IT WAS BUILT DEAD. The shuttle was a masterpeice of design and some of the inital work for it was pehonomenal. BUT as all publicly accountable institutions with large goverment funding in any country, they had to deal with political decisions that impacted on the end result of the Space Shuttle.

Personal I want to see the shuttle Fly Purely because its better than the alternative. No i dont mean the russian soyuz modules or even Buran (the soviet space shuttle, which is arguably better given it flew a full orbit test and reentry under auto pilot, Which are by themselves very excelent machines. Abeit more "ruggedized" than the NASA engineers would want. Soyuz is still derived from the Balistic Missile school of rocket science. And there is proof that in fact the Russians are better able to deal with an emergency than the US are presently. A soyuz can be "locked and loaded" ready on the launch pad to take off in 6 hours. This comes from the entire launch fabrication and facilities still being heavily derived from balistic missile technology, which was built to be used quite quickly in the event of a nuclear war.

The american space program tried to leave this behind to "look towards the future" Wernher Von Braun, the German behind the V2 rocket and a significant member of his staff surrendered to the US at the end of WW2 and were essentialy the brains behind the US space program and most of the Balistic missile technology developed leading up to it. He, before even the launch of the saturn V had begun to think about the desin of a "reusable" space vehicle. Taking off like a rocket landing like a plane.

All of this is looking towards the kind of mass market future for spaceflight most here would hope to see someday. But the risks remain great. and currently It appears that the US have taken a step back. Deciding to shift to disposable launches with single use crew modules. While safer due to the elimination of long term mechanical wear and tear it is still going to be throwing precious resources away every time. and adding to the amount of junk in space.

Where it should have gone and NEEDS to go is where some of the prototypes that have come from aerospace research reside and go. There is no reason besides lack of interest stoping us from building a Single Stage to Orbit Space Plane that could take off AND land like a plane at an airport. Dont cite technicalities. Theyre fudged by people that either havent looked at the full picture of available technology, or have a vested interest in not looking at it. Current Aerospace technology if rounded up and applied directly to the problem with the kind of $$$ the us goverment gave back when the Appolo program began or even with the amound of money put into the space shuttles development. Perhaps even with the meager budget given to the creation of the "new" Spacecraft for nasa, th

Re:Human Spaceflight, History and Future

[ckaminski]

You forgot the DC-X, another great rocket program axed by budget conscious administration... :-/

Buran's problem, like the STS, was doing a lateral mount on the booster. But at least Buran put the engines in the booster, and not the orbiter, where they are completely useless and increase landing weight.

Re:Human Spaceflight, History and Future

[Lucractius]

I wont say i know all the long list of glorious aircraft and spacecraft axed by paper pushers.

But the problem isnt that the boosers were in the orbiter. Thats actualy a choise of design based on the needs of the craft. The bosters do allow for the shuttles cheap disposable fuel tank to be used as opposed to a full rocket engine with Buran's main stage booster (a modified Energyra Heavy Lift Rocket)

The better way is to not used rockets for the incredibly wasteful purpose of getting a spacecraft to the altitude at which it becomes necessary to bring your own oxidizing agent. The space planes usualy solve this with multi stage engines ( turbo jets up to mach 3 then scram jets up to high altitude where they start pumping in the oxidizer and the scramjet becomes just like a rocket ) or 2 stage launchers, Such as the White Knight mothership for SpaceShip One that took out the X Prize recently :)

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[Seumas]

Exactly. Imagine all of the amazing discoveries and accomplishments that would never have happened if we insisted on waiting until we could nearly gaurantee that not a single person would be killed or even hurt and that no property would be lost or destroyed or damaged.

Anyway, I'd rather die attempting to explore the universe outside of our little planet than die from cigerettes, cocaine or bigmacs.

shuttle stats

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a few things to think about:

Safe = free from risk or danger

Space flight therefore, will NEVER be safe. One day it may become "less dangerous" to the point where people accept it as a normal mode of transportation, and accidents are an accepted part of the small risk of space flight.

Shuttle: flawed design of a craft whose major mission was to provide employment in the states of the Congressmen who pushed for it to be built. (Like the B-2).

Shuttle Stack: 3 main rocket engines provide the same output as 23 Hoover Dams when at 100% throttle. (This ignores the SRBs which are more powerful again!)

Shuttle Main Engines: Are sitting on gimbals which allow directed thrust! (OMFG - what were they thinking! Linear Aerospike motor was the way to go)

The shuttle was, and always will be an Experimental Vehicle. It was NEVER an Operational Vehicle. NASA was silly to treat it is as such.

Given the above facts, and a 1.8% failure rate, I'd say the Shuttle has done a simply amazing job.

Re:shuttle stats

[janwedekind]

Nothing is free from risk of danger!

A good measure (at least on earth) is the ratio "death per billion passenger-kilometers". These are the numbers for Europe (1999):

• Airplane: 0.8
• Train: 0.4
• Car: 8

I don't have the numbers for the Space Shuttle, but I think, that even counting the full distance travelled (relative to earth), that the Space Shuttle would look quite bad.

Was ist sicherer? Zug oder Flug?

Sillyness

[ROFLMAObot]

I don't understand, it's a risky business, why spends billions of dollars on a grounded program when you aren't really eliminating any risk. I'm willing to bet that throughout the entire space flight history there has be a 1% chance of failure. There will still be that 1% chance of failure, cars breakdown, people die. It happens.

What about fiberglass shell?

[bergeron76]

Didn't SpaceShipOne re-enter the Earth's Atmosphere using a composite resin body? How was SpaceShipOne able to do this without ceramic tiles? Was it Altitude?

Logically, I'd think Ceramic tiles are required considering that "rocks" / meteors are all that are found intact on Earth (from Space). However, the Earthling in me doesn't see a "rock space shuttle" as a practical alternative.

Re:What about fiberglass shell?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was speed. SS1 does a short suborbital hop. Any craft coming down from LEO has to kill a lot of speed, which is done on re-entry by turning velocity into heat.

Rocks don't qualify: a lot of their mass is lost anyway on impact with the atmosphere, and they come through at speeds exceeding orbital.

Re:What about fiberglass shell?

[Free_Meson]

Didn't SpaceShipOne re-enter the Earth's Atmosphere using a composite resin body? How was SpaceShipOne able to do this without ceramic tiles? Was it Altitude?

SpaceShip One (orwhatever it was called) was going MUCH slower. It never reached orbital velocity, ~22,500 knots iirc. The heat experienced during reentry is from the atmosphere slowing the craft down. You wouldn't have to shield a craft at all if you were only traveling a few hundred mph. You'd have other problems, of course, but reentry heat wouldn't be one of them.

Taking me with them

[jfengel]

Presumably you're after "care enough to spend money on", which is a much harder question.

One thing that would get the public interested would be to make spaceflight available to somebody other than a few dozen astronauts. The public has gotten pretty tired of living vicariously, which is why they don't watch shuttle launches any more (well, didn't even when there were some.) But they'd fund a few tens of billions if they thought it would eventually result in them personally going. Sadly, it'll cost way more than that.

Now, the public would probably be interested in another moon landing, and they'd certainly be glued to their TV sets for a Mars landing. Nobody's seen a moon landing in forever, and if it could be sold as beating the Chinese to it, so much the better. So they would watch one, but they wouldn't tune in for the repeat. Not even for Mars. Viewers are easily bored.

Now if they could sell a reality series based on somebody getting kicked out of the ISS every week...

Re:Taking me with them

[O2H2]

Less than 10 billion in non-recurring will get you a state of the art earth to orbit and in-space propulsion architecture that could support long term exploration of the moon and Mars. You still have to pay for the flights of course- but they are much cheaper than SHuttle. Roughly $1000/lb to LEO at moderate launch rate.

The cost of going to space is NOT about the metal in the rocket- it is about the humans that support the activity- essentially overheads. Want to get to space cheap? Increase RATE. Overhead growth is small vs launch rate growth. If there was a "there" there in LEO for example then the demand might rise to the point where critical mass production thresholds would be crossed and even the cost of the hardware would collapse. Really rockets are MUCH MUCH simpler than aircraft- mostly they are big tanks with very simple turbomachines driving quite simple engines. Far simpler than a PW4000 engine on a modern jet. Avionics are laughably simple compared to a palm pilot- due to the quest for absolute reliability.

So the POTENTIAL for low cost flight to LEO and beyond is definitely there. We are just a wee bit away from the reality.

Beta Tested

[airider]

It has been beta tested and gone gold and so far it's track record has been much better than MS Windows, and every other OS or software App I'm aware of. It's only crashed twice over 25 years of service in THE most demanding environment imaginable. Show me another system (software or otherwise) that's had this track record over the Shuttle's current and projected longevity?

WTF

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

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Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Nope. Death rate (astronaut fatality per launch) for the shuttle is 4.5%. Count em. IRC it's because the number of astronauts launched varies- some of the defense launches had fewer crew.

By way of contrast, Soyuz's death rate is under 2% and getting lower all the time, and they haven't had any deaths in over 25 years, and none with the current version.

Soyuz is significantly less brittle than the Shuttle, they have an escape tower, and their abort modes actually do seem to work- some of the Shuttle's involve 3 miracles happening.

Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Check out the wikipedia article for more info: Space Disasters.

You've messed up the difference between safety and reliability. The shuttle reliability is 2%- 1 in 50, but the safety is actually only 95.5% (4.5% deathrate) because they put different numbers of astronauts on some of the shuttles (the first launch only had 2 crew for example, and some of the defense-related launches had reduced crew also), but both times they blew up, they had a full crew onboard. If you do the maths, it's about a 4.5% fatality rate.

Shuttle is actually more than twice as dangerous than Soyuz (overall), furthermore Soyuz hasn't had any deaths at all in about 30 years, and none with the current version that seats 3. The reason Soyuz is safer is because they had all the really deadly problems early on when they only risked small crews, whereas the Shuttle is more brittle, and kills at random (hence more likely to kill a large crew).

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[peragrin]

Um The soyuz has only had small crews.

The shuttles are designed for 7 people at a time. The soyuz can take up to three people at a time. So you need three soyuz launches for every shuttle launch.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[RhettLivingston]

My point is really that it is safe enough. Whether you talk of 98% success or 95% success, its simply good enough. Also, the fact that something else is safer doesn't mean that the shuttle isn't safe enough.

The fact that we've let our idea of what is safe enough change over the centuries is probably the largest factor holding exploration back today. If you took the people of 500 years ago and gave them the technology of today, we would probably have gone to Mars long ago. We may have had 50%+ losses and it might be that nobody has yet made it back, but we would have been there. Its a sad statement of our decline that there hasn't even been talk of the one way option,,, colonization.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Yes, but even allowing for that, the facts say that Soyuz is more than twice as safe, per person who flies.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Ah, so you believe the politicians when they tell you the ISS/Shuttle is about exploration?

It's actually about job creation schemes for Russians who could help foreign powers build ICBMs pointed at America. That's what the ISS is for. MIR did nearly all the exploration already. You'll note a lack of scientific papers coming from the ISS.

Space needs to be about money to get anywhere now. Space Tourism is the future; there's a reasonably plausible route to Lunar and Martian travel (including exploration) via it. First we need orbital hotels and suitable launchers. The suborbital stuff will hopefully derisk it for investors so that these can be built.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[CrimsonAvenger]

You've messed up the difference between safety and reliability. The shuttle reliability is 2%- 1 in 50, but the safety is actually only 95.5% (4.5% deathrate) because they put different numbers of astronauts on some of the shuttles (the first launch only had 2 crew for example, and some of the defense-related launches had reduced crew also), but both times they blew up, they had a full crew onboard. If you do the maths, it's about a 4.5% fatality rate.

You, sir, are full of it.

4.5% deathrate for the Shuttle (14 deaths in 113 flights) requires that the AVERAGE Shuttle crew be only 3 (2.75, but who counts?).

Since none of the Shuttles flew with less than 2 men on board, that would imply that with the exception of the two accidents, only 15 shuttles carried seven men, and the other 96 had two each.

In fact, with just cursory checking, it is possible to determine that the Shuttle has carried 689 people, though some of those were for only part of a flight. Which gives the Shuttle a 2.0% deathrate.

Which puts the Shuttle deathrate about the same as Soyuz. Sorry for bursting your bubble as to the superiority of Soviet Science....

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[DerekLyons]

Shuttle is actually more than twice as dangerous than Soyuz (overall),

Shuttle - 2 complete LOCV failures in 113 flights. Soyuz - 2 complete LOCV failures in 87 flights, plus around 16-18 extremely close calls. Soyuz is hardly 'twice as safe'.

furthermore Soyuz hasn't had any deaths at all in about 30 years, and none with the current version that seats 3.

Let's look at just the last five missions of Soyuz (the last three years) shall we? We find one mission where the main flight control computer shut down entirely, we find another where a seperation pyro fired in the hangar prelaunch, we find another where the braking (landing) rockets failed to fire correctly...

For those playing along at home, that's three serious failures in the five most recent missions.

The reason Soyuz is safer is because they had all the really deadly problems early on when they only risked small crews, whereas the Shuttle is more brittle, and kills at random (hence more likely to kill a large crew).

The size of the crew is an emotional analysis, not an engineering one. Read here for an account of the Soyuz (and Soyuz derived spacecraft) failures thru 1997 - it's quite sobering. Even more sobering is when you consider the problems listed above - and the fact that the Soyuz (R-7) booster has had two unmanned LOV failures in the last six years.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[RhettLivingston]

No, I don't. The fact that the shuttle is too expensive is a true and valid reason to criticize, if not eliminate it, though I believe it could be flown at a vastly cheaper level if it was used as an unmanned heavy launch vehicle.

I was simply stating that safety concerns are NOT a valid reason to criticize it.

Space tourism runs into heavy liability concerns no matter what. It is even more vulnerable to bad publicity from crashes than the shuttle once tourists are involved and the protection of being a government agency is absent.

What is needed isn't space tourism, it is private space exploration. When people start building their own space ships with their own money and risk their own lives for profit, then we'll see space exploration take off,,, because then there won't be anyone to sue when it blows up. That's just the facts of life in a world where disclaimers don't hold up in court.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[bergeron76]

Yes, but how often is the Soyuz launched? I'm sure it's launched much less frequently than the Space Shuttle. Doing the correlate math will likely yield you a different result with regard to the Soyuz's safety record.

Re:Get your facts right. Re:The Only Things?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

There's not a great deal of difference with launch rate (even before the Shuttle was grounded).

How do you know?

[melted]

These tin cans have been flown two dozen times each. I think they can blow up pretty much on any reentry.

author is a dumbass

[XO]

Space flight will, for a very very long time, be in beta test. Until we can achieve the shuttle's original mission of going up many, many times in a short time frame... it's going to be in test. Space missions are dangerous, get used to it. It's amazing that we have a track record as good as we do.

Idiotic question

[RWerp]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

No, I wouldn't. That's why we don't send children into space, only consenting adults.

Re:Idiotic question

[oneishy]

Would you want your children flying a space shuttle that hasn't been properly beta-tested?

Honestly, I agree. In any other post on this site that article should be moderated as flaimbait.

It's a nice case of emotional misdirection which gets you emotionally against children flying spaceships into space, when that isn't the issue at all.

Besides; don't we expect any beta test of space flight to involve flight? So why claim that it isn't beta-tested so we can't/shouldn't fly. As another poster mentioned - space flight will be in beta for a long while to come.

And... suprisingly this post is on-topic =)

Re:want your children flying a space shuttle that

[pegasustonans]

I would guess that my 3 year old nissan quest is no where near as safe as that ship is.

True, but you have to admit if you strapped your Nissan to a booster it would be a pretty fun ride until your inevitably painful terrible death.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[Rei]

That's unfair. You're must be counting unmanned Soyuz launches toward the total to get the 2% number; the shuttle only does manned work (we launch our unmanned payloads on other craft). All of the unmanned Soyuz failures don't contribute to your count - and there have been a lot on this "less brittle" craft, as you call it (as recently as 2002, where it ended in a firey explosion right after launch). You only mention the manned failures because it makes your side look better; the failures being on unmanned craft, however, was just a coincidence. By the way, that 2002 launch? It killed a soldier on the ground, who undoubtedly wasn't included in your count, in addition to wounding 8 (a mile away from the explosion, at that).

Even if you're counting unmanned launches, though, your numbers still don't make sense. Please elaborate. There have been far more than 4.5 astronauts killed per launch (and what's up with the "%"?), because 2% of shuttle launches have ended in casualties, and each carried 7 astronauts. There have been ~1600 Soyuz launches, but little over a hundred manned launches, of which two involved fatalities, one with one death and one with three deaths. Your numbers, quite simply, make no sense. By the way - if you want to count total casualties of the Soyuz program, you need to add in the 50 technicians killed by an explosion of a Soyuz booster on the pad on March 18th, 1980. It's kind of ironic to think of it, but when you factor in ground crew deaths, even a mostly unmanned (and when manned, minimally manned) rocket like Soyuz could even have a higher death toll than the Shuttle on a per-flight basis, even with 1600 flights (it's hard to say for sure, with Soviet secrecy)

And if you want to talk about Soyuz's abort modes, you better talk about miracles. Remember Soyuz 18a? The crew went through a bloody 21.3g, and stopped just short of falling off a cliff. One person's internal injuries were so bad he never flew again. And even its normal operation can be disastrous - the much maligned "land via wings" approach of the shuttle prevented things happening to it like Soyuz 23, which broke through the surface of a frozen lake and nearly drowned its cosmonauts.

Ditch the shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Russian Kliper can do a better work than the shuttle.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[jimmydevice]

Ok, Life is disposable. We should explore the innerspace of DNA and exploit everything we can discover, including transspecies DNA integration. What about killing our dependence on burned petrochemicals? Let's use nuclear to save the feedstock of recyclable petrochems we will need in the future. We need to explore and exploit every radical and socially tastless techonology if humans want to exist on this wet blue rock 200 years from now. Fuck that shit building tin cans to send PhD's to their death at 1B a shot. ( maybe not a bad idea)

Each Astronaut Costs $10 million!

[Baldrson]

The value of human life is frequently put at far less than $10M for public policy. So let's be liberal with our estimate of the value of astronauts lives and say they're worth $10M. That means every shuttle launch is approximately the equivalent of 50 ritual human sacrifices to an idolatrous god.

The real reason Space Shuttle (is this thing related to Space Ghost by any chance?) is because they can't afford to kill another Shuttle.

WTF Exploration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. There's nothing there to explore except empty space and a buttload of deadly radiation.

Please stop watching so many brain-killing kiddy cartoons, OK? It's not doing much good towards yours mental health.

Stop reading sci-fi.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're already half batshit-insane from it.

Re:Sure, why not?

[PeterBrett]

Troll. Instead of railing against NASA (annual budget $14 billion), why not direct your angst against the DoD (annual budget $400 billion). I mean, the US spends a relatively TINY amount on space exploration. Ooops, I forgot. Over there you get jailed for protesting against the military-industrial complex, don't you? Actual valuable research is a much easier target.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[Anonymous Coward]

This item by Rei sounds like sour grapes. If you look at Wikipedia - http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-space-disaste rs - you can see a reasonable specification of space-flight related deaths, and the base data for the assertion that Soyuz has a better fatality rate than the Shuttle.

The one thing that shows up is that the Soyuz safety mechanisms seem to work.

Re:N.A.S.A.

[KarMann]

Uh, gee, aside from the dozens of crews who flew on them before their respective catastrophes. Other than those, yeah, they're "all" dead. Dumbass.

Combustion sucks!

[mister_llah]

Likewise, taking forever to reach other planets isn't too swell either.

Long live warp and wormhole theory, we should slow down poking around space (as people, not slow down in probing, mind you) ... until we can do anything but crawl...

NASA's breakthrough physics project
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/

Re:Combustion sucks!

[ShoobieRat]

We do pretty much all our "poking around space" without the space shuttle or ISS. Most of the "poking around space" is handled quite well by our satellite and ground-based observations.

The space shuttle and ISS perform local space observations and tasks, most of which don't usually require looking away from Earth. Speed, is irrelevant.

Gluing scales onto an albatross

[smchris]

Isn't the core point that it is becoming increasinly painful to watch efforts being spent on refining a dead technology? We knew all along that the shuttle was a highly unsatisfactory compromise but we didn't make the effort to move on to the next stage in the 80s and 90s.

Re:Gluing scales onto an albatross

[ShoobieRat]

And you would replace the shuttle with what? I was unaware of any replacement solutions sitting in hangers ready to go.

Our human spaceflight program is getting old, the Russian program is scary, and....and...and that's it.

We have no standing alternatives. Every project being worked on to replace the shuttle is still in infancy. Many of the most advanced materials and engineering required for these new projects, did not come around in the 80's. What alternative would you have them use?

Re:Gluing scales onto an albatross

[ckaminski]

Simple, when the X33 composite fuel tank encountered problems with layer separation, and they went to the Al fuel tank to finish the launch demonstrator while they worked out the kinks, both projects are now mothballed. So instead of focusing on building complex composite structures of such huge sizes with rabid intensity, the technology languishes.

Hell, such technology could be put immediately to use in the normal aerospace and boating industries.

DC-X was killed because of a design failure (using only 4 legs to land?) and a subsequent crash. Full-scale development never went past the drawing board. DC-X could have been the best of both worlds, SSTO, and blunt-body reentry.

Wusses

[Anonymous Coward]

My god you people,

OH NOES!!!! THE SHUTTLE IS TOO DANGEROUS TO OPERATE!!!

Jesus, you realise that space is one of the most harshes environments you can put something? The shuttles have done extremely well in terms of usage vs. problems. We've lost very few lives to the shuttle, in comparison to the science and knowledge gained from their use.

Everyone here wants technology to advance, and science to advance, and yet they bitch most when a few lives are at stake. The astronauts know what the dangers are, and are fully willing to accept their fate, should there be a problem.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[fuzzybunny]

In space, you're exposed to extreme temperature variations (and thus thermal expansion/contraction, brittleness, freezing fuel/hydraulic lines, etc), high radiation levels, parts and liquids shifting in zero-G, etc.

Cool! Sounds like a spa I went to with my girlfriend once...there's your solution for NASA's budget woes--there have _got_ to be people willing to pay money for that sort of treatment.

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[FatAlb3rt]

escape velocity? i don't recall any shuttle reaching that... ;) otherwise, great post!

Subtitle Should Have Been...

[stalky14]

"From the: No, really, we mean it this time dept."

Who else thinks they'll have a shutdown in the last
10 seconds?

Re:Subtitle Should Have Been...

[ShoobieRat]

I could only hope they're being so cautious.

With such a complex machine, with lives at stake, with the entire program at stake, with billions of eyes watching, YOU would have yer hand hovering over the "abort launch" button too, buddy.

Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out ove

[WolfWithoutAClause]

That's unfair. You're must be counting unmanned Soyuz launches toward the total to get the 2% number

No. Just the manned launches, Progress is not included. Check the wikipedia article for more information. Space Disasters.

You only mention the manned failures because it makes your side look better; the failures being on unmanned craft, however, was just a coincidence.

No, the question was about passenger safety what the odds for his child on a launch vehicle was, not reliability; Soyuz is possibly less reliable, but it is somewhat safer for the cosmonauts.

By the way, that 2002 launch? It killed a soldier on the ground, who undoubtedly wasn't included in your count, in addition to wounding 8 (a mile away from the explosion, at that).

That was a Progress launch. It's quite possible that had it been a Soyuz that the cosmonauts would have escaped on the escape tower. The fatality was standing behind a plate glass window within the blast range. Very avoidable and very sad. Incidentally that shows a worse problem with the shuttle- a similar failure of the Shuttle could kill hundreds; the launch pad is surrounded by thousands of people for miles around, including watching from behind windows. Many, many deaths are to be expected.

The high safety of Soyuz is not a coincidence; it has been built in from the ground up (no pun intended). The Shuttle was badly designed; it has safety issues they still haven't solved, the foam for example is still expected to damage the tiles on takeoff; and some of the abort modes are extremely suspect. The Soyuz abort modes do actually work; in some cases we know this because they've been executed. Still, as with ejector seats, surviving and lack of injury is not the same thing- even in aeroplanes ejector seats often weaken the pilot enough that they never fly again.

Alpha test--not even a beta,,,

[Jedi Holocron]

Elf-Friend wrote earlier that the shuttle is a beta test platform. I would disagree with this. The US Space Shuttle is an alpha test platform. This was a first of the kind launch vehicle. Yes, there have been improvements along the way, system upgrades, etc...etc...

The beta-test platform was the Soviet "Buran" Space Shuttle which built upon the design and experiences of the US version. (If you believe the legends, the Soviets actaully got the plans from the library of congress.) They added powered decents, automated flight, improved thermal shielding, etc..etc.. Look it up if you want all the details.

It is high time for the US/NASA to get off their collective duffs and get us off this rock--via something other than riding atop(astride) a roman candle.

'nuff said.

Let's examine the oh so terrible atrocity...

[ShoobieRat]

It's surprising how many people are just appalled by the "loss of life", not to mention money, in the two shuttle disasters.

Let's review:
1. Out of over 107 missions, into a region of existance we know little about, with a machine more complex than most other aircraft, with a crew riding thousands of tons of explosives, we've lost "only" 14 people, in 2 disasters. (That's a less than 2-percent failure ratio.)
2. There have been over 14-thousand fatalities in the airline industry since its start. (Over a thousand deaths in the past 3 years alone.)
3. In comparison to the two known non-US space-flight programs in operation on this planet, the Russian space-flight program with its current Soyuz ship (older than the space shuttle) has been plagued with more problems than death, and the Chinese, although modestly successful, are still back in the days of the Mercury and Gemini missions, flinging people into orbit in capsules with nothing else to do.
4. Despite widespread lack of knowledge on the public's part, the US space program has had wide-spanning benifits to the human race.
5. The number of countries capable of supporting a continual human space-flight program, are few. The number that can do so, and then afford to advance further to make it a process that is safe and as common as airline flights, comes to single digits.
6. The space shuttle remains the only solution available for providing support and maintenance to satellites. It is also the only platform able to move between orbits and locations, and actively interact with other space-based systems.
7. The money spent advancing space technologies, not only benifits us, but goes into our economy.
8. The government spends far more than the entire NASA budget that, without sounding like a hippie, have done little to advance our standing in the world and which have a deadly outcome. If NASA wants to spend millions and billions developing technology that makes our lives better and expands our knowledge, what's the problem? Money burned is bad, but money burned towards a good intention is better than money burned for naught.
9. Do I need to continue?

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[Seumas]

And that's exactly why we will stagnate.

Explorers die. Explorers take risk. But explore, we must. If our species doesn't get off this rock and expand, we put ourselves at the mercy whatever fate the rest of the cosmos throws at this planet.

As for nuclear power. What the fuck is wrong with that?! It's clean. It's safe. And there are plenty of developed nations that use it almost exclusively with astonishing success (Japan and France for two). Our problem is that a bunch of grieving mush-brained hippies only know that the word "nuclear" means "scary", because they saw some indian crying on TV as a kid or saw some little girl picking a flower in some retarded mushroom cloud commercial in the 60s.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[CrimsonAvenger]

Check the wikipedia article for more information. Space Disasters [wikipedia.org].

The Wiki entry is misleading. It asserts that only 277 people have flown on Shuttle. This MAY be true, but since there were 689 people on the various Shuttle flights, it means that most of them had to have flown more than once.

I've never bothered to check the SHuttle crews by name to find out how many repeat customers there were, so I won't dispute the Wiki entry. However, the fact that 14 of 277 have died is meaningless.

Would it be considered even MORE unsafe if it had flown 10,000 times, with the same crew each time, then crashed on the last flight, killing the entire crew? For a 100% deathrate, even though there were 9999 flights with no errors?

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

You're wrong on every front.

No. Just the manned launches

Manned launches: 37 Soyuz, 14 Soyuz-T, 23 Soyuz-TM. Total = 74. There may be a couple other types of craft not included there, because I've seen the manned launches as high as around a hundred. Two manned Soyuz failures in 74 is a worse failure rate than two in 113. As mentioned before, the only reason why it has a lower casualty rate is because it carries a lot less people than the shuttle (it carried one and three, respectively, on its accidents. The shuttle carried seven on each).

And, by the way, if you think killing 50 technicians on the ground before one launch alone is irrelevant because it's not the cosmonauts who were killed, I hope for your sake that you never tell that to a technician's face. Same with the deaths of soldiers. That's rather sickening, to be honest.

but it is somewhat safer for the cosmonauts

Not on a per-person-per-trip-to-space basis. The shuttle has launched many more into space. I mean, we could say that the Spruce Goose is tied for the record of "World's Safest Aircraft", but that would be unfair, now wouldn't it, as it only flew a minimal crew one time.

That was a Progress launch

No, it was not. It was a Soyuz-U.

A similar failure of the Shuttle could kill hundreds

No, it could not. The light from the SRBs is visible from 450 miles around. The closest viewing area is outside the designated "blast zone", at 3.5 miles from the twin pads, and that's usually not allowed without a NASA pass. The primary shuttle viewing area is about ten miles away at Space View Park in Titusville, to the west. The shuttle moves east after liftoff.

The high safety of Soyuz ... as evidenced by probably around a hundred total casualties under its belt (including ground crews killed on unmanned launches) and a higher failure rate than the shuttle?

it has safety issues they still haven't solved

And a Soyuz just blew up there years ago. Your point?

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

A similar failure of the Shuttle could kill hundreds

No, it could not.

Oh well if you say so, the recent report I read that analysed the distribution of people on a typical launch day, and recommended reductions in access was wrong was it? Hey, here's an idea, why don't you read stuff before posting? It's dangerous I know, you might actually learn something. Fragments from an explosion can fly for miles in fact. These people are in range.

That's rather sickening, to be honest.

Yes, the contents of your brain are. I never said, meant, or even thought that.

You did.

So you sicken yourself; and then attempt to blame others.

Congratulations.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

the recent report I read

If you've got a report, then link it, Mr. "Shuttle Tiles Don't Radiate Significant Amounts Of Heat". I demonstrated, with links, that the spectators at a NASA launch are ten times further away than the soldiers wounded and killed by the Soyuz failure.

I never said, meant, or even thought that

You did, however, state:

No, the question was about passenger safety what the odds for his child on a launch vehicle was, not reliability; Soyuz is possibly less reliable, but it is somewhat safer for the cosmonauts.

How callous can you be? 50 people died, and you're essentially saying that you don't care about the ground crew when looking at safety - only the cosmonauts (which haven't been safer, as demonstrated in my last post, which you didn't respond to).

By the way, I noticed that you skipped responding to the vast majority of my post, including all of the spots where I corrected your misstating of the facts around Soyuz, its safety record, and its past accidents. Duly noted.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

How callous can you be?

I accuse you of utter callousness towards the people at Peenemunde; they died building suborbital vehicles! You never once said how unnecessary their deaths were, thousands died! We were clearly talking about safety, and you don't care about them... you're a real bitch you know that? You're a dirty, ugly, nasty bitch for not mentioning them. I just vomitted. Thousands dead, and you express your evil nature by not mentioning them in that way; you're saying they're nothing.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

We weren't discussing Peenemunde - that was the very first mention of it, I certainly hadn't commented on it, and as such was a blatant straw man. We were, however, discussing deaths on the Soyuz program, and you basically said that you didn't care about them - you *did* comment about the deaths, and how you didn't think that they should be counted. If you are willing to state that you didn't mean that, and that you feel that the loss of their lives *should* count toward deaths in the Soyuz program, then say so. You still haven't done that.

They're adults, not babies

[Marcus Erroneous]

Having raised a couple of them, I know that we only get to enjoy them for a few years, then they are their own people. Free to make the choices that they want. The last crew was post-Challenger. They had seen the dangers, weighed the risks and found them acceptable. You could not have pried them out of that orbiter. When they died, they were where they wanted to be, doing what they wanted to do, knowing that something like that might happen, but doing it anyway. After losing two orbiters now, I'm willing to bet that the current crew all celebrated their chance to do this. Once again, they have weighed the risks and decided to go ahead anyway. And if something happens to them, once again, they will have died doing what they wanted to do.
The people that do this aren't looking for a space Volvo. They're not looking for a safe, guaranteed flight. They're intelligent people, pushing the envelope, weighing their options and taking a calculated risk. My son is in an Air Force ROTC program right now, looking to be a pilot. One day something may happen to him while flying. And I'll know that he died being where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do. The question isn't if, but when we'll die. I'd rather die beta-testing a space system than from a drunk driver.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Oh look, more nonsense from the mad troll.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

Thank you for sticking with the issues related to Soyuz's numerous accidents and crew deaths (which you have yet to address), and avoiding posts with no content that are simply name calling.

If you actually care about calm, reasoned debate on the subject of spacecraft safety, go back down several thread levels. If not, by all means, keep tossing out insults. As it stands, I provided references to counter all of your initial claims, and you haven't done anything to refute them (mainly because your initial claims about Soyuz and the shuttle were simply not true).

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The question was:

"I certainly wouldn't want my children to do it, as a parent. But I also realize that there are quite literally tons of people who if you presented them with the option of a shuttle flight and told them up front there was a 5% chance they wouldn't be coming back, they'd do it."

I took this to be a discussion in the death rate of crew per launch of launch vehicles. You also seem to take it as a question about how many ground staff died decades ago, and for some bizarro reason you seem to think that deaths surrounding unmanned launches count towards manned ones! What an ass you are Rei!

And you still haven't condemned Peenemunde. The people that supervised on that, also worked on Apollo! Thousands dead related to a manned launch (by your own assinine, moronic specious sophistic logic)!

In a battle of wits, you are unarmed. Rei, you are ever trying to change the question, trying to pretend the question is other than it is, or the answer was always different to what was given, desperately hoping nobody will notice. Are you are too set in your ugly-hearted troll ways to even bother to read what I wrote about this? The question is very clear. The answer is also clear: get the fuck out of here.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

No. My post was in response to:

Soyuz's death rate is under 2% and getting lower all the time

This like is wrong on so many fronts. It is wrong if you only count manned flights (4 deaths in 74 flights), it is wrong if you count unmanned flights, and it is wrong whether you count ground crew deaths or not. I provided links before, and you have NOT YET refuted them, despite my repeated requests to get you to back up your points and get back on topic.

What do you do instead of defending your points? Ridiculous straw men about an utterly off-topic discussion about the atrocities of Peenemunde, which have absolutely nothing, even tangentially, to do with Soyuz (like ground crew deaths do) or the Shuttle, and streams and streams of personal insults. Seriously, how desparate can you be? What sort of argument are you looking for - should I bring up the black plague out of the blue and condemn you for not condemning it? And then you act all shocked that someone would find your refusal to include ground crew deaths for Soyuz in a discussion of Soyuz fatalities (your words: "Soyuz's death rate"), especially when so many Soyuz were launched unmanned.

Unless your next post actually addresses the casualty rates of Soyuz or the Shuttle, and isn't jam-packed full of insults and utterly off-topic references pulled from a hat, this conversation will terminate. I am always up for a debate, but a personal slug fest against a person who doesn't defend their points is not what I am here for.

P.S. - You have also stopped defending your points on our other thread. Duly noted.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Dividing deaths by flights is not correct, you need to adjust for how many were on each flight; and this makes a big difference for Soyuz, the earlier, less reliable model only seated 2. The newer one seats three; and has killed no cosmonauts.

As of June 2003 Soyuz was running:

Soyuz/T/TM/TMA: cosmonauts launched to date: 213, deaths 4

That's a death rate per launched cosmonaut of 0.019; just under 2%.

And they've launched several times since then, with no deaths.

Read and weep moron; now stop playing your stupid games and piss off.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

You put enough effort into discussing the topic at hand to outweigh the personal insult on the last line (do you use that debate style in real life?), so I will continue.

The newer one seats three; and has killed no cosmonauts

The "most recent" Soyuz is the Soyuz-TM. It has launched humans a statistically insignificant number of times given the % casualty rate - 23, last time I checked. No accident would be expected in that number of launches. Soyuz-TM has, however, failed a number of times unmanned and killed at least one person in the process (as previously discussed), and has had manned problems. Soyuz-TM 5 had sensor and computer problems that left the craft in orbit for an extra orbit (it's not designed to hold people for long periods).

the earlier, less reliable model only seated 2

Not true. First off, Soyuz-TM is just one in a long line of craft. They had always seated three, but there were concerns about the safety of the emergency chute with three people on board, so it was cut back to two. Even still, they overruled the safety concerns, and Soyuz 7 was the first three seat flight, on a Soyuz-7KOK (same craft design as Soyuz 1), followed by the fateful Soyuz 11 on a Soyuz-A and Soyuz 16 on a Soyuz-7KTM. There have been about a dozen models, belonging to three major design "families" (Soyuz, Soyuz-T, and Soyuz-TM).

Anyways, back to the main issue at hand.

I fail to understand how you could call a craft that keeps having failures, even if it hasn't killed many *cosmonauts* (although it's killed dozens of others in recorded deaths, and possibly hundreds), as "hardened", and the shuttle, which has failed on a lower percentage of missions with no "near misses" or ground crew deaths as "brittle". Please explain how you can perceive these to be accurate descriptions given the facts of the matter.

Furthermore, explain how you perceive safety standards for both sides. You seemed to view (pardon me if I got the wrong impression) Russians watching rocket launches from a mile away as being on-par with Americans watching launches from ten miles away. If this is the case, why?

Once again, may I remind you: no personal insults, or the conversation ends.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

They had always seated three, but there were concerns about the safety of the emergency chute with three people on board

That and they couldn't wear spacesuits with 3, which is why those 3 cosmonauts died, right? That's why they grew the later versions so they could deal with depressurisation without everyone croaking.

I fail to understand how you could call a craft that keeps having failures, even if it hasn't killed many *cosmonauts* (although it's killed dozens of others in recorded deaths, and possibly hundreds), as "hardened"

Because they can have major failures, and the safeties will usually mean they survive. The Shuttle has no major failure redundancy at all- if the SRBs fail- dead. If the vehicle loses attitude control during reentry- dead. Soyuz has had the equivalents of both these failures and pulled through. It's just more robust; by no means perfect, by no means, but probably a little safer overall. Not more reliable, less if anything, but still, I think, safer.

Still, if Soyuz has a weak point, it's the landing- those landing rockets are rather unreliable, even dangerous. Somebody is going to die eventually. I don't have a good feel for the death rate due to that though; maybe 1%.

Once again, may I remind you: no personal insults, or the conversation ends.

Fuck you then!

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[Rei]

Ah, so if I get your point correctly: you're not arguing based on statistics, really, but on general design features. I can actually buy into that kind of argument. My problem was your use of statistics. Thusfar, the shuttle's launch record is slightly better than Soyuz's, but they're mostly comparable.

Personally, I actually mostly like Soyuz's design (I really dislike large SRBs, am fond of LOX/Kerosene for mid-sized rockets, and like top-mounted rockets, although I'm not fond of pure-capsule reentry - at least use a parasail like Big Gemini was to use so that you have *some* ability to maneuver away from lakes and cliffs ;) ), but not it's management. Russian safety boards have even less authority than NASA's boards - and if you think that NASA's launched in some bad situations, the Russians have launched in even worse. It seems to have gotten somewhat better since the end of the USSR, thankfully.

Hmm, don't want to talk any more? Yeah, this conversation has eaten up my free time, too. Ciao, then!

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Thusfar, the shuttle's launch record is slightly better than Soyuz's, but they're mostly comparable.

Actually, the death rate for Shuttle is about 0.21, which is worse. It's not statistically significant though, and the confidence limits on Soyuz are bigger.

Re:Careful here Re:Spirit of exploration wins out

[WolfWithoutAClause]

2.1%... or 0.021

Re:Spirit of exploration wins out over safety a lo

[ckaminski]

Challenger was Flight #25. Horrible way to celebrate an anniversary. So over 85 flights since the last accident. Pretty damn good improvement, IMHO.