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

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: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.