Slashdot Mirror
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?"
From TFS:
Um....aren't those problems the reason the Shuttles were grounded in the first place???
Also from TFS:
Well...does this 'Return to Flight Task Group' have the authority to ground the flights?
From TFA:
Apparently, they don't.
Remind me exactly why we had a 'Return to Flight Task Group' again...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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..
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.
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.
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
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.
"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed." -- Bruce Lee
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!
". . .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
Spooooon!!!!!
Oh fuck off. The astronauts know damned well what they are getting into... certainly better than you with your irrelevant software analogy.
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.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed
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.
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.
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.
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?