Slashdot Mirror
Shuttles Can't Finish Space Station
Doug Dante writes "The shuttle can't make the 28 flights now planned before it retires in 2010, according to Dr. Michael D. Griffin, the new administrator of NASA. It can only do about 15-23, leaving 5-13 planned missions to alternate lift vehicles. NASA is expected to consult space station partners on alternatives once they are approved by the Bush administration.
Should the Space Shuttle be cut loose?"
Seriously, the Russians must have some form of heavy-lift capability, if not currently operational then one they can get out of mothballs fairly quickly, no?
I am trolling
Is there any chance that a few (unmanned) shuttle C flights could be used to launch the remaining pieces of the ISS? Or would it take too much time&money to build a few shuttle C orbiters? =/
What we need to do is establish a base on the moon.
It would require reinvention of heavy launch capabilities, such as Saturn V rockets (which embarassingly, the blueprints for which were 'lost' in a NASA 'housecleaning' exercise) to get material and personnel onto the moon.
We will need shelter, which could be domes on the surface, or domes which could be buried or half-buried in the lunar surface to provide extra protection against Radiation. We will also need the ability to grow food, such as a greenhouse, for the personnel. While the greenhouse is being constructed they could live off of packaged food.
Or we could simply build the base by robot remote control and send people there when it is done.
The base would have two (three) primary purposes. Lastly, it would be to see if we can actually live in such low gravity well, and how to counteract detrimental effects to the human body. Secondly, research: What exactly is on the moon? What materials are there that are not present on earth (Helium from the interstellar wind for fusion), and are they useful? Fistly, however, the true purpose of a moon base would be to mine materials from the Moon itself that could be used in the construction of spacecraft which can neither be built nor launched from the surface of the earth, due to the High Gravity Well, and the manner of propulsion.
Using such a base on the moon, it would be possible to construct an Orion Class Spacecraft either in Lunar Orbit at one of the Lagrange Points (can't remember which one), or on the Lunar Surface, as it could simply blase off from there.
In other words, the moon will be the key to the Solar System.
Now if we could only get off our collective asses.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Whatever you might think about the "Bush vision for space" the focus of that vision is from earth orbit outwards. The part of the journey from surface to earth orbit should be bought from commercial providers. This market is already waking up. Just imagine what a big client like NASA will do to launch costs.
NASA, get out of the launch business!
But no. They are now planning their own new shuttle-derived launch vehicle.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Er, during which part of the Apollo program? I belive the (inflation corrected) funding is now up to ~65% of what it was in 1965.
>> Should the Space Shuttle be cut loose?
Pay attention. That's been the plan for some time. It's been in all the news, you know.
The CEV will succeed, not replace, the Shuttle. When the CEV flies, the Shuttle stops flying. If ISS construction continues after that, it will need to be with redesigned payloads launched on new vehicles.
Even if the CEV was not in the works, the Shuttle is approaching the date at which the entire system would need to be requalified for flight. That would be very expensive. the Administration has no intention of asking for those funds and Congress has no intention of providing those funds for a vehicle that is considered fundamentally flawed.
Don't lament the future of the Shuttle of the ISS. Both served to justify the existene of the other. Now that NASA has a real mission with real targets, the Shuttle isn't very relevant.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Well, it could be worse, he could have the european mindset of "throw money and bureaucrats at a problem until it goes away". I wouldn't trust them with anything that matters either. Best solution, like nearly everything, probably lies outside of government waste.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Why not scrap 5 of the lowest success rate programs and do both at the same time. For that matter, set up a few more launch sites so we can have more than two shuttle crews in space at a time. Having more hands on deck to build ISS could never hurt.
But, it's a pipe dream. Our government has no interest in space while the war on terror is still in vogue.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
SpaceX can't get humans to the orbit.
Yet.
Falcon V (currently under construction) will be man-rated and fully capable of carrying a capsule-type spacecraft which can reach and dock with ISS. Manned spaceflight is a stated long-term goal of SpaceX (http://www.spacex.com/updates.php).
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!
e hicle Congress/US Defence force, don't stuff this one up, k thnx
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 Read how the shuttle designers were forced to compromise because of poor funding, and how that initial 'saving' has turned into another allmighty cost blowout. Those near-sighted politicians!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_Phoenix What the shuttle should have been. Leave it up to the Europeans to get it right!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_exploration_v
The shuttle program is already largely contracted out.
The whole "contractors do it for less money" is largely a myth. Contractors often use such programs as a cash cow.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Building spacecraft on the moon is not something that will be done soon. Not because metals are scarce, but because spacecraft are complicated devices that require enormous industrial infrastructure behind them. You're not going to transplant that industry to the moon anytime soon, and you're not going to save money (even considering launch costs) when the cost of labor on the moon will be many orders of magnitude higher than on Earth.
Somethings we may see sooner are mining the moon for propellant (lunar polar water, organics, stuff derived from those), and possibly extraction of platinum group elements if PGE-rich asteroid impact sites can be located. None of these activities require sophisticated manufacturing on the moon.
Slashdot is full of niggers. Scrap the silly "space-plane" concept and develop a family of lifters and craft that _can_ be used for many things but don't back NASA into a corner that forces them to use it for all missions. Make crew safety an inherent feature (recognizing that there are tradeoffs and that getting out of the gravity well is a fundamentally dangerous activity). Stop throwing good money after bad on that trinity dies ISS as well, and use the collective resources of the two programs to start over. It's not true that the second design is always better than the first (see again ISS and Mir/Skylab) but you're wise to play those odds.
before you bullshit on space planes learn to understand the difference between the shuttle and a real space plane.
firstly a real space plane doesnt have to carry tons of liquid O2 on board involved in getting it up the the altitude it NEEDS that o2 at. it just hast to carry the O2 for getting from that altitude up to orbit.
Its far more efficient than a rocket to use a spaceplane. WHEN DESIGNED PROPERLY
and the ISS isnt a joke. Its just being made a POS by beaurocracy. Personaly i think anything we put up there should STAY up there and keep adding on. Old and feeble or not. Skylab 1 and 2 and 3 and Mir and all the Saylat stations AND the ISS would have made one pretty damn big aglomerated space station by now. If we only sacrificed parts when they became absolutely neccessary and then also chose to build around them using them as storage areas or even just balast weight on the orbit. Its still a better long term plan than this "disposable" plan people seem to advocate. If the space shuttles dont wind up retired as permanant attached modules on whatever space station is up there im gonna be mighty pissed.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Building spacecraft on the moon is not something that will be done soon. Not because metals are scarce, but because spacecraft are complicated devices that require enormous industrial infrastructure behind them. You're not going to transplant that industry to the moon anytime soon, and you're not going to save money (even considering launch costs) when the cost of labor on the moon will be many orders of magnitude higher than on Earth.
It's not going to happen in the next 5 years, but there are significant savings available from moon based building.
First, consider launch costs. At 1/6G, it's a lot easier to get a spacecraft off of the lunar surface in the first place, so you get to build a much lower powered spacecraft to accomplish the same mission.
Safety is a factor as well. A nuclear powered booster may present unsurmountable political and social obstacles for Earth based launch, even if you CAN prove that it's safer than a big chemical booster. The barriers are a lot lower for Moon based launch since nobody can claim that an accident would damage/destroy an ecosystem or put a large civillain population at risk.
The spacecraft design is further simplified by not having to build it to deal with Earth's gravity while being positioned and launched. It will have no aerodynamic considerations. A lot of complexity and weight can be saved by not having to design everything to fold up into a cylindrical rocket and/or dock together in orbit. A spacecraft that would crumble like so much tissue paper during an Earth launch could be fine for a Lunar launch.
A device much too heavy for even the strongest crane/winch and cable on Earth could be managed on the Moon.
Advances in robotics can reduce the cost of Lunar labor. Telepresent workers won't be nearly as expensive as human beings located on the Moon since they can go home at night and will actually face less workplace hazards or physical exertion than they would personally doing the same work on Earth.