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Space Shuttle One Step Closer To July Launch
Mictian writes "The risk to the space shuttle from launch debris, mainly ice falling off the external tank, has been reduced and is now low enough to be considered 'an acceptable risk,' NASA's shuttle engineers and managers concluded in the debris verification meeting held Saturday at Kennedy Space Center. The board recommended a green light for a July launch, which Shuttle Program Manager Bill Parsons accepted. The independent Return to Flight Task Group will hold its final meeting on June 27th to determine if the remaining 3 (out of 15) hurdles to launch are cleared, as mentioned in previous Slashdot coverage."
So, what's going to happen after the shuttle fleet retires?
The owls are not what they seem
Of course it is. It always has been. Yay for admin-speak.
I think space missions are cool and all, but here's a pretty interesting article about why it may be wasteful and an inappropriate way to spend taxpayers' money.
The BBC article goes into more detail, including the scrutiny over the decision over the July launch. In particular over ice impacts to the shuttle's heat shielding. Heres the article;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4622243.stm/
The only major problem NASA faces with regards to the shuttle is its planned retirement date. Put simply, if weather,mechanical and indeed financial conditions permitted the maximum amount of Shuttle launchs the International Space Station would still not be completed.
That article is far from "interesting."
I took particular offense to this passage: The gross glutted wealth of the federal government; the venality and stupidity of our representatives; the lobbying power of big rent-seeking corporations; the romantic enthusiasms of millions of citizens; these are the things that 14 astronauts died for. To abandon all euphemism and pretense, they died for pork, for votes, for share prices, and for thrills (immediate in their own case, vicarious in ours). I mean no insult to their memories, and I doubt they would take offense.
What a kook! This guy obviously has no background in anything scientific, has absolutely no clue about what the space shuttle or NASA are trying to accomplish and can not analyze anything outside of a patheticly narrow and egotistical political lens.
Not surprising to me though was seeing this kind of an article come from the National Review.
I want to get back into space as much as anyone - heck, if there was a chance it would work I'd strap a booster to my back and be launching myself. But cutting corners for PR deadlines was what caused the disaster in the first place. Take as long as you need, NASA.
I am trolling
Do you think the fact that according to separate sources it is mid-summer right now in Florida, has anything to do with the risk factor being reduced?
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
It's nice they're all donating new hardware and such, but really...
who's gonna be paying those killer power bills?!?!
Slightly Safe for Work, but still offtopic.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Man that rocks.
A space shuttle lunch, man, that'd be one hell of a sandwich.
I R00z j00!!!!!
Richard Whitley is DEAD!
RIP, oh great pun one.
Now they can launch, but the ISS won't complete itself, ant that is why i wonder what the hell happened thet made them shut down all the projects they ever stared with to replace the shuttle.
_ cancel_010301.html
They could at least have shut the projects down BEFORE dropping sacs of money down the drain(if that is what they thougt they were doing - i didn't think so)
The dead X33 and X34 projects :
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/x33
anyone else read this as "SpaceShuttleOne"?
I grew up in the era when all the shuttle launches were televised and it seemed that every other kid wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up. I was one of those kids and I believed that all the cool science and break-throughs were made by astronauts up in orbit.
However, during college, I realized that the shuttle program is about 95% politics and 5% science. I got an internship within the space program, but in the unmanned satellite area. After college, I continued to work in the area of space sciences and now I have several missions under my belt. Having seen how things work from the inside, the majority of good science comes from our unmanned satellites that don't make the news and the majority of the public don't even know about. While there are certain scientific benefits that the shuttle program has brought, the majority of the shuttle program has been a public relations campaign and politics.
While I already believed that every precaution should be taken before sending the shuttle back up, I want NASA to make extra sure that every precaution really has been made because we are risking people's lives in the name of politics and public relations. Don't get me wrong, I don't want people to risk their lives in the name of science or exploration either, but there will always be some risk in exploration. There shouldn't be any risk (with respect to people's lives) just to play politics and get nice photos of Americans and Russians together in orbit.
I don't want to see the manned program disappear. But I do want to see NASA be as responsible as they can be. I don't know where the "acceptable risk" falls, but I sure hope it's really low.
I grew up reading everything about NASA. I was fascinated by it as it was a CIVILIAN space agency (in contrast to the military). This is all but forgotten today, but it is important because that is the charter.
Unfortunately, it went from "the best and brightest" to "how do we do with less". Now NASA is going with "eh, it seems like an acceptable risk" but you know the folks that say that are thinking "as long as I'm not the one on that shuttle".
It is attitudes like this that has allowed other countries to catch up (and even surpass) the U.S. While we are arguing over whether evolution should be taught in schools, other countries are pulling ahead of the U.S. (and why not, as American corporations apparently feel that Americans are not worth hiring).
Apollo 17 was the last mission to the moon. It only got noticed because it was the last mission to the moon. Shuttle missions are hardly even noticed now by the general public. As far the the public is concerned NASA barely exists.
Sadly, I fear that in my lifetime NASA will either be absorbed by the DoD or close its doors altogether. That will be a sad day for this country and for science.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
There is a reason for that. Americans don't want to go into engineering, they go to business management and medicine and law. That's where the real money is. Can't blame anyone for that.
An american engineer, if you can hire one, will cost you more, and will come with a certain set of expectations (work week, benefits, etc.) which his foreign competitors are not burdened with. In a capitalist society a business purchases generic labor at lowest cost, as it should. Nothing to complain here about.
To change this, and to make an american engineer competitive on the world labor market, such an engineer must reduce his price; in addition to that he needs to work harder, as his Chinese competitors do. His office presence from 9 to 5 must bring enough cash in to pay his salary; you start here and figure out how much he is worth to a business. At $80k/yr his work day costs the business about $500. If the engineer during that day produces some 30 lines of a generic code, he doesn't earn enough to stay employed. Drop your price to $20k/yr, or start writing 100-200 LOCs daily, then you are profitable.
Defense spending is roughly one half trillion dollars. Things could get worse and more expensive very quickly. Oil at close to $100 a barrel will cripple the economy for some time. Economics, politics, and volatile global relations doesn't bide well for NASA funding.
The shuttle isn't the only way to get to the ISS. The Russians regularly send at least two different craft to the ISS.
In addition China, India, and Japan are all known to be in various stages of constructing their own craft. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one failed due to politics, but I'm not making any bets against their engineers if the governments wants them to succeed. (They will of course have failures along the way, that is part of engineering) I haven't heard of any ESA plans, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had some too.
Now granted the shuttle is the biggest of any of the above. However many missions don't need the full mass hauling ability of the shuttle. Prioritize based on both what the others can do, and what is important now, and most missions can happen anyway.
There is also no reason to assume after the shuttle is gone there will be nothing else. The US plans to go to Mars. There is no way to get to mars without the ability to get more mass in orbit (out of orbit really) than the shuttle can do. I would expect those lower stages will be tested to the ISS with some cargo - as long as we are making them, why not use them.
The wacky paranormal crowd, including Ed Dames, is saying that if/when the space shuttle is forced down by meteors, the "kill shot" will follow, which will involve giant solar flares wiping out most life on the planet, and then "another race of humanoids" will appear to help Earth rebuild.
I for one have my tinfoil hat securely affixed to my head.
The linear aerospike nozzle tests of the X-33 were quite successful though the composite fuel tanks failed. The experience gained by the propulsion engineers should be very valuable for any next-gen rocket stuff.
There is no doubt the astronauts who fly the Shuttle and International Space Station, and before them the earlier crews, know the dangers they face. Do we? It should have come as no surprise that astronauts died with Columbia and earlier Challenger. Leaving our atmosphere is inherently dangerous. There are thousands of critical components and systems, any one of which could shape the same outcome. NASA has had plenty of close calls before. It has been my opinion, and it seems to be born out by what I've read, that NASA has taken a less than rigorous attitude toward full safety. The conditions they allowed US astronauts to fly to aboard the Soviet MIR were shocking, to say the least. Of course we've all read that NASA experts played down fears about the very foam collision that was the Shuttle's undoing. We will fix the foam, and the wings and anything else that's been made obvious by the events of February 1, 2003, but the changes will only marginally improve the safety of the crew. There are still those thousands of parts and systems. As long as men fly in space, there will be danger and there will be death. This is a profession so dangerous that you can get killed just practicing - as we found out with Apollo One. It's time we, as a nation, took a look at the facts, and made a decision. Is what we're doing in space worth jeopardizing human lives? I say no. Look back at Columbia. It was a 'junk science' mission. There was little of any scientific import on board. Our other major manned program, the International Space Station, isn't much better. Even if it weren't crippled by a caretaker crew, it would be accomplishing few things worth writing home about. Why are we doing this? Is it a matter of pride? In this day and age there's a better way to explore - robotically. We are proving, on Mars, and with other missions, that robots can accomplish the same, or more, than man. And, it's being done at a significant savings, with little human danger. Don't underestimate the cost. My producer at SciFi used to say that if, somehow, the Shuttle's payload bay was mysteriously filled with gold while in orbit, the mission would still lose money! The time to change our attitude is now. If the goal is to explore space, let's do it the right way - so there can be worthwhile science and exploration. As it stands now, the space program is crippled by the fear of further disaster... and there will be further disaster. It's only a matter of time.
Thanks for the update. We've got a product scheduled to be included on the next flight, so we're watching it closely and hoping it goes. Just from our perspective, the amount of work from the call to us, and getting it on the flight, is enormous.
-- -b-
If you "really" want to go wayyyyyyyyyy back to before the shuttle, the X-15 flew into and out of space, then the X20, X24 series of lifting bodies were done. They had planned on using ELV's to haul the stuff up, and use the X20 or X24 to haul the people up and back, but, they thought the shuttle would be cheaper. On a side note, the "original" design of the shuttle was a piggyback design. They would equip a Scram jet style carrying plane, similar to the way they piggyback the shuttle on a 747, then once at a high enough altitude and speed, the shuttle would be "launched" and have enough fuel on board to make it to orbit. This would have completely eliminated the risky SRB/ET setup they use now. Personally, I'd like to see them go back to the old Saturn V setup.....something that worked perfectly, every flight (the boosters worked, the apollo CM/SM didn't).
I am I the only one who read this "Space Shuttle One Closer to Launch" and immediatly though that I'd missed out on Rutan's most recent hijinks?
Rhapsody in Numbers
That when I saw the title of this the 1st thing that popped into my head was Linkin Park's "One Step Closer"?
Insert Pithy Quote here.
Especially considering how difficult it would be to land a space shuttle full of gold.
(It would be about 400x the shuttle's maximum landing payload, based on what I can find from google)
True nothing current can do the job, but things to not stand still. You'd be surprised by how old the rockets are. The Delta and Atlas boosters date back to the 50s, the Soyuz and Proton to the 60s, and the Shuttle to the 70s. Also, no one has built a booster that can meet or exceed the ~40 year old saturn V. (With the possible exception of the STS, if you include the shuttle itself as part of the payload)
>Space Shuttle One Step Closer To July Launch
In America, capitalism is on the verge of the cliff.
In soviet Russia, communism is always one step ahead!
I mean, if they can't even do this much, how do they hope to ever return to the 1960's and put a man on the moon?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My Engrish speaking friend is anxiousry araiting the Space Shutter's Return To Fright.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
In a nutshell, concerning NASA, the only stats that matter:
Two destroyed Space Suttles, 14 dead astronauts
versus
One destroyed space capsule, 3 dead astronauts
(woulda been 6 if Apollo 13 truly got 'lost in space')
Simple is better (though not reliable without complicated redundant backups).
I'm not trying to be a troll by 'reopening' old wounds, I'm just trying to cut to the very heart of the matter.
The only other alternative is to keep sending out 'cute little bots' -- a far cry from the Viking/Voyager I and II missions from the 1970s -- that is how these kinds of missions *should* be done!