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Space Shuttle One Step Closer To July Launch

Posted by timothy on from the how-to-launch-public-money-into-space dept.

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."

7 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Successor to the shuttle? by October_30th · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, what's going to happen after the shuttle fleet retires?

    --
    The owls are not what they seem
  2. "Acceptable Risk"? by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Of course it is. It always has been. Yay for admin-speak.

    1. Re:"Acceptable Risk"? by pcmanjon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't see why it has taken THIS long for them to do anything about it. For the longest time (half year) they just sat around saying "what are we going to do about it guys?" without any sense of direction or determination to get it fixed.

      They were in no particular hurry (don't get me wrong, hurrying is a bad thing) nor was there any urgency to find a solution. It was pretty much, "find a solution at your own convienence"

      NASA has done some great stuff; but they just seem too slow and insignificant these days.

    2. Re:"Acceptable Risk"? by demachina · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here is a dose of bad attitude for a Sunday afternoon. I was thinking about going back and finding all the Slashdot articles about the space shuttle returning to flight over the last 2+ years. If you recall after the crash NASA was saying they would be flying again in a year. Well its going to basicly be 2 and half years IF they launch in July and that is a big IF. I hate to break it to you but the Shuttle really isn't any closer to launch today after this new finding, than its been for most of this year. Any one of a about 100 people in about a dozen committees can get cold feet over one of about a thousand safety issues, all of which are totally valid, and its all called off again.

      How about we stop posting articles about the Shuttle launch schedule and just wait until they actully launch the f**king thing.

      Bottomline is the shuttle program team has. after two catastrophic failures, reached a state of near paralysis obsessing over safety issues most of which have been there for ALL of the last 25 years. Either they are sometime soon gonna say F**k it, fly, or they are going to say "but what if this went wrong" and the launch date will just keep slipping indefintiely. At least maybe they have an administrator now who will make them launch someday and do something worthwhile for a change. As nearly as I can tell the Columbia crash totally messed up Sean O'Keefe's head and he was so paralyzed ny the DANGER of manned space flight I doubt the shuttle would have ever flown again with him in charge.

      The cruel reality is that most of the people who work on the Shuttle get paid the same whether it flies or not up until someone finally says enough and pulls the plug on it and I doubt any politician has the guts to actually do that. Even when that does happen all those people will quickly jump to one of the two CRV teams and politicans will be obliged to move all the money there since the jobs program that is the manned space program MUST BE PRESERVED AT ALL COSTS, even if they never launch another man in to space. The CRV is especially cool because there are about 10 years of paychecks waiting there before they have to actually risk launching anyone in to space.

      --
      @de_machina
  3. Re:Interesting? by 0123456 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "This guy obviously has no background in anything scientific, has absolutely no clue about what the space shuttle or NASA are trying to accomplish"

    I have a background in science, I've been a VIP at several space shuttle launches, met numerous astronauts and NASA employees.

    And I agree with everything that he says.

    Maybe you could explain exactly what NASA has accomplished with the Space Shuttle and the Great White Elephant in the sky?

  4. The shuttle is about politics, not science by StarWynd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:The risk of ice falling has been reduced! by NOLAChief · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's a good question, and I'll be honest. I have no idea. To take a wild guess or two, I'd say 1. Weight. Pork lard does weigh something, and even a thin coating over the entire surface area of an ET puts you in the order of hundreds of pounds (Case study: Look at the first couple of flights. The tank is white. Later flights it's orange. They decided the white paint wasn't doing them any real benefit, but was costing them ~500 pounds in weight, so they left the orange insulation exposed.) 2. Coatings may have been tried, but the chemicals may have reacted poorly with the insulation.