Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
I'll read the article. But:
The West Wing on Voyager crossing the termination shock:
"Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extraterrestrials, is carrying photos of life on earth, greetings in fifty-five languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chant to Chuck Berry, including "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by 1920s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man. He died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down.
But his music just left the solar system."
Okay, maybe I'm dumb to feel inspired by that. I don't know why it's so touching. But every time I think of it I get goosebumps.
The Onion said it best. Holy shit, we walked on the fucking moon.
It may be true that there's no incentive to explore space, in terms of measurable returns. We get spinoff technology, but maybe it would have come anyway. That's debatable. But we walked on the fucking moon. That is one of the biggest moments in any chronicle of our race. Let's keep at it, if for no other reason than that we can. Let's be the one species that survives itself and spreads out into the universe.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Yes.
Let's have some balls, for once, and go somewhere. We can sit here, doing with shinier toys what we did again and again throughout history, or we can go somewhere. Exploration, man. "And he willed that the hearts of men would seek beyond the world, and find no rest therein." Let's go.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
have you ever thought that WAR was a "wasteful and an inappropriate way to spend taxpayers' money"??
Not a damn bit. These tanks are being filled with cryogenic propellants, one at about -290 F, the other even colder. Ice is going to form on the tanks. The whole idea of the insulation is to reduce, not eliminate, the amount of ice that forms. Basically, the tank is so cold it doesn't care if it's 0 F outside or 100 F outside. The ice will form and it won't melt.
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
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.
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.