Slashdot Mirror
Commission Says NASA Failed on Shuttle Safety
Tsalg writes "The final report from the Stafford-Covey Commission concludes that out of the 15 recommendations they made, the 3 toughest technically are not met. The news was not official on the return-to-flight website but has been widely commented elsewhere. Says one of the task members: "It is NASA's job -- not the task force's -- to determine whether the risks are acceptable and whether it's safe for Discovery to fly." The commission said risk remained that pieces of foam and ice could break off and hit the shuttle at lift-off.
It also said the orbiter had not been sufficiently hardened and it lacked an in-flight repair system.Nasa has been aiming to launch shuttle Discovery as early as 13 July."
The last sentance in Dr. Feynman's Appendix F on the Challenger Shuttle Accident Report: For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
little irony: originally the shuttle was supposed to be launched horizontally from piggyback position on what would be similar to a 747. The risks were lower, and the shuttle would be far more capable than the current system using a giant tower of cryo-o2 and 2 giant solid-boosters strapped on. This hybrid space-plane design was scrapped near the end for essentially design conflicts, the army wanted something it could use for different purposes without needing the piggyback launch facility, and considered using a hybrid launch vehicle too technologically backwards, also, the design costs were lower though the per-launch costs were much higher, and eventually they decided that they could make it fly again by just strapping a whole lot of rockets to it and lighting the fuse.
Both of the shuttle losses were caused by failures in the launch system and not the orbiter itself, but that's to be expected when you strap rockets that big to something that was never designed to be launched that way. Sad too, launch stresses were much lighter in the original design, and the entire design was reusable.
http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch1.htm
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It has been 29 months since Columbia was lost over East Texas in February 2003. Seven months after the accident, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) released the first volume of its final report, citing a variety of technical, managerial, and cultural issues within NASA and the Space Shuttle Program. To their credit, NASA offered few excuses, embraced the report, and set about correcting the deficiencies noted by the accident board. Of the 29 recommendations issued by the CAIB, 15 were deemed critical enough that the accident board believed they should be implemented prior to returning the Space Shuttle fleet to flight. Some of these recommendations were relatively easy, most were straightforward, a few bordered on the impossible, and others have been largely overcome by events, especially with the decision by the President to retire the Space Shuttle by 2010.
The Return to Flight Task Group (RTF TG) was chartered by the NASA Administrator in July 2003 to provide an independent assessment of the implementation of the 15 CAIB return-toflight recommendations. An important observation must be stated up-front: neither the CAIB nor the RTF TG believes that all risk can be eliminated from Space Shuttle operations; nor do we believe that the Space Shuttle is inherently unsafe. What the CAIB and RTF TG do believe, however, is that NASA and the American public need to understand the risks associated with space travel, and make every reasonable effort to minimize such risk.
Since the release of the CAIB report, NASA and the Space Shuttle Program have expended enormous effort and resources toward correcting the causes of the accident and preparing to fly again. Relative to the 15 specific recommendations that the CAIB indicated should be implemented prior to returning to flight, NASA has met or exceeded most of them - the Task Group believes that NASA has fully met the intent of the CAIB for 12 of these recommendations. The remaining three recommendations were so challenging that NASA could not completely comply with the intent of the CAIB, but conducted extensive study, analyses, hardware modifications, design certifications and made substantive progress. However, the inability to fully comply with all of the CAIB recommendations should not imply that the Space Shuttle is unsafe.
The shuttle predates Regan.
Richard M. Nixon initialized the shuttle program on January 5, 1972.
The Enterprise prototype was delivered on September 17, 1976.
The Columbia was delivered on March 25, 1979.
note the soviet's tried to come up with a copy, they never really could get it to work
The Soviet Buran shuttle's first orbital flight was on November 15, 1988. It made a fully automatic landing with no issues.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
And Buran worked fine, and was in many ways superior to the Shuttle - it, for example, contained jet engines that allowed for a powered landing - Shuttle can't pull up for another landing attempt, Buran could. It also had no main engines - they were in the huge booster that mimic the shuttle main fuel tank. Buran also had no firecrackers (solid rocket boosters), and instead used only liquid fuels - making challenger-style boom impossible.
:)
Yes, it was an aerodynamical copy out of stolen blueprints - so they saved a ton of wind tunnel testing and other stuff, but the innards were all russian tech, and they make good solid space tech.
What didn't work out was the funding. Shuttle is expensive, and so was Buran. Collapsing USSR decided to save SOME kind of space program, and picked MIR and the trusty old rockets they had already in service, and canned Buran. It only flew once, unmanned. A feat Shuttle can't do, by the way, as it can't land unmanned.
Considering how expensive Shuttle is to operate, I'd say they made a smart financial call
But there were no technological obstacles. It was only the lack of money. A real shame what they allowed to rust in the former USSR - they had the biggest booster (Energiya) and the 'better' Shuttle, but both are now pretty much gone due to lack of funds.
According to Wikipedia : "The U.S shuttles landings are also mostly automated (there has only been one manually flown re-entry so far), but deployment of the landing gear requires a human to physically press the button. The manual step was added at the insistence of the astronauts, who claim that early deployment of the landing gear due to a computer error would be fatal."
No France
And Buran worked fine, and was in many ways superior to the Shuttle - it, for example, contained jet engines that allowed for a powered landing
Actually, the Buran didnt contain jet engines, but it did have engines that could be attached to the airframe for flight testing, transport and research purposes.
Soyuz *had* the ability to launch 20 times a year. It doesn't now (currently 2 per year). Ramping up the production rate would be costly, and require a lot of new workers, who would have to be trained, etc.
And although Soyuz hasn't killed anyone for a long time, there have been several occasions in the last few years where it came uncomfortably close. Soyuz's record isn't significantly better than the shuttle's.
They couldn't document even the placement of wires in the wings. I got the impression most of the IT projects I've worked on have better documenation, and that's scary. This guy compared NASA's documenation to the US Navy's documentation of reactors on submarines. Where the Navy has a record of every piece of plumbing that's ever been changed on any of their reactors, NASA didn't have hardly anything.
My first reaction at the end of the briefing was to think "that thing shouldn't fly again".
And I'm a raving space exploration nut and think the US should withdraw from the Space Treaty and claim half of the Moon and offer homestead rights to private citizens and companies.
And I fully accept there is always risk in space travel, but not THAT much risk.
And as others have pointed out, the risk is higher then ever now. One more accident and...