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Discovery Set to Launch July 13
An anonymous reader writes "The US space shuttle is set to launch July 13 for the first time in nearly two and a half years, after being grounded following the 2003 Columbia disaster, NASA said today. NASA experts held a final 'flight readiness review' meeting on Wednesday and Thursday to make a final decision."
The space business is a dangerous game and everyone used to accepted that. This was when astronauts were larger than life Supermen rather than scientists. I just want to know when the threat of death became an unacceptable risk for exploration.
We vacationed every summer in FL. It was always part of the trip to visit Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy). I have fond memories of it. Hot faced from too much sun, beach clothes and sandals, and seeing those incredible rockets towering into the sky as my dad drove us onto the compound. Little did I know of the history, for I was born in 1968 and at the time was a child. My dad was really into it and took all the time to explain the details of the thing. To me, he was everything, and so was my country. He bought me a Space Shuttle model, and I remember clearly the towering building wherein it all was assembled -- labeled with our nation's flag. I remember the juggernaut machine that traveled at one or two miles an hour which moved the rockets into place. I remember the launch pad, the museum displaying the Apollo crafts and astronaut suits. My dad took lots of pictures. He taught me to believe in our country and in its projects. There was so much pride in me then. I was proud of my dad, our country, our achievements.
My dad is gone now, and I'm not sure what he would think about things now. I think he would be sad. We have angered countries, lost landmarks and shuttles have fallen. I would not want him to know these things, and I bear them now in his memory, but maybe, just maybe, we can regain our standing as a nation and in space....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Its quite strange. Most of the major news agencys reported recently that NASA had confirmed that the Shuttle could be launched in July, as it was within an "acceptable" bracket of safety.
Yet less than a week later, the same news networks were saying that a major commission had concluded that NASA infact hadn't met their targets, lumped with a whole lot of criticism of the space agency as a whole, too.
But as this topic confirms the launch will go ahead apparantly regardless of what this commission found? I wondered if anyone could clarify the situation at large? (I'm not trolling or anything here, just geniunely puzzled about the table of events leading up to Discovery's launch.)
One aspect of the recent tragedy was that those astronauts died on nothing more than a glorified taxi run. Their mission contributed nothing to science, it had no scientific reason to take place
The sooner we re-focus on real exploration in space the better, and we can do it without the shuttle or the money pit that is the ISS.
NASA needs to stop wasting money and get on with unmanned exploration of Mars, Europa and elsewhere, replace Hubble, and launch the terrestrial planet finder. All these projects are being pushed back to make way for this current fad of unscientific garbage that explores NOTHING.
Why doesn't anyone ever seem to realize that all of the scientific advancements that have come through manned spaceflight have come at a risk? Astronauts are strapped into a rocket capable of accelerating the space shuttle (no small object) to 10.7 km/s, many miles in the air (above the atmosphere) and then have to re-enter the atmosphere and land safely after slowing down from many times the speed of sound. With manned space flight, sh-I mean bad stuff has got to happen, and it's a wonder that more hasn't gone wrong.
True enough- but there are broad lessons that can be learned. The lesson from Challenger was that they needed better inspection on the ground before launch, not just of the O rings, but of everything- as well as a way to escape an aborted launch. The lesson from Columbia was that they needed in-orbit inspection *before* returning to Earth- especially of any air-control surface (which is basically the whole shuttle- it does become an huge glider on re-entry). Each broad lesson learned doesn't just eliminate the specific problem- it elminates a whole slew of possible problems.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
> I mean granted, I'm sure they know what they are doing but what happens if we lose Discovery too?
It would surely mean the end of our manned space program.
It might well mean the end of our entire space program, since it looks like the unfunded Mars mission serves no purpose other than to kill our unmanned space program.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I agree that there has not been much space exploration done by the shuttle per se, but it did facilitate the Hubble telescope, which has been one of the best tools for space exploration.
Not quite true, but closer than a lot of people might think.
The chance of dying on the space shuttle is basically 2 out of 113 based on past history. The percentage of US troops in Iraq that have died is around 1% (1700 out of 170,000 or something like that).
Of course no one has ever died on any of the unmanned interplanetary missions. Maybe the lesson is that we should be doing more of those. What Iraq and the Shuttle have in common is they are BOTH horribly expensive, deadly, wastes of money. At least there's no draft for Shuttle astronauts.
sigh. Is it really necessary to point it out?
More people have died, but the shuttle program has lasted much, much longer than any of the previous programs and has flown many more times than all the other manned missions combined.
So (# deaths)/(length of program) is lower, and (# deaths)/(# flights) is lower, thus making it safer on average than any of the previous projects.
Maybe not