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107 Cameras to Scan Discovery for Damage
neutron_p writes "We already know that NASA has prepared for space shuttle rescue mission if a crisis arises during Discovery's return to flight. NASA wants to avoid any risk, that's why they also installed 107 cameras which will film and photograph the orbiter's first two minutes of ascent from every angle scanning for pieces of insulation foam or ice fall off during the launch and strike the shuttle, the kind of damage that doomed its predecessor Columbia. Cameras will be installed around the launch pad and at distances of 6 to 60 kilometers (some 3.5 to 35 miles) away, as well as on board of two airplanes and on the shuttle itself."
I don't know where the article got their conversions from but I sure hope it wasn't from NASA!
6km is approx 3.7 miles not 3.5 and
60km is 37 miles and not 35
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Sigs are like arse-holes, everybody has one
What are they gonna' do? Abort after it's 100' off the pad?
If it explodes, we'll have enough angles to recreate an exact 3d model of what happend. COOL. If it doesn't, we still have enough to create a nice 3d model of the launch. This will push the wave of new 3d tv's... hmm... getting ahead of myself again.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It's easy to say it's a good thing. Especially when it's not you that is having their privacy invaded. But, imagine if you were the shuttle. Would you really like being scrutinized by 10 cameras?
I guess the words "severly damaged" don't mean much of anything here?
Bullet time is a concept introduced in recent films and computer games whereby the passage of time is displayed as hyper slow or frozen moments in order to allow observe imperceptually fast events such as flying bullets.
In The Matrix, the camera path was pre-designed using computer-generated visualizations as a guide. Cameras were arranged on a track and aligned through a laser targeting system, forming a complex curve through space. The cameras were then triggered at extremely close intervals, so the action continued to unfold, in extreme slow-motion, while the viewpoint moved.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet-time
With so much footage, in case of another explosion at least they will be able to compile a cool Matrix shot of the event.
Yes, there is an ejection system, it's called a lot of rocket fuel.
It's great that so many eyes are going to be on the shuttle this time around, but do we have a plan for actually dealing with a catastrophe, past verifying that it exists? Do we have a rescue mission planned if something bad happens? And what happens when the rescue mission gets a hole in their wing???
I want to see the Shuttle go up again as badly as the next guy, but they're going up without satisfying the recommendations of the committee. More cameras isn't going to help much, apart from letting the astronauts know they're doomed.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Let's say the cameras spot something fishy, like another strike to the tiles during liftoff.
What next?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Or maybe even more, anything which comes loose, will be discussed into great detail.
Anyway, rule of thumb: Great progress comes with risk. With the space shuttle, which about 20 years ago was great progress, the risk stays since there are no real developments.
The only question is: Is the spaceprogram worth the risk of flying with the space shuttle?
I personally think it is. I regret the attitude after the accident were complete risk aversion was shown. I would have gotten into the next space shuttle (err, can not pay for it, so they have to offer), and I am sure I would have returned safely (chance less then 1% on a deadly accident). The chance that the foam which caused this came loose and causes the damage is extremely small. Pieces of the shuttle fell off before (especially the ceramic tiles, lost a few per X flights), without problems.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
NASA has always had a debris inspection and launch anomaly review team that reviews taped views of the launches. It was this team that saw the fatal foam hunk strike Columbia's wing as well as note the O-ring failures on Challenger.
It will be good to have more cameras, but in a sense this violates a NASA truism that indicates not to worry about an issue of which you have absolutely no control over. Given the political climate the cameras are a must, but there will be more non-NASA people looking and fretting and writing their congressman over things that are routine in truth, and even those congressmen will be eyeing things that they have little experience to interpret properly and waste taxpayer dollars debating why ice must form on the outside of the ET ("Because it just does, damn it! Can we go back to flying now?")
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
that's why they also installed 107 cameras which will film and photograph...from every angle
Humanity is blessed to gain the technology advances pioneered by CBS's Big Brother.
I'm all for safety of space missions. The life of astronauts is as important as anyone's is.
Call me insensitive, but here's what I have to say. This is NOT a commercial airline where pax expect reasonable safety & expect 100% safety. Space exploration is a risky business. Sometime we have to accept the risks & challenges for some new things. The seafaring discoveres like Columbus & Vasco Da Gama wouldn't have achieved what they did if they didn't accept a single risk factor.
My main point in saying this is that halting shuttles had for 3 years has already had a devastating effect on space exploration, what with budget cuts in NASA & cash-strapped ex-soviet space industry.
Don't get me wrong, I want Astronauts/Cosmonauts/Taikanauts to be as safe as possible. But sometimes we have to bite the bullet.
Please try to understand what I'm saying, don't just jump to conclusions & say I'm insensitive. All I'm saying is that in this excess emphasis on safety has caused immense damage already to space science.
they had the mirrors in the cameras ground correctly and they checked to be sure that both the engineers and contractors were using imperial measurements instead of the contractors working off of metric numbers while the engineers were providing imperials. Well, if nothing else, at least they can go correct the mirrors in the faulty cameras and it will only cost us $250 million each.
If you see one cockroach there are probably hundreds you don't see. I would bet the next thing to blow up the space shuttle will be totally different. It seems as though we will only be rid of these things by blowing them up.
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I've thought of that, too. When the fleet is retired, why NOT just send at least one shuttle up there, as just another permanent part of the ISS? Just modify it for long-term space use and you have a very large addition to the station at a fraction of what it would cost to build a portion of the same size from scratch. Plus, it could double as a lifeboat should something go wrong with the attached Soyuz lifeboat.
And it would just be cool.
Going to space is dangerous, but beneficial. As soon as people realize that, we'll be much better off.
107 cameras seems a bit like overkill and perhaps an attempt to fix a "one in a million" problem that has already occurred.
Could you imagine if the western part of the United States was settled by people that needed 107 cameras pointed at their wagons to make sure that a wheel wasn't falling off before they left? Some people have an adventurous spirit. Let them adventure. Sometimes they die. Sucks, but true.
I'm a big tall mofo.
This will help them figure out what went wrong if something does go wrong, but it's hardly helpful to the crew onboard.
I doubt there is any way to eject under those circumstances. The amount of Gs on the crew pretty much prevents them from moving, and the amount of time between "Uh oh" and KABOOM!!! isn't exactly long enough to do anything.
Even if there was a way to eject, it would depend on where the problem took place. 100 feet off the ground maybe you live. In the stratosphere, I don't think your chances are very good. Also, jumping out of the shuttle into a giant plume of fire might be a little more than your body can handle.
/. ++
1. There is not that much usefull space in the space shuttle. For labwork they had the lab in the cargo bay for example.
2. Dynamics: You can not add random parts to the space station without changing its dynamice properties. Once you add a part, the harmonic frequencies are going to change, and you will have to recalculate the whole thing to check for problematic stress points and fatigue. (Ok, you think: Zero gravity, what stress, it floats by itself. In reality the spacestation is in a degrading orbit, so it has to be lifted once in a while, this uses thrusters which are carefully placed to boost the stations orbit. This also causes a lot of stress on the station!)
The harmonics are already a problem since not everything of the spacestation is in one plane, making it already very complex. The harmonics also dampen out pretty slow since there is not atmosferic friction (there are dampeners though).
Thus a continously added object like the spaceshuttle will be not add a lot in space, but will add a lot in complexity and weight, making the lift of the spacestation more complex and expensive, and will probably reduce the life time of the station.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
What happens if the camera falls off and damages the shuttle.
Wagons wheels cost somewhat less than a shuttle. Are 107 cameras to view a muilti-billion dollar shuttle launch is well worth it to save a couple hundred million bucks? I say yes.
Not that redundancy is a bad thing.
But if they are going to snap pictures of the belly at the ISS, isn't that enough to determine if there are cracks in the heat shielding?
This system will tell us when, where and how the damage occured. But then this is something they should have had all along.
Why is this shortsighted? What do you know that hundreds of NASA experts don't? Do you know if it is possible to modify a space shuttle so it can be a useful attachment to the ISS? Is the ISS equipped with the necessary tools to do this, or do we need to send up another mission to supply them? Do you know if it is safe to have the shuttle attached permanently to the ISS?
I don't mean to be mean, and I'm not trolling, but surely if the shuttle experts have deemed that the best option is to plunge it back to Earth, then maybe that is the best option. In the end you have to trust their judgement, regardless of any blemishes on their track record. I'm sure they have weighed up their options with what to do with a broken shuttle.
One month after 9/11, I was in Logan, waiting to board a full-of-fuel 767 to London. The airport was crowded with uniformed police and troops from about five different organizations. They were packing firepower enough to defend East Boston from invasion by any nation smaller than France. And yet they stayed on the ground and I went into the air. This story gives me the same feeling: No matter how many cameras/guns there are on the ground, if it goes bad in flight, you're still fucked.
I realize there may have been air marshalls on board, still I would have felt better if one of the state troopers had lent me his Glock for the trip.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
This time around, ignoring signs of damage to a shuttle could actually get some NASA fuckwits fired.
There is a plan, and in a nutshell, if something happens where the shuttle can not return, it is to dock with International Space Station. At that point a Soyuz capsule can be used for the astronauts to return to earth.
m l?s=eee
To quote from one article:
"If they find major damage, NASA might have the seven shuttle astronauts use the Space Station as a lifeboat until a new shuttle arrives - a worst-case scenario that would involve dumping the stricken shuttle in the Indian Ocean."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0712/p01s01-stss.ht
How do the Russians launch their vehicles one after another without lots of funfare but with almost success? There have been almost 2,300 successful Soyuz launches and just 11 Soyuz failures ever...! That's a success rate that cant be beat! To make matters worse, they do it cheaper too!
Whats this? NASA is using metric?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
They could have used them oeny spent on cameras. Last I had seen on discovery channel was a method of coating the chips underneath of the shuttle in flight which was very cool. How about some insulating material (like scotch guard for carpets) or by keeping debris out in the first place (I guess most of the debris falls off from the shuttle and hits itself).
What does your Credit Report look like?
We don't watch it launch.
Yes, I'm aware of those basic facts. But it's design methods like this that have made NASA a hidebound organization. There is no flexibility. The direct cost of putting mass in orbit is completely buried in the Bureacracy and Bullsh*t that keeps the people on the ground busy.
Hey, I used to design stuff to NASA specs. I've been there. It's not the cost of the material, it's the cost of the bureacracy. You CAN solve the basic engineering problems associated with increased mass on the ISS. It was originally designed with shuttle parking in mind, at least back when it was conceptualized in the 70's and 80's.
But now that our Congress has saddled NASA with even more stupid rules and regulations, they are less and less likely to be creative with the resources they have. Hence the growth of the 'private' space industry.
Want proof ? Ok, here's my favourite example of rampant bureacracy. I worked for a small company that made satellite subsystems. We met with the lead contractor on this job. We had four engineers on our team. They came with 20 !
Their Thermal effects guy said "OK, we need to review this with your Thermal effects guy. Who is he ?" I raised my hand. And answered his questions.
Their Nuclear effects guy said "OK, we need to disuss Nuclear effects. Who do I talk to". I raised my hand, and gave the right info.
When you talk to NASA, you're talking to a horde of pencil pushers. Creativity is beaten out of these poor guys, and the lead scientists are so busy filling out this report and that that they can't get any real science done.
They need a good space race / space war to put the fire back in their bellies.
Oh, and they need the Germans back too.
What if a camera comes loose and hits the shuttle?
Gee, I hope none of those cameras they've installed on the shuttle itself come loose and hit anything.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Exactly. As far as I see it the Shuttle has met it's design goals, one percent failure. Columbia was that failure, stuff happens. Challenger was just an incredibly stupid loss that occoured because politics and beurocracy won out over sound engineering. While it can be argued that Challenger was a failure of the Shuttle program it had little to do with the act of getting into and out of space. Even after the Columbia accident there isn't one person on a Shuttle flight crew that wouldn't go up again, they know that there is a non insignificant risk of death, it doesn't phase them. Hell even if you count Challenger the Shuttle system has about the came percentage chance of mortality as ascending Everest, yet you don't hear people calling for the mountain to be closed to climbers or that high altitude recovery programs should be scrapped.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It should allow scientists to detect the slightest crack in the shuttle's thermal protection, according to Bob Page, the official in charge of the imaging system.
Well, get ready because here comes MJ12, Daedalus, etc...
The point of the cameras is to determine if something broke on the shuttle. If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth. The cameras aren't there to say "OMG, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, ABORT." The cameras are there to determine if something went wrong and if so, to send the backup shuttle into space to return the astornauts safely to earth.
scanning for pieces of insulation foam or ice fall off during the launch and strike the shuttle
more like scanning for pieces of insulating foam or ice falling off during the launch and striking the shuttle
This is to prevent a Columbia-esque thing from happening again. You'll remember the Columbia didn't blow up on launch, but on re-entry. Had we had 107 cameras to decide it's hull was compromised, we might not have sent them down in the Columbia without having repaired it or something.
This made me think of the Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner, "Nightmare at 20000 Feet" Remade with John Lithgow in the Twilight Zone Movie. Shatner's character sees (or thinks he sees?) a gremlin eating pieces of the engine. He is taken away in a straigthtjacket when the plane lands.
I think describing a foam insulation damage event as a "one in a million" problem cannot be supported by the facts.
I must note that there have only been about 100 shuttle flights. So the odds of foam damage were most likely a lot closer to 1% than 0.0001%.
I suppose that Rei will be around later to tell you all about how debris falloff is a common problem with rocket launches. As the shuttle orbiter is both fragile and mounted on the side, the possibility of debris damage should not have been ignored. In retrospect it was clearly a mistake, not just bad luck.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I am the structural engineer guy (-:
Anyway: Politics already made the space station more complex: The Russians wanted a module perpendicular to the other modules, thus causing some nice side effects. No way to stop them, and there have been attempts, but politics decided that it not matter that much, so the spacestation got its perpendicular module.
Iow: Been there, done that
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I'm sure they have weighed up their options with what to do with a broken shuttle.
Who says you have to dock it to anything? Just roll it out in the front yard, set it up on concrete blocks and presto! Crazy Ivan's used space part emporium!
Despite all these measures, there will likely be another shuttle disaster in the future. Unfortunately, certain critical problems aren't identified until failure occurs.
... no more O-ring problems. ... no more foam problems.
... "Well, thank god it wasn't the foam or those darn o-rings again".
After Challenger
After Columbia
So what'll be next?
My guess is that they'll never see it coming, whatever it is. NASA is too focused on making sure the foam doesn't cause another problem. However, the foam was fine for 20+ years and the chances of the same exact thing happening again are infinitely smaller than the chances of a new problem occurring.
So, here's what they'll say when the next explosion happens
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
This continues the growth of a disturbing trend and the death of freedom. Before long, they will require cameras film airplane takeoffs and train travel. One can even envision a day when amateur rocketry will fall under the watchful eye of big brother. This could be the final nail in the coffin for Estes. They will soon require ID to travel into space like we were living under Soviet occupation. Sure, it may catch some terrorists, but we best remember Franklin's admonishment on trading freedom for security, before we let things get out of hand.
- Wagons don't cost 2 million each.
- When a wagon wheel falls off 7 people don't fry
- You can feel a problem with a wagon wheel just from the ride. In a space shuttle you don't know there is a problem until it's way to late.
- if you think you have a problem with a wagon wheel, you jump out and take a look. An EVA is a major use of resourses, both in flight and on the ground.
- A foam strike isn't the only thing that a camera would catch. Remember, the first indications of what when wrong with Challenger came from video.
IMHO, the space shuttle's biggest problem was a design which said that the thing needed to have wings.The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
As an employee of the NASA IV&V facility, I can tell you that this is going to be a major help in troubleshooting both mechanical problems and in designing better software to prevent problems like what happened in the previous launch.
The improved safety systems like this one will (hopefully) prevent another three year delay like the one just experienced. That delay caused some major setbacks, so don't write off this add-on yet.
Just saw that darn error...
Its time that NASA started investing in more robots. I can see EVA robots doing these checks on all spacecraft in the future, no matter what country the spacecraft has launched from. It only makes sense. I'm sure that such robots can be much more robust and cost effective than a human EVA to check heat shield tiles and other items critical to a safe landing, and high tech scanners, such as are used to check for stress cracks in commercial airliners could be the basis for such robots. Geez, if you spend $500k maybe we could save several hundred million.
A cousin to the inspector robot could also replace the tile when it is sent up on an unmanned spacecraft. Its not like the logistics of this kind of problem aren't worked out everyday around the globe. Many of the people and businesses in Florida et al have just gone through the process. Yes, you need a part, but can't buy it or steal it from anywhere, so you have to wait for the next shipment etc. Just make sure the astronauts pack a few extra meals. Sure, the cost of shipping that extra part could be hundred thousand dollars or more, but that is cheaper than losing a shuttle and much cheaper than losing astronauts, never mind the damage to reputation.
This sort of thing should be a no brainer. I'm surprised actually to have not heard that NASA has worked out how to replace a tile while docked to the ISS?
But then maybe I'm just missing out on something.
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They thought of doing that, but soon ditched the thought after seeing what happened after the whole Rodney King beating, knowing what they were going to do to the Indians.
A beurocratic nightmare. The Airforce wanted some kind of crazy orbial bomber, but once the shuttle was done they washed their hands of it. Shuttle missions cost like 100x what they were supposed to.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think all the non-NASA people fretting over these routine things are there for a reason, in particular to help control what happens before the launch. You know, so we can prevent another seven people dying and scattering another shuttle all over the western hemisphere.
Cameras don't fix problems. They just see them (sometimes).
Like the Patriot Act, this doesn't solve anything; it just perpetuates the illusion that the problem was with data collection. In the WTC attacks and the Columbia break-apart (I refuse to use the term "disaster" or "accident"), it was the decision-making process and management. In both situations, there was plenty of evidence that was ignored because of egos, rivalries, and mindsets.
Please help metamoderate.
So the guy that plays the lottery once and wins that one time had a life-long probablity of winning the lottery of 1?
The odds are what they are. Odds are that the probablity of the foam thing is LOWER than 1% are pretty high.
How much lower than 1% is a pure guess.
I agree though, they should stick the orbiter at the top like other vehicles do. Not on the side like it is.
That's probably because they are almost always used as adjectives with word 'brain'.
I disagree with the assertion that the Shuttle was "great progress," even measured by standards 20 years ago. The Saturn V was "great progress," and the Shuttle's capabilities are a huge step backwards - trapped in LEO, 1/2 the payload capacity (118,000kg versus 47,000kg,) etc. Here's a concise table of launch vehicle comparisons. Note that there aren't many GEO entries, and all that have that capability are the expendable-type. There's a technical reason for that ... actually many.
Then there's the political aspect, which can't be ignored. Nixon pretty much crippled NASA. Here's a nice account the political climate - skip down to the "Coping with Change" part. Do you think that Nixon (or any other President) would be inclined to disassemble the programs of his predecessor? I think they'd roll their own grandmothers if they thought it'd get them re-elected.
Finally, there's the big pack-o-lies that the Shuttle program is founded upon. The program cost is probably the biggest one. They promised USD $20M launch costs, with the expectation of having one launch a week. The reality is they *knew* that was hideously optimistic and unsustainable. So we're stuck with USD $1B per-launch costs, and a somewhat-reusable orbiter that needs major overhauls between launches.
The Shuttle is an amazing piece of technology. It just isn't the right technology to use if we ever expect to get off this rock.
And quite frankly, there's no reason to send americans or anyone else. The only reason for the "space race" was to develop technologies that could be used for ICBMs.
Since no one wants to attack mars, no one needs that level of technology.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's not a technical issue. Those can be solved. Before Challenger blew up, engineers voiced concerns about it being to cold to launch, but management ignored it. When foam hit Columbia, engineers wanted the wing inspected, but again management ignored it. If it weren't for wanting to save Hubble, I'd say retire the Shuttle now. I know the ISS is only about half built, but would completing it give us a better scientific return on our investment?
You gotta hand it to our astronauts. Even with bad management decisions they are still willing to take the risks to go into space. I'm dissapointed with NASA's current handling of the manned space program. I wish they'd take a lesson from the unmanned side with all of its spectacular successes.
As Richard Feyman said in his appendix on the Challenger disaster report: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
What did NASA Learn? The shuttle is not a succesful technology, and although Nature can't be fooled the public can.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The shuttles have a very limited on-orbit lifespan; they quickly run out of fuel for the fuel cells, coolant, etc. They make lousy space stations. The average shuttle mission is ten days, and the maximum is 18 with the Extended Duration Orbiter upgrade.
If you docked one with the ISS, I'd expect it to very quickly die --- and once dead, I doubt very much whether doing an in-orbit renovation to get it into a sufficient state even to land it on autopilot would be feasible. (If there is and autopilot.)
Given the sheer mass of a shuttle and how much stress it'd put on the ISS' station-keeping facilities, I strongly suspect that in the event of an on-orbit failure, the crew would be evacuated and then it'd be given the heave-ho into the Pacific...
1. They will be spacewalking to test exterior repair, if it works, they can fix it on orbit.
2. They're going to be visiting the station - this mission is reportedly rigged so that if something really bad is found, the can stay on station until another shuttle can be launched.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
why don't you try looking up the definition of the word troll. When you're done you can look up the definition of a joke too.
If you can't tell the difference between a troll and what is obviously a joke I suggest you uncheck the "Willing to Mod" box because believe it or not there ARE people with senses of humor around here.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Remember, the first indications of what when wrong with Challenger came from video.
IIRC, NASA was warned about the problems with o-rings and low temperatures. While the first indicators to the public might have been the video, surely there were some people who immediately knew what caused the event.
107 camera's to keep tiles from breaking of sounds like using duct-tape to cure software problems with your bionic arm.
It just seems to shush the minds of those not wanting to awknowledge the risks involved with strapping 7 people on a rocket.
Or did they recently sign with FOX?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
107 cameras. Go figure. NASA was just *trying* to figure out a way to use all of those X10 cameras that their employees were tricked into buying.
Kompressor: We must destroy X10! We must destroy all Internet ad!
Well, that's the death of the US manned spaceflight effort right there. The strange thing is, I'll bet the astronauts themselves would willingly take risks; after all, as Americans, they are in a sense descendants of one of the greatest risk-takers ever.
Oh, well: maybe China can do better.
This is quickly becoming my biggest pet peeve: knee-jerk reaction to a problem that already happened and is now unlikely to happen again.
Shoe-removing at U.S. airports is the most hateful example. Just because one guy tried to detonate his shoes four years ago, I will now have to remove my shoes everytime I board a plane for the rest of my life. Never mind that A) they don't even test the shoes for explosives, B) the next terrorist attack won't be on air-travel due to increased attention there, and C) even if it is, a shoe-bomb isn't going to be a successful strategy.
It's like were doing pennance out of guilt. "If only we'd done this before Richard Reid got on the plane!" Well, we didn't. And doing it now isn't going to help what happened then.
I mean, we learned better than this in high school football. When a guy burns you on the run, do you pack all your guys on the line for the next play so he doesn't do it again? No, because then they'll just burn you on a long pass. A good defense is balanced and proactive, not just reactive to the last thing that happened.
Well you really only need seven cameras to check the shuttle. The other hundred are there to check for terrorists.
Who ordered that?
Cam-Bot, give me rocket number nine!
NASA was warned, but the first indications of the problem actually occuring were from video. Knowing that a problem may occur doesn't help you when it does happen. Knowing it's happening/happened allows you to do something to correct it.
I just moved to Orland last September to go school (a bad idea after i found out why Fark has a Florida tag) so this will be my first shuttle launch that i can go see. can anyone here who's seen a launch recommend a good spot to watch from? Canaveral National Seashore would be a great place but i have a feeling it gets shut down during a launch.
My prediction is that one of the cameras will break off during launch and strike a critical tile. Causing complete destruction and a loss of all 107 cameras. Then there will be 214 cameras on the next shuttle launch just for redundancy/backup purposes.
You might want to add to you analogy that due there are now only 3 wagons left.
Sounds more like it's time to retire management than time to retire the shuttle! Seems like that would have at least saved the Challenger, and possibly the Columbia as well (although I'm not as sure they could have figured out anything to do in the latter case).
:)
I do agree that we could probably do better than the shuttle, but it still sounds like you're trying to blame it for problems that aren't really its fault. And designing and building something better is a damn expensive proposition! I'd rather get as much value as possible out of the shuttle, even if it means we have to fire or shoot every bureaucrat in Washington!
The odds that the odds are lower than 1% are reasonable. However, the odds that they are one in a million, or even one in a thousand, are fairly low. If the odds are 0.1% we would have only a 9.5% chance of such an event in a hundred launches. If the odds were one in ten thousand the 100-launch odds are less than 1%.
We know the odds for the lottery, but suppose I offer you a game with unknown odds. Let's see... you win! Do you think you can speculate on the odds for this game?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
They don't need so many cameras to film the ice
chunks falling off they need less humidity
so the ice doesn't build up so much.
They should launch and land from Edwards AFB.
From o.p: "...two airplanes..."
As a commercial pilot friend of mine likes to point out, it's aeroplane, (cf: hydroplane). "Airplanes" don't exist (well, as a machine) - that describes a flat section of air, not a flying machine.
Well, there goes what little karma I have...
If someone wants to invade and take over East Boston, I say let 'em!
At least they might stop raising tolls though the tunnel!
Better yet, you should be able to travel with a handgun of your own provided you are legally able to own one in the first place. If you have the displeasure of living in Massachusetts, my sympathies as they are very draconian with their "gun control" laws. They still seem to think that the gun commits the crime, not the guy with the gun. Studies prove -- more guns == less crime.
I could see it if you were flying to Paris. If you had a gun, you could get France to surrender! If you are French or a decendent - "Bonjour, Ne prenez aucune offense, je suis juste en vous donnant un moment difficile. Au Revoir"
Hrm... I guess the number 107 wasn't chosen without a hidden meaning.
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. . . if instead of integrating 107 cameras onto the shuttle, they just made sure it didn't blow up again? NASA seems more concerned with covering their asses when something goes wrong than in making sure it actually goes right in the first place.
That said, I think they've lost sight of the fact that exploring space is always going to be risky but that the science that results from it is worth it.
"NASA scientists have confirmed that last week's Discovery disaster was caused by a camera that came loose during takeoff and damaged the heat resistent tiles on one of the wings..."
D
It's not like the American public cries out every time someone in the Army dies. We give them lots of equipment to try and increase their safety, but it's just a given that their line of work is DANGEROUS.
It's a sad thing when someone dies. But it just happens. They know the consequences, no one forces astronauts to go up there. And I bet if you asked any of them if they thought it was worth it given the risk that they'd all say yes.
certifying a rocket for manned travel is no trivial task. Besides needing to be ultra reliable, theres other issues at hand like vibration and sound to consider (dont want to shake people apart or deafen them). A rocket launch is the second loudest manmade event to occur. The first is the detonation of a nuclear weapon.
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Will they take into affect the extra weight that all these cameras will add to the Shuttle before launch? My girlfriend says just ONE camera adds ten pounds...
The shuttle was a good idea, and a way complex machine, a complete step away from the disposable launch systems, a new design from the ground up, only partly drawing on previous experiences.
It failed in its goals. Still I rather go up in a shuttle with 2 failures in its lifetime, than to sit on top a kerosine leaking Russian Soyuz (?) launcher. It really smells like the kerosine around it, do not smoke, spark. It is incredibly reliable, can be launched at much more flexible (weather) conditions.
Weird, choose for the one which fails.
Design wise the Russians only did incremental changes, they did not really come up with any radical changes since the original design worked. This way they kept it reliable and cheaper, but lost a space race.
I would like to see a next generation launch vehicles which make the space shuttle look like a piece of history, of course if nobody dies, it is better, but to get ahead, some risk is needed.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The shuttle's engineering design also specified no foam loss as a requirement. Over time, foam loss became tolerated, with a pervasive management attitude of "well it hasn't caused any problems, yet". Damage to the shuttles' carbon panels was documented on numerous missions, and was ultimately treated by management as a post-flight maintenance issue, rather than as a safety issue.
This sort of complacency is what killed Columbia, and is well documented in the extremely interesting Accident Investigation Board report.
I hadn't thoough of it from a guidence/stability standpoint, but I would think that stripping a lot of the internal components and replacing them with parts that were designed to remain in flight may be cheaper than creating a new segment of the same size. Then again, you would still have lots of needless weight attached to the station, such as the wings and engines that are clearly no longer being used.
So... I guess it's not such a great idea. Good thing I don't work for NASA.
I think that the greatest failure of the Shuttle program was the mixing of human- and cargo-missions. I'll ignore the politics and outright lies for now. By requiring that humans be present on every launch, the Shuttle is horribly constrained in it's flight profile.
The Russian split of Soyuz for the humans and Progress for the cargo is a winning combination. They can fly a riskier payload with the Progress, and not have to worry about possibly killing the people. They also don't carry all the life-support baggage that limits the ultimate payload capacity. For reasons I can't explain, there was a mandate that the Shuttle would do everything for everybody - resulting in horribly sub-optimal performance all around. The Shuttle was doomed to fail all it's objectives before it ever got off the drawing board.
5, 4, 3, Main engines go, and blast off.
All systems nominal, main thrusters green. SOMEONE SET US UP THE BOMB! Just kidding guys.
Hey this Camera 42, is a bit shaky, must be the thruster resonance... should be nothing.
500 meters and climbing.. looking good!
*CLUNK* Houston, we erm, have a logitech device embedded into our windshield... were burning up, argh argh araaaaargh.
Ground control: Major Tom? Toooom? Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
Lesson: Don't spend loads of money fixing up a flight model to be stable, and then duct tape some random cameras to it.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
The only reason this piece of junk is still flying is because a bunch of idiots at NASA want to keep their jobs! They should have dumped this white elephant after the challenger "accident" and gone back to a proven, reliable, system like Apollo. God forbid something happens, but with a POS like the shuttle "system" it will happen again. And about this "resuce" mission if needed, what the hell does that mean? Try sending up another POS? What if the 2nd one screws up when it is launched? NASA's manned flight ops need to be junked and something else started. They are so over-bloated with crap, they can't find their way out of the bathroom!
Command center: Video surveillance report, go ahead.
Analyst: We did detect some minor damage, sir.
Command: Describe the event, please.
Analyst: Video surveillance indicates the vehicle was struck by several cameras that fell off other surveillance units. Recommend upgrading duct-tape adhesive for future missions.
Command: Thank you, dismissed.
include $sig;
1;
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Doesn't the camera add 10 pounds?
That's 1070 lbs! I hope they planned for that...
from NYT...
"The Discovery astronauts will fly with five prototype methods to repair the heat-resistant tiles that line the orbiter's bottom and the hard reinforced carbon-carbon material used for the nose and leading edges of the wings, which were damaged on the Columbia. Although three will be tested in space, none of the options are yet certified to repair actual damage."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You're essentially making the argument that this happened because the chance was approximately 1%, and not 0.0001%. You go on to say that "If the odds were one in ten thousand the 100-launch odds are less than 1%," the implication being that with a chance of only 1% we would never experience the foam falling off. You seem to be arguing that things will happen at 1%, and also won't happen at 1%, which doesn't make any sense ... Please explain?
So does this mean they will be putting a cam in the living quarters and selling it on PPV
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
If the odds were 1 in 10,000 then it would be very unlikely for us to see such an event in a mere 100 launches (less than 1 percent). That's 1 percent in total, not 1 percent per launch. If the odds are 1 percent per launch then there is a 63% chance that the event will occur at least once over those hundred launches.
In this particular case, it is obvious that damage from foam insulation could have happened to any flight, and we may be just lucky that it didn't happen before now. It wasn't too uncommon for big chunks of foam to fall off, and it wasn't too uncommon for them to hit the orbiter. When you add in the fact that certain areas of the orbiter will be damaged catastrophically from a foam impact, you are led to the conclusion that this was a real problem, not a mere freak of chance.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Shuttle wouldn't be large addition to ISS, it would be more "laughable addition". It's big only outside (=much larger drag for the whole ISS, whiich then needs much more fuel to saty on orbit), but inside its living space, even compared to current, unfinished ISS is just, well...laughable...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Hey look! A window!