Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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
I only wish I could mod this as "-1: Bad Taste".
Its not what it is, its something else.
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.
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
- 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.
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
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.
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.