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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?
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
But this is /., so it would actually be:
"-0: Business as Usual"
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.
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."
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.
"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
Why not have some emergency landing capsules already in the orbit? Nothing fancy, just a capsule with minimal electronics that can land in the ocean. Proven technology from many years ago. Leave enough fuel so the capsules can stay for a decade in desired orbit.
If you left a car in a parking garage for 10 years, then came back and tried to start it, do you think it would work? No. The tires would be flat on the bottom. The fuel would have separated. The fuel and brake lines would likely be dried and cracked. There would be rust. The battery would be dead. It would not work.
Now, imagine that instead of being parked in a nice, protected garage, it was instead in outer space, at roughly -170 degrees Celcius, being bombarded with harsh solar radiation and tiny space debris traveling at 18,000 mph for 10 years. Would it work? Would you bet your life on it?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Basicly to match vectors you have a very small launch window. You will either aim for ISS or for the escape pod. If you have just lost 25% power at one of the main shuttle engines you just lost your window. You will have to follow an alternative plan. This is why all this "stay safe in ISS" is a bullshit plan. It will only work if a tile gets loose. It won't work in Challenger-type scenarios (which there is no escape with the current Shuttle tech) nor Columbia (something happens unnoticed and you have the failure in the re-entry).
Going up and down is easy. Changing vectors and orbit is just too expensive in energy terms so you don't do it. The whole point is getting it right the first time.
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.