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."
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.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
- 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.
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."