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Space Shuttle Discovery to Launch July 26
thhamm writes "According to Space.com: 'NASA will restart the countdown for the space shuttle Discovery Saturday, with plans to launch the orbiter spaceward on July 26 after more than a week of work to pin down a fuel sensor glitch, mission managers said late Wednesday'. In the meantime, technicians will work with grounding wiring associated with the liquid hydrogen engine cutoff sensor system, as well as adjust the configuration of components within Discovery's point sensor box."
who needs needless guages... when i was your age we flew to the moon with rubber wings covered in foil! we dont need no stinkin guages...
I love to slaughter the english language.
(HAL 9000 on Discovery): "I am fully operational, and all my circuits are functioning perfectly. I have the highest enthusiasm for this mission."
This time the check engine light won't turn off...
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
The same time Battlestar Galactica gets released on DVD for Region 1. It's going to be an all space-geek filled day!
Joe
With a DMM, since 480VAC mains power with a bad ground can get your attention.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm afraid that NASA shuttles will never get in the air again, due to the now incredibly high standards of NASA. The last problem may have been pretty big, but we can't turn off every shuttle launch just because it's not absolutely perfect.
Believe me, I want the astronauts to survive. But you also have to understand that going into space is dangerous. Things go wrong even in the most tested of scenarios. The astronauts know the risk.
is this july 26th THIS year or next year? : p
would be for some sort of non-lethal disaster to happen that severely damages/destroys the Shuttle but doesn't kill the crew. Perhaps some accident on the landing, or some sort of problem before launch but where they can get the crew off safely but still destroys the shuttle.
This way, we can finally get rid of the pork politics blasphemeies known as the Shuttle and the ISS and start investing money into a real, sustainable manned space program, instead of this ridiculous horse and pony show.
You'd think that something like NASA would know how to wire up their sensors.
Hey, if that guy can build a mech for $20k and sell it on ebay, imagine what NASA would be like with people like him! The shuttle would acutally get off the ground and not cost millions!
I think it might be time to rename this shuttle Longhorn
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
with plans to launch the orbiter spaceward on July 26
I think we all needed that clarified. I can never guess what those wacky people at NASA will think of next!
So, you get readings at some point in time. You then force through a voltage within tolerence limits but definitely higher than normal, to increase the temperature of the wiring. You measure the resistance again. The circuit with the bad wiring will increase in resistance more than the other wires.
Once you know WHICH line (from end-to-end), the task is easy. You find the mid-point and see which half has the greater resistance, and repeat. Simple binary search.
Alternatively, you do a full tank test, to recreate the cooling.
In the meantime, there is supposed to be a shuttle in standby configuration, in case the astronauts get stuck in space. Is the standby shuttle getting tested as well? If (as could be the case) it is a faulty batch of transistors in one of the components, then the backup shuttle would likely have the same fault. If the main shuttle is to launch on Tuesday, they kinda need to find this out NOW.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There are three possible outcomes to the launch attempt, only one of them is completely positive:
1. Discovery launches Tuesday during the launch window and has a routine and successful mission. After that, there will be plenty of time to determine the root cause of the sensor issue.
2. The weather does not co-operate or another tenchnical glitch surfaces, causing Tuesday's attempt to be scrubbed. NASA is hounded in the press for being unable to manage their spacecraft, when in fact they are doing exactly that according to their safety protocols, which have been generally tightened post-Columbia.
3. Disaster. Unthinkable and possibly the end of an American manned space presence until the Crew Exploration Vehicle is completed and launched in the next decade.
The Space Shuttle is an aging flying compromise that has been updated as much as possible, and it is what NASA has been given to work with. I almost expect Outcome #2, given their justifiable prudence in halting launches when they are not 100% satisfied that the system is as operationally ready as they can make it. NASA may be criticized for delays, but when seven lives and a multi-billion dollar spacecraft are on the line, not to mention all of their political capital, once can understand why they do what they do.
Bottom line is that all eyes will be back on the Cape come Tuesday morning. Godspeed Discovery.
I'll watch from a distance, thank you.
Duke Nukem Forever to launch first!
Geez, we've been doing this since the early 80's, big deal. Why don't they give more attention to something interesting like fusion research at the National Ignition Facility. Now that's cutting edge research, boldly measuring energies that no physicist has measured before!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
*kicks feet* Make it go! Make it go! Faster! Faster!
I've been wanting to go see a shuttle launch for a while. This one's on a weekend, which makes it possible. However it's a twelve hour drive, and I don't want to drive for 24 hours round trip if it gets called off again.
2. Do not eat iSpace Shuttle.
"If we can understand that failure and it was a known failure that we expected...then we might very well be willing to go fly with three of four sensors, there's good flight rationale behind it."
Well, I'd say that sounds more reasonable than the "unexplained anomaly" that they thought was 'acceptable' on a criticality-1 item (I presume).
Well hopefully this time it is a success, another setback would be a bad thing on many levels.
...
Proper Measuring Units... Check
Fuel Pump... Check
Non-cracked Tiles... Check
Flux Capacitor...
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
What makes you think the successor to the Shuttle won't be a pork politics blasphemy?
For god's sake, how did it come to this, anyway?!? 30 years in and the STS program is still considered an experimental program with experimental vehicles.
I remember cutting out time magazine stories about Congress funding the space station in 1983! This is probably very simplistic thinking, but we could've taken the money we wasted on ISS in the 80's and designed a much more dependable shuttle fleet where loose wiring didn't mess the whole launch up.
And we're still talking about a Mars mission?1? Step by step, folks...not all at once.
Skimming that, I substituted "Challenger" for Columbia. I'm not sure which "second round" you're referring to, but there've been lots of shuttle launches. All your points made perfect sense before Columbia's breakup.
Really they'll apply to any NASA launch. Throw in Apollo 11. The same basic pressures applied.
(Challenger was a real watershed -- the way it went had such a huge effect, much more than the Apollo fire. If we're counting "rounds" that would at least count as one previous round.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What Universal is saying: --rob.
...they can make a small space on board and take Scotty's ashes with them... seems only fitting.
More important than the risk to the astronaut's lives is the political risk to NASA. If the nation sees another highly public NASA mission miss its target to the extent that lives are lost, the agency may lose even the support is has now.
Throughout 40 years of manned space flight, there were no fatalaties. Also during this time was the highest public support of manned space flight. Correlation?
4. The Americans finally admit that they have become too risk-averse to continue manned space exploration and the program disappears in a poof of bureaucratic red tape. Space shuttles appear on eBay. Top bid is $25.00.
The shuttle were reshaped into a cow ala Austin Powers.
I would not send the shuttle up. There is risk in all things, but if there is a bad sensor, that is something that should not go wrong. The sensor is doing its job, it is letting the engineers know something is not working.
The shuttle and space program is one of the only cool things the government does. It gives people hope that we can learn beyond earths limits. There is a universe up there, waiting for us to explore.
If I ran NASA, I would start working on figuring out ways to have missions to far away planets. How many times is the shuttle going to go up, then come back down, then go up, and come back down. We have been doing this same thing for over 20 years. Isn't it time we take a step off our front lawn, and see what is down the street.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Now what I can't imagine is how many times more difficult that is when true "ground" ends up being over 100 kilometers away!
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
I can only hope and pray that this isn't another example of government administrators scheduling a shuttle flight (ala Challenger), thinking that they know more about the problem than engineers. To a degree, this is also what brought down Columbia. Godspeed, STS-114..
You understand nothing about the development of hardware or software.
Everytime you add a new feature, chances are, a new bug is added as well. The shuttle of today is not the same shuttle that flew in the 1980s. Sure it looks the same ON THE OUTSIDE, but it has been constantly upgraded as bigger/better/faster technology has come along.
It is under continuous development. Bugs like this are bound to crop up. I commend the team at NASA for doing the right thing and scrubbing the launch to check out ONE buggy sensor in a QUADRUPLE REDUNDANT system.
Certainly they could have flown with one bad sensor, but it was much better to scrub the launch and at least understand the malfunction before launching.
Is the standby shuttle getting tested as well? If (as could be the case) it is a faulty batch of transistors in one of the components, then the backup shuttle would likely have the same fault.
Atlantis is attached to the ET that passed the previous Discovery tanking test. Remember the Hydrogen value cycling issue? I don't remember reading about any sensor issues with it. It should be ready to go
an ill wind that blows no good
Seems to me that 3 astronauts died during a routine test on the launch pad in 1967. This would seem to be an even harder blow to public support, because they never even left the ground. But instead, the lessons learned through their deaths re-energized the space program, and we landed on the moon less than 2 years later.
I think the current lack of public support has a lot more to do with scientific illiteracy and the negative cultural view of scientists/engineers than it does with Challenger and Columbia.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Anyone want to guess the impact of a Chinese mission successfully landing on the moon? I wonder if they'd take down the stars and stripes, you know, just for good measure
A really, really long dipstick.
This sounds hauntingly familiar. In the first disaster NASA had simply gotten used to seeing some burn-through on the o-rings to the point that it was "normal", in the second disaster they had seen foam and ice come off the orbiter but nothing bad had happened so far.
In the third disaster they couldn't find the cause of the fuel sensor problem so they declared that only three were needed and launched anyway.
Bob Cowell writes an excellent column in Computer magazine. In one column titled "Murphy Was Wrong" he points out that unlike Murphy's Law, things usually go right in spite of a myriad of glitches. In fact, they go right so often that people start ignoring the warning signs. It usually takes a severe or multiple failures to cause an actual catastrophe.
If something is failing it is failing for a reason. Don't launch till you know the cause and for gods sake don't "solve" the problem by simply rewriting the rules to say that it's OK for a "critical" system to fail.
As cool as the space exploration and the shuttle are, it may be time to say that the program has utterly failed to meet its goals, will never be able to meet its goals, and that we should cut our losses, take the information we have learned from the shuttle program, and move forward on a replacement.
Consider that the stated goal for the shuttles was 100 missions each. Unfortunately that's pretty close to the tally for the whole fleet. Oh, and there is that little annoying fact that 40% of the orbiters have crashed killing all aboard.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Actually, IIRC, there are seven other sensors sensing the same thing that disagree with this particular sensor. So, it sounds to me like the sensor is not doing its job.
There are four sensors total, three others worked within parameters and reported no problems. On this particular fuel tank there are two sensors, and the other one is not having any intermittent issues.
Also, it is incorrect to say that the sensor is reporting something "wrong" because obviously, on the ground with no fuel in the tank, it should not be reading as full. It was for a time, and that's indicative of a sensor issue.
Finally, NASA has been "planning" manned planetary expiditions since the 1960's. Old hands at NASA will tell you that they were almost ready after Apollo, and in fact, the NOVA was the booster (it was a Saturn series with a first stage that used 12(!) F-1 engines) that could have been used. Newer NASA folks could show you all sorts of ideas and plans that they have.
The one thing that is missing is the political will, which this country has very little of when it comes to Big Science light space exploration. Invariably it is decried as a waste, even though history has shown that taxes gained through space spinoffs have repaid the investment in the space program multiple times.
Bottom line: you want to go to Mars or beyond? Write your Congress-critter and tell them that. Write the President and tell him that too.
Since when do university degrees NECESSARILY equate with scientific literacy? Not all degrees are given in science or engineering, after all. There are LOTS of degrees in liberal arts, business administration, advanced basketweaving, etc. that are handed out with little need for learning science.
Enrollment in science/engineering programs among US students is dropping. While our society becomes more and more DEPENDENT on science and technology, the percentage of the populace who actually UNDERSTAND how things like computers, genetic engineering and space travel actually WORK is probably at an all-time low.
Joe Sixpack cares more about crashing in front of his TV than in what makes the damn thing work, and the same goes for his kids and their video games....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Enrollment in science/engineering programs among US students is dropping. While our society becomes more and more DEPENDENT on science and technology, the percentage of the populace who actually UNDERSTAND how things like computers, genetic engineering and space travel actually WORK is probably at an all-time low.
Never has a majority of the United States had an engineering/science degree, yet the nation always had high support for its space program.
Since when do university degrees NECESSARILY equate with scientific literacy?
Don't know where you go to school, but where I go to school one has to take a minimum of two semesters of lab-based science. Physics tends to be one of the fullest courses in this class.
Joe Sixpack cares more about crashing in front of his TV than in what makes the damn thing work, and the same goes for his kids and their video games....
At what point in history has Joe Sixpack ever had an engineering degree? Never. Bottom line: this lack of support doesn't come from a lack of scientific training.
NASA has just signed a multi-billion dollar investment with Microsoft.
Bill: "Please, Please, Please put my O/S in your Shuttles!!!"
NASA: "Uh... Mr. Gates, apparently you are not aware that Shuttle disasters are second nature to us."
Bill: "Yes, BUT... with my O/S on board, all of your explosions would happen BEFORE you ever left the ground... saving you TIME, MONEY, and FUEL!"
NASA: "Hmm... you may be on to something there."
The sensor is doing its job, it is letting the engineers know something is not working.
No it's not working. The tank is full and it's reading empty...hence the problem. So the sensor IS the problem, the situation it's reporting doesn't exist.
If you can't rely on your instruments, you're gambling with disaster
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Milo: Houston! We have a premature re-entry!
Opus: In space... it's never Miller Time.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
[quote]Never has a majority of the United States had an engineering/science degree, yet the nation always had high support for its space program.[/quote] Who said ANYTHING about having a DEGREE in science/engineering? A basic literacy and interest in a subject DOES NOT require a degree... [quote]At what point in history has Joe Sixpack ever had an engineering degree? Never.[/quote] There you go with the crap about degrees again. Back at the time of Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, the AVERAGE person had more of a "hands on" involvement with the technology in their everyday life, even if the technologies of the day were crude compared to what we have today. Back then, many people actually tuned up their own cars, changed blown tubes in their TV sets, and handled other tasks that nowadays are the domain of "professionals". Many technologies have become "black boxes", which require expensive, specialized equipment to repair. You can't buy a Heathkit stereo anymore, and most kids wouldn't have the patience or attention span to assemble one anyway! Public schools and pop culture have seen to that.... As people become more isolated from the workings of the world, curiosity starts to wane. It is a short step from lack of personal curiosity to lack of support for scientific exploration in general. [quote]Bottom line: this lack of support doesn't come from a lack of scientific training.[/quote] Again, not a lack of scientific TRAINING (not everyone needs to be a scientist/engineer), but a lack of INTEREST in things scientific....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Reposted due to formatting screwup....
[quote]Never has a majority of the United States had an engineering/science degree, yet the nation always had high support for its space program.[/quote]
Who said ANYTHING about having a DEGREE in science/engineering? A basic literacy and interest in a subject DOES NOT require a degree...
[quote]At what point in history has Joe Sixpack ever had an engineering degree? Never.[/quote]
There you go with the crap about degrees again.
Back at the time of Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, the AVERAGE person had more of a "hands on" involvement with the technology in their everyday life, even if the technologies of the day were crude compared to what we have today.
Back then, many people actually tuned up their own cars, changed blown tubes in their TV sets, and handled other tasks that nowadays are the domain of "professionals". Many technologies have become "black boxes", which require expensive, specialized equipment to repair. You can't buy a Heathkit stereo anymore, and most kids wouldn't have the patience or attention span to assemble one anyway! Public schools and pop culture have seen to that....
As people become more isolated from the workings of the world, curiosity starts to wane. It is a short step from lack of personal curiosity to lack of support for scientific exploration in general.
[quote]Bottom line: this lack of support doesn't come from a lack of scientific training.[/quote]
Again, not a lack of scientific TRAINING (not everyone needs to be a scientist/engineer), but a lack of INTEREST in things scientific....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Here's my impression of NASA:
"Come on... SEVEN! Baby needs new funding! The shooter is hot! Come on.... MAKE THE POINT! Ohhhh, loser. Crapped out. Let's try again. Come on... SEVEN!"
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Lockheed took over the tank contract...
Thanks Colonel!
They used different, heavier foam....
Result, splash one bird.
Now the tanking system is having sensor anomalies.
Help?
How's that La-Z-Boy treating you? Can I get you another cold one?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Well im hoping everything goes well July 26 is my B-day people blowing up on my birthday is not cool at all!
I believe they have also depleted the supply of ants responsible for sorting the tiny screw's.
Ha ha! Look at the guy, what a nerd!
Just before the last launch attempt an interviewee on the CBC pointed out that the probability of any given launch actually occurring on any given launch day is somewhere under 50%. Nothing wrong with that. It's an incredibly complex machine. The redundancy is because you can't stop halfway thru the flight and say "oops. Can we start over again?" or call the AMA, so you don't want any of the thousands of redundant pieces non-functioning before you even start.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
We have probes and telescopes, we already know what's down our street. It's just millions of miles away and not very interesting.
Best cast scenario for manned space exploration: months or years in an ugly tin can running down supplies, and any of the crew who haven't starved to death or killed themselves through madness get to float about on a barren rock for a few minutes before going home again. Unlike Neil Armstrong they won't become famous from it because people will be bored of yet another astronaut visiting some obscure moon or asteroid named after an equally-obscure Roman god.
There's nowhere within the range of human travel that offers us anything we don't already get down here. If we need to go somewhere for something, we can send robots. The only thing I can think of that would be of any value would be holidays to the Moon, but that'd fall apart once the novelty wore off and people realise that low-gravity isn't any fun and that you can just as easily live in a dome or small metal hut on Earth.
NASA has signed a multi-hundred dollar ($699) investment with Linux.
/etc/S11/sorg.config hasn't been precisely configured by hand the shuttle fails after 200m and dumps itself back on the launchpad with just a '$' to tell you what went wrong.
Apparently if the
It's not compatible with any of the launch facilities so the crew will have to build their own from scratch. But that's OK because it teaches them how it works, and saves them time and money in the long run.
If it gets to the ISS, it can't dock because the shuttle uses an obscure airlock protocol rather than the standard. The shuttle vendors blame the Russians for not opening the specs.
It takes a series of cryptic typed commands just to seperate from the external tank.
Although the control panel is excessively complex, with hundreds of buttons and displays for even un-necessary or obsolete functionality, it's all in a nice transparent blue shade so it's worthwhile, but each operation takes 10 seconds longer than it should.
There's no toilet installed because the shuttle designer disagreed with the licence terms. You see principles come before having a shit.
No-one knows how to work the shuttle because the designers think writing manuals is boring. Instead they replaced the altitude meter with a fading menu.
It looks and acts like a cheap rip-off from a competing space-agency's ship.
unmaned? Their knock-off of our shuttle did two orbits and a landing that can only be described as tits. Now since the main purposes of this shuttle flight are 1) proof-of-concept/testing of all of the modifications and 2) resupply space station....
Well if the damn thing blows up on launch like challenger then, i guess they need to rework it. If it burns up on reentry then maybe they should look over their blueprints. But if it doesn't blow up at all, then mission completed and no lives (not even a monkey or a puppy) need to be risked.
I mean the shuttle does do reentry and approach with the control to computers, hands off pilot, correct?
I think lowering the landing gear is the only thing that requires a manual input and is not fly-by-wire. But I'm sure those geniuses could rig up some kind of contraption with wires and marbles and ice cream attached to an egg timer that would lower the gear at the right moment.
Wow, a few minutes ago I accidentally remembered that I hadn't heard news about this recently, which worried me a bit since I'd heard that the launch window would end in the end of this month. But now I see NASA's apparently done it, congratulations to them :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Somebody should celebrate the Cuban Revolution by shooting off the top of Castro's head and shitting in his brain cavity, then everyone can rejoice, especially the families of his victims.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Tropical Storm Franklin is going to be in the way.
But then again, I could be wrong.
The thing that amazes me is - such a big ship and they have such big problems with a sensor! A freaking sensor!
Then again, I'm a programmer so I do know that the simplest things are often the ones which cause more problems... But it's still disturbing that a sensor is giving so much trouble. Makes one wonder how many problems there could be in the whole ship!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F