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."

Comments

The best thing that could happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The Second Round of a Difficult Situation for NASA

[ausoleil]

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.

Having just finished a test sensor application...

[Jtheletter]

I can totally relate to the problems and frustrations of improper (or in my case, disconnected) grounds in a system causing bad readings and being difficult to debug.

Now what I can't imagine is how many times more difficult that is when true "ground" ends up being over 100 kilometers away!

Have they learned nothing?

[linuxwrangler]

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.