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Debris Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch
kushboy writes "According to an article on CNN.com, there is video of debris falling off Discovery during its launch earlier today. While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle, extra precaution and more video will be analyzed due to the Columbia mission of 2003. 'NASA has taken steps to minimize the amount and size of debris falling off the shuttle's exterior tank during its ascent. But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.'"
From the Story summary:
From TFA:
Honestly, guys....do you even read submissions anymore?
Anyway, given the current technology, it's pretty much impossible to eliminate falling launch debris. We should know more about any possible damage by tomorrow, after the Discovery crew finish their VSE via boom-mounted camera.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 6images/
Article title:
.
Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch
Article summary:
While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle . .
Seriously. I feel stupid complaining about the editors; I don't often. But this is ridiculous.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
NASA predicted that debris would fall and stated before launch that it is impossible to eliminate all debris.
But wait! The shuttle launched today! Debris fell, and NASA says its impossible to eliminate all debris! Holy crap, somebody better tell slashdot!
NASA officials said an object that may have been a 1 1/2-inch piece of thermal tile appeared to break off from the Discovery's belly during liftoff. It came off from around a particularly vulnerable spot, near the doors to the compartment containing the nose landing gear.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163629,00.html
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Must've been all that crack...
If it is impossible to stop debris from hitting the shuttle, should everyone be so worried? Yes, there was the Columbia disaster, but doesn't the fact with all the new precautions in place debris still strike the shuttle suggest debris probably hit the shuttle on every previous launch, and with with no major problems.
The shuttle was designed to haul and return huge cargo loads. There is NOTHING else ever designed or built than can safely return an object from space the size of a school bus. This is a remarkable feat.
Now you can certainly argue the merits of the shuttle goals. But the shuttle is still a marvel of engineering.
What is there to say really. Design by committee.
And to be frank, which is true Pinky-style, he thinks at 30 years old, the shuttle is past her prime and says it's time for the next spacecraft.
"I'm gonna worry about every launch until then," he says.
http://www.komotv.com/stories/38187.htm
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.
"T-5 and holding due to pigeon..."
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
How often does it actual return cargo? I can't think of too many times when it has. The problem is that it's a horrible compromise. The factors that make for a good cargo craft are quite dissemalar from what makes a good manned craft.
TODO: Something witty here...
I think we're getting a little paranoid because of one incident. But that's just me....
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
Does anyone have the whole external tank video? I mean from the launch to the { NO CARRIER } point. I know it exists since it's on the subscriber-only section of spaceflightnow, but I haven't found it anywhere else yet.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
There. There's another post that is simultaneously true and a troll.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Articles like this just makes me proud to pay taxes.
Seriously, NASA does some amazing work! I wish the politicians could stay out of it so we would have the next generation craft 10 years ago as we were promised. The shuttle also should have been retired 10 years ago (with a workin replacement 10 yrs ago), but thanks to the number of people the shuttle keeps employed, the "pork" shuttle is still here. Oh well, thankfully it is over soon.
This sort of thing is fairly common for shuttle launches in general, in a process which requires many component parts falling debris is inevitable. Of course, the close scrutiny of this launch will have made this coverage equally as inevitable. It appears to be some of the black undercovering of the shuttle just peeled away and fell to Earth. But NASA, ever cautious, says its might be the orbiters tiles themselves that are damage...needless to say its wise to take NASA's comments with a pinch of salt.
For those interested, heres the BBC article;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4719847.stm/
Funny how they call it "debris"...instead of saying "part of the shuttle fell off and we don't know if these parts have hit and damaged other areas."
I agree. There have been so many shuttle missions that ended successfully and there must have been debris falling every single time.
And even some decent - albeit basic - analyis. Here's a Real Media link. If you prefer a different format other than Real, you'll have to find it yourself. Right now, the video segments are available at the main CBS News website, via the link titled, "NASA Celebrates and Studies." Apparently there were two "events" NASA is looking at. One is a piece of tile that apparently came off the shuttle, and the other is a piece of mystery debris that came off the main fuel tank or a solid fuel booster.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Good job mods... this was posted before other comment saying the same thing...
The debris falling off would be problem if they were falling off from the under side the shuttle (the insulation from underneath the shuttle) or hitting the insulation and ripping it off.
On the way back this is the side exposed to tremendous friction and temperatures reach 1000+. So even a slight amount of insulation missing could cause the high temperatures to reach inside the shuttle which could be a great problem.
So I hope they check the debris properly and take appropriate actions.
What does your Credit Report look like?
The hottest parts of the Orbiter on reentry are the leadng edges and the nose, with the underside cooler as you work aft.
That's why Columbia was doomed when the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon leading edge was damaged and the hottest gases that could enter the Orbiter melted the wing supports.
Columbia and every single Orbiter after her has lost tiles or had mild to signficant damage on every single flight. This is not inherently serious. Losing a lot of tiles in hotter areas or significant damage in one crucial area is cause for worry.
Nowandays Orbiters don't use much in the way of tiles at the top of the vehicle, preferring to use thermal blankets. Only a serious breech of the nose or wing edge RCC is dangerous in the extreme. Tile damage elsewhere is nothing to sneeze at, but generally the underside tile loss is not as bad because the heating and the air movement is less direct.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
My thoughts and prayers go out the the family of the bird that hit the external tank. An autopsy will be performed tomorrow to find official cause of death--most likely "hit by shuttle".
Its just a little airbore, its still good. Its still Good!
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris
Impossible? Typical engineer thinking... of course there is a way. Thought these guys were about to take a page from the manual of some people I work with - just keep delaying the next flight until they EOL the shuttle. W00t! 100% no impacts. Bonuses all around...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I wish the politicians could stay out of it
Who the hell is going to decide what the nation's policy should be? Engineers? I'm not disputing that they're intellegent and capable of getting things done.
But they don't have a mind for policy and no one chose them to choose it.
There have to be politicians to do this and the only thing you can do is pick different ones.
Does The Brain know about this?
Tim
The Columbia incident was just a freak accident that is not likely to happen again. RTFA, it says that its impossible to stop falling debris. And if you watch all those old shuttle launches, there is lots of falling debris and only once did it cause the loss of a shuttle. So i think they're just making a big deal out of nothing. This is why i hate the media.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
The headline is bogus. The real news is a bird hit the external fuel tank. This means the fuel tank may BURN UP ON REENTRY! This tragedy will destroy the entire program.
except for the post two minutes before it that also said the same thing.
The damage is close to the upper limit of what they could repair in space, if it does prove to be tile shear. This may force a rescue mission.
Furthermore, we won't know until at least day 3 of the mission, according to the BBC, as to whether the damage is significant. We won't know tomorrow, from the sounds of it, and depending on the nature of the damage we might not know until much later, as they may need to run computer simulations to determine the likely damage to the heat shielding, if the damage is not something they can visually inspect.
The bird strike to the external fuel tank had no significant impact (pun intended) and the debris from that doesn't seem to have caused any problems.
There are two worst-case scenarios, at this point in time. First, the tile may be sheared and the damage not repairable with the repair kits they have. Of the worst-case scenarios, this is the most likely, although it is still considered improbable. This would force a rescue mission and possibly the cancellation of all remaining shuttle flights, as it would be too big a political risk.
Alternatively, the damage may have been caused from something coming loose on the INSIDE of the landing gear assembly. An impact from the inside might easily knock the black outer layer off but not cause noticable damage to the tile. The odds of this are extremely low, but certainly not zero. It is also unlikely the astronauts will check for internal damage for the front landing gear, which means that if this IS the case, the shuttle will crash hard on landing and be destroyed.
Debris is inevitable, this is perfectly true. This is why such systems SHOULD have the best monitoring that money can buy, including internal sensors that can detect anomolous conditions.
In the case of Columbia, the damaged sections would have cooled faster than normal, due to being open to space, and would have had far higher radiation levels than normal - again from being open to space. From data like that, it would have taken all of 30 seconds to figure out the damage was significant and potentially catastrophic, with or without photographs.
Frankly, I don't know why NASA is so obsessed with photographs, as they clearly aren't telling NASA whether the damage is significant or not. Internal monitoring is needed to establish something like that, especially for components that can't clearly be seen by some far-away camera due to angle or obscuring fuel tanks.
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)
The summary did actually say: "debris does not appear to hit the shuttle". And it doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't as you stated.
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."
or maybe SlashFox.
/.: Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch
BBC: Nasa looks into shuttle 'debris'
CNN: NASA checks on debris after shuttle success.
Foxnews: Rising From the 'Depths of Despair'
We're talking about several things here. First, the bird that was hit by the EFT (oh well). Second (and is this what everyone's fussing about?) two vent covers on the dorsal section of the shuttle were covered with pieces of Tyvek material (same people that make the waterproofing wrap for houses). Those fabric covers were designed to fall off as soon as the craft started moving. During today's briefing, NASA indicated, IIRC, that the two covers even had small parachutes to let them down slowly. The briefer said that these two bright-colored objects were clearly seen doing just what they were supposed to do: sliding down during the first moment of the launch.
Completely unrelated would be the hunk of whatever it was that sloughed off of the EFT just before separation, but which would have not struck the orbiter. Also unrelated was the apparent sheering off of a small, perhaps 2-3 inch chunk of a tile near the nose gear cover (just aft). They may deploy the arm to check that one out, but the tiles get pitted all the time.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is NOTHING else ever designed or built than can safely return an object from space the size of a school bus
Except, you know, the Russian Buran Shuttle with 20 tons return capacity vs the shuttle's 15 - and 30 tons of launch cargo capacity vs the Shuttle's 25. Best of all, the Buran could fly to orbit and back on autopilot without a human crew if needed (as it successfully did on a test flight). The best thing that NASA could have done at the time to replace their shuttle fleet would have been to fund or buy Buran from the Russians when they ran out of money. the Russians built an amazing robot spaceplane in the 80's, something that NASA still has not achieved.
But don't let silly things like, oh, facts get in the way of all your flag-waving.
NASA's shuttle is a bastard design created from political compromise: the military wanted it, the scientists wanted it, the politicians wanted it. As a result it works for almost nobody and is a 30-year old deathtrap. I'm suprised the loss rate has been so low - I have no idea what drugs NASA is ingesting, I'll be very suprised if this one isn't lost as well. The shuttle should be killed and replaced ASAP, preferably taking some serious clues from bulletproof no-compromise brute simplicity Russian space engineering - which is currently the best in the history of the world (until the Chinese or commercial sector catches up and passes them).
A simple example:
If the shuttle's re-entry angle is wrong, EVEN WITH NO DAMAGE, airframe stress becomes critical, it breaks up and everybody dies.
If a Russian space capsule's re-entry angle is wrong, they experience slightly higher G-forces and the pickup helicopter takes a couple of minutes longer to reach them after parachuting to earth.
A fact to ponder:
Modern metal alloys are tough enough to survive re-entry without protection from heat tiles. Get that? In a modern design, NO HEAT TILES ARE NEEDED. Which completely eliminates the cause of one shuttle disaster (when the heat tiles failed).
So why are we sticking with the old Shuttle?
The sad thing is the shuttle was supposed to be part of a system that included a space tug and a space station. Of course the shuttle is nothing like it should have been. To many short term savings traded for long term costs.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There is also the possibility that something came loose on the inside of the shuttle. An internal impact would cause a tile to fall off, just as easily as any other cause. Depending on exactly what that could be, there is a risk that the front landing gear may not be operable.
These are slight risks, and I won't deny that, but they are non-zero risks and I hope that NASA will make sure that the orbiter is safe (as far as these things can be called "safe") to de-orbit before it attempts to do so.
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)
When was fox anything but useless commentary?
Rising From the 'Depths of Despair'
No hitches, but some debris seen, as Discovery makes first manned flight since Columbia disaster
all of these other "news" sights are just putting their spin on the whole thing. During the news conference, they said (paraphrased as I don't have a transcript) "look, at these neat videos. We've seen more of this launch than any before. We even see some things falling off. This first one is cool, you can see a piece of tile come off, apparaently from the rear of the front landing gear door. Here is another one, and we have no idea what this thing is, or how big it is. When we finish evaluating the video and doing our tests over the next few days, we will be able to tell you what this was."
The rest of the NC was the "reporters" trying to spin this into "Oh my GOD, the shuttle is stranded and everyone is going to DIE!!!"
How many school buses are there in orbit?
(They tried unsuccessfully to send a teacher into orbit once, but she didn't get far.)
And speaking of these odd measurements, what is the difference (in size) between a schoo; bus and a regular bus? Or is that the standard because regular buses don't exist in the US. (adults drive their own SUV's, only kids ride a bus...
Please enumerate the number of items which it has returned from orbit.
I thought not.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Come on! This isn't rocket science guys!
oops.
So the shuttle has a shedding problem. How about a huge, form-fitting hairnet for the entire craft?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You poor bastard.
You missed being "insightful" by 0.92 seconds.
Now you're modded as a loser.
Learn to type faster.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
There may certainly have been "Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch".. But this should be no surprise since NASA scientists and engineers have stated that debris always falls, and it is 'impossible' to prevent. That's why, should you look at the shuttle time line, you will see that they are taking many more preventative measures than have ever been taken in the past. However, this begs the question.. Why weren't these steps taken before?
26 Jul - Takeoff - Wednesday - A large amount of camera and recording equipment are used to monitor the body of the aircraft during liftoff.
27 Jul - A 100 Foot Robotic Arm will inspect the shuttle's shield areas.
28 Jul - The shuttle will backflip approx 600 feet from the space station, allowing it's underside to be photographed with high-resolution cameras on the space station.
29 Jul - 3 Aug - Three 6.5 hour spacewalks have been scheduled to test and repair any heat shield damage.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
All this shuttle garbage is a bunch of over emphasized crap, it's disgusting, the columbia incident is now being exploited as a series of anal media attention to what use to be the most insignificant information that could ever come from Nasa.
My two cents
IT'S ALL ABOUT GOOD OL AMERICAN LIABILITY. If there is ONE thing that was preventable (a tile that was loose, a sensor in a tank, whatever...) the lawyers start sharpening their pencils and trying totake money away from NASA.
Go back to the old days....we're talking THE RIGHT STUFF days...these guys really weren't sure if they were coming back. That was part of what being an astronaut was! Yes, I made it to space, and I made it back, YIPPIE-KA-YAY MF!
I'm sure that NO astronaut WANTS to die, but I'm sure that they've all accepted the possibility...the VERY REALY possibility...that they might not come back.
We're not going to get anywhere if we don't take risks. Stupid risks are...well...stupid. BUT calulated risks are what made this country what it is today.
If we keep on this track, our kids won't be able to go outside without rubber-gloves and a face mask. We need to relax...we need to keep moving...and we can't be such chicken shits! We're a smart country...let's use our smarts and show CHINA that they're not the only country capable of having a functioning space program!
Returning cargo is one of the reasons the ISS needs a shuttle or similar craft to operate. With the shuttles grounded finished experiments and refuse has built up on the ISS to the point that it interferes with everyday operation. The Russian Progress craft simply don't have the ability to bring all of this back to Earth.
For this reason, one of the first things Discovery will do after docking with the ISS is transfer as much of the old equipment, experiments, and trash as possible to the shuttle so they can load new equipment on the station.
"Completely unrelated would be the hunk of whatever it was that sloughed off of the EFT just before separation, but which would have not struck the orbiter."
Wrapping the EFT in a layer of fabric would help.
"Overrated"??
When it hadn't been modded at all?
If it's truly junk, why not just jettison it retrograde and let it burn? Heck, you'd even get a small energy boost. Like a ghetto mass driver.
TODO: Something witty here...
The shuttle program has lived with damage from debris from the very first flight, in 1981; in 113 missions the orbiters have been hit by debris some 15,000 times, mostly on liftoff. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration replaces about 100 insulating tiles after every flight and repairs many more than that, Stephanie S. Stilson, the vehicle manager for Discovery, said Monday.
In fact, the rest of this article sums up the situation quite nicely:
July 27, 2005
Intense Hunt for Signs of Damage Could Raise Problems of Its Own
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 26 - Now that the Discovery is in orbit, the examination begins. Its 12½-day mission will be the most photographed in the history of the shuttle program, with all eyes on the craft to see if it suffered the kind of damage from blastoff debris that brought down the Columbia in February 2003.
There were cameras on the launching pad, cameras aloft on planes monitoring the ascent, cameras on the shuttle checking for missing foam on the external fuel tank, and a camera on the tank itself. One camera caught a mysterious object falling from the shuttle at liftoff; radar detected another, about two minutes into the flight. Cameras aboard the shuttle and the International Space Station will monitor the Discovery until the end of its mission.
But all this inspection may be a mixed blessing. The more NASA looks for damage, engineers and other experts say, the more it will find. And the risks of overreaction to signs of damage while the shuttle is in orbit may be just as great as the risks of playing them down.
"How do you distinguish - discriminate - between damage which is critical and damage which is inconsequential?" asked Dr. David Wolf, an astronaut who spent four months aboard the Russian space station Mir. "We could be faced with very difficult decisions, in part because of all this additional information that we will be presented with."
The shuttle program has lived with damage from debris from the very first flight, in 1981; in 113 missions the orbiters have been hit by debris some 15,000 times, mostly on liftoff. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration replaces about 100 insulating tiles after every flight and repairs many more than that, Stephanie S. Stilson, the vehicle manager for Discovery, said Monday.
Now, though, it will be far easier to spot such damage while the shuttle is still in orbit. Thanks to a $15 million laser camera system developed by a Canadian company, Neptec, for example, NASA can detect a crack of just two-hundredths of an inch, the width of two business cards pressed together. On the leading edge of the orbiter's wing, such a crack could admit dangerous amounts of superheated gas during re-entry. A similar crack elsewhere might not.
It was a large hole in the left wing's leading edge, caused by impact with a 1.67-pound piece of insulating foam during the launching, that led to the Columbia disaster.
But if a crack is detected, said Iain Christie, director of research and development for Neptec, "how is NASA supposed to explain that this is not a problem?"
Nor is it clear how it could be fixed. NASA's efforts to create a repair kit for tile and leading-edge panels, a recommendation of the board that investigated the Columbia accident, have not been successful. Techniques will be tested during a spacewalk in coming days, but they are not ready for an actual repair, and the Discovery astronauts have said they would not want to trust any patchwork on a return to Earth.
Another option, the "safe haven" plan, would involve abandoning the $2 billion shuttle and having the astronauts wait in the space station for a rescue mission. For that to work, another shuttle would have to be launched within a few weeks.
That is theoretically possible but carries risks of its own: the chance, for example, that the orbiting astronauts would run o
Well, for starters they'd actually need a mass driver. Depending on how hard it is to build/launch/install/operate one it sounds like a good idea though...
because then all of that junk ends up orbiting earth for decades until it finally burns up. In the mean time it can hit other things in orbit and cause rather large problems.
Cargo gets returned on every flight. For example, here are the most recent missions which had significant items that you just can't let burn up.
STS-114: MPLM, only have two of these, have been used several times by the shuttle.
STS-107: SPACEHAB, science module for the Columbia cargo bay.
STS-111: MPLM
STS-108: MPLM
STS-105: MPLM
STS-100: MPLM
STS-102: MPLM
STS-106: SPACEHAB
STS-99: SRTM
STS-96: SPACEHAB
That right there is 10 out of the last 21 flights in 6 years where a major item has been returned (and flown again) on a shuttle, except of course for the SPACEHAB lost on STS-107.
This doesn't even include the robot arm which is housed in the cargo bay. We wouldn't be able to build the ISS without the shuttle arm.
The shuttle docking ring and airlock are also in the cargo bay. Very hard to do anything, like fix Hubble, let alone build a station, without an airlock.
Don't throw away that very huge cargo bay too fast.
You need to learn how to construct an argument.
You can't claim the Shuttle is a shitty compromised bastard design, and then also say that NASA should have bought and used the Buran, which is the same sort of shitty compromised bastard design, except it lifts more and can fly itself, which is kinda cool but not all that groundbreaking.
Then you whine about the Shuttle's horribly risky reentry characteristics, characteristics it shares with the Buran, which you recommended NASA replace the Shuttle with.
Then you claim that the worst a capsule re-entry is much less risky, which is patently false. You can burn up a capsule with a re-entry angle which is too steep. Just like the Shuttle. (And Buran). You can skip off the atmosphere in a capsule with a re-entry angle which is too shallow. Just like the Shuttle. (And Buran).
And you'll have to supply a link to the alloys you claim will withstand 3000 deg F without massive reductions in their somewhat important physcial properties, like tensile strength and modulus of elasticity.
if you fired it retrograde with decent velocity it should burn with in hours.
TODO: Something witty here...
Except, you know, the Russian Buran Shuttle with 20 tons return capacity vs the shuttle's 15 - and 30 tons of launch cargo capacity vs the Shuttle's 25.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Best of all, the Buran could fly to orbit and back on autopilot without a human crew if needed (as it successfully did on a test flight).
From the Wiki article, the final version of the Buran has a single, solitary flight and this flight was unmanned. Hardly an impressive record, no?
The best thing that NASA could have done at the time to replace their shuttle fleet would have been to fund or buy Buran from the Russians when they ran out of money. the Russians built an amazing robot spaceplane in the 80's, something that NASA still has not achieved.
Again, from the Wiki article: "The U.S shuttles landings are also mostly automated (there has only been one manually flown re-entry so far), but deployment of the landing gear requires a human to physically press the button. The manual step was added at the insistence of the astronauts, who claim that early deployment of the landing gear due to a computer error would be fatal." Geee... which flag are you waving?
NASA's shuttle is a bastard design created from political compromise: the military wanted it, the scientists wanted it, the politicians wanted it. As a result it works for almost nobody and is a 30-year old deathtrap. I'm suprised the loss rate has been so low - I have no idea what drugs NASA is ingesting, I'll be very suprised if this one isn't lost as well. The shuttle should be killed and replaced ASAP, preferably taking some serious clues from bulletproof no-compromise brute simplicity Russian space engineering - which is currently the best in the history of the world (until the Chinese or commercial sector catches up and passes them).
Reading this is funny (in a dark way) in light of a recent article over at MoFi concerning the R-16 accident. Possibly the worst rocket accident in history and it was caused by... political and symbolic concerns trumping scientific ability.
If the shuttle's re-entry angle is wrong, EVEN WITH NO DAMAGE, airframe stress becomes critical, it breaks up and everybody dies.
If a Russian space capsule's re-entry angle is wrong, they experience slightly higher G-forces and the pickup helicopter takes a couple of minutes longer to reach them after parachuting to earth.
You've switched gears and are comparing a shuttle to a capsule. What happens if a US capsule's angle is wrong? What happens if the Buran's angle is wrong?
Modern metal alloys are tough enough to survive re-entry without protection from heat tiles. Get that? In a modern design, NO HEAT TILES ARE NEEDED. Which completely eliminates the cause of one shuttle disaster (when the heat tiles failed).
I'm hardly an expert, but I thought the purpose of the tiles wasn't to simply survive heat but to prevent its conduction. Can you take a modern alloy of similar weight and thickness, heat one side with a torch and hold your hand on the other? Then you have a fair argument.
http://spaceline.org/shuttlechron/shuttle-sts51a.h tml t ml t ml
http://spaceline.org/shuttlechron/shuttle-sts32.h
http://spaceline.org/shuttlechron/shuttle-sts57.h
This is all about stiring up the pot. Bad news sells best. I first heard this on a radio report earlier. They start in with "This just in... debris seen falling off the shuttle". They go on for a minute about cameras and analysis and everything else before then mention, quietly, that, oh, BTW, it didn't even hit anything.
I love all the remarks in the media about "It would be impossible to eliminate the chance of things falling off the shuttle". Yah, like how about the fuel tank the size of two football fields or the two giant boosters with flames shooting out of them!
Here's the way it's gonna be: Every time an an astronaut so much as breaks wind on this mission, there's gonna be a news report. Next launch will have three reports, "Shuttle going to take off", "Shuttle took off", and "Shuttle landed". After that, we'll be back to occasional random "We have a space program, or something" crap. Until the next big problem.
I hate the media.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
dont worry
What we loose...
Need anyone be reminded that America can simplly control knowledge at the highest levels...
Testament to the glorious effacacy of the American edumacation system...*sigh*
Too bad the Buran was copied, almost exactly except for the lack of engines, from the US shuttle. Its enhanced capacities are due to the removal of the on-board engines and the capacities of the Energia booster stack, which we should buy, as it is a very good Big Dumb Booster. However, BDBs aren't sexy, and Not Invented Here Syndrome brings its own problems.
Ever since the Apolloe disaster, I have been convinced that you cannot walk up to a 30 or so story stack, hear the moaning and groaning of the equipment loaded with cryogenical propellants, and look up and say to yourself "Sure this is safe!". This fixation on "this fell off", etc. is a problem that will degrade what is left of the shuttle program. It doesn't matter what the safety is... Does anyone think there is a lack of folks applying to fly?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Look we all know, the only danger is if they send the shuttle to that terrible planet of the apes... wait a minute...statue of liberty, that was our planet!You maniacs, you blew it up, damn you, damn you all to hell! ;)
If NASA and the country are so worried about killing space travellers, why are we still using shuttle designs from the early 1980's...
But it is nearly a quarter of a century old. We need something using 21st century technology, no?
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Dude, there are lots of behavior out there that should be scolded as flag waveing, but this guys comment has nothing to do with flag waving. Your over-reactive reply makes *you* look like the chauvenist. Maybe you should stop waving the hammer and sicle.
The Russians had the same problem. You think they spent their country out of money for scientific furvor?
The Buran was made as a copy of the US shuttle, and was made later. It would likely have had updated technology reflecting that. Life support is a pain in the ass to incorperate, it was probably easier and cheaper to have an unmaned shuttle than otherwise.
That is a completely assinine comparison. The fact that the Buran existed illustrates how inappropriate that comparison is.
I agree with that and Im sure that many at NASA do as well, but since its a public project it will always be political issue.
All the cheering in the world wont resurect defunct communist states. And their technical merits can stand on their own without your help.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I just can't believe that with 16.2 BILLION they can't even keep pieces of the space shuttle from just falling off indiscriminately . IF an airplane such as the 747 were to have pieces falling off of it I'm sure that the FAA would have a fit until the problem was fixed and keep it from flying . This is our basic problem now . We just accept that things are going to break .Instead of builder a better mouse trap we just build five times as many to replace those that break and then train extra mouse trap layer to replace the ones who were injured when the springs flew off and got stuck in their eye .
I honestly don't believe that our moon landing would have taken place if the space program had the out and out lethargic nature it has taken on .
We need to have a kick in the butt . I mean come on the space shuttle can't even land on the moon . The only thing its good for is orbiting the earth . The president needs to drop the gauntlet for the defense contractors and tell them we need a reusable launch vehicle that has the capability to make an extraterrestrial landing .
I say we go back to the moon SOON and aggressively pursue that goal .
We need to do more than walk in space . We need to get to exploring the galaxy .
It's pretty obvious that birds are jealous of human spaceflight. First we invade the skies, and then we better them by going into space. It was probably taking advantage of the intense media coverage of this launch to try for a grand-scale terror event.
My god. How could the Bush administration fail to protect us? That bird should've been shot down by SAMs before it got anywhere near the shuttle.
This time were lucky: it wasn't a frozen chicken.
So, you have a simple pressure guague and measure the difference between observed pressure drop and your expected value of R. If the total discrepency exceeds some critical threshold, then there is a problem with the wing that would create a serious problem.
Now, measuring the temperature. There's this thing called a thermocouple. Dunno if you've come across these. It requires a couple of strands of wire, which you can run down the length of the wing quite easily. Alternatively, find a piece of metal in the wing that joins to a piece of metal that runs into the cockpit. Two types of metal, a temperature gradient, sounds like a cheapskate peltier device to me. Check the potential difference and you can detect unusual gradients with minimal effort.
Rescue mission: Uh, NASA themselves said that if there was a problem with launch that they would have Atlantis on standby for a rescue mission. Drudge might not have said it, but I don't give a damn about Drudge. I do give a damn about NASA's own statements.
The fact is, I've worked there and know how NASA operates. I know several of the contractors who build components for the shuttle. I've seen round their workshops, I've talked with their engineers. This doesn't sound like a lack of knowledge to me.
I don't need to defend myself in the face of those who really do know less than me, or even less than those who merely read the newspapers and bother to remember what was said by the people involved.
I don't need to defend how much I know. Repeatedly, as none of this is unique to this posting, I've said all of this in prior Shuttle and/or NASA debates when people have asked for my sources. Why should I keep telling people stuff that they could have looked up for themselves? All my postings are searchable on Google, same as everyone else's. If you wanted to know the extent of my knowledge, you wouldn't need to troll for it.
Can I prove I worked at NASA? Sure. You'll find my old NASA e-mail address on a number of Open Source projects I helped out with at the time. You don't know what those are? Seek and ye shall find. It's not hard to figure out.
Let's see. So, I have inside knowledge of the engineers, inside knowledge of the construction of the Shuttles, and inside knowledge of the political machinations of NASA. And I am the one with the faulty assumptions, working from knowledge I don't have?
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)
I get a chuckle thinking about our totally passive reentry heat/trajectory management systems and their horrid compromises. Ceramic foam bricks! Melting silicone rubber! Gassifying plastic! Gahhh!! Thousands of pounds of junk carried all the way up ( bad enough) and all the way BACK to the deck (absurd). And then the meticulous maintenance of each brick and its associated mortar- thousands of hours spent between flights. If engines or jet combustion chambers were built this way they would not have coolant or means of actively rejecting heat- few cars or jets would have been made I fear using this design rule. Megawatts of potential power flowing past you but only the most primitive glider-like means to manipulate it to control gamma and flight azimuth- truly a pathetic showing. And then the ever-present and dramatic " narrow window of entry" yeesh. We can do better but we need to open our eyes...
I was just looking at the pictures on the NASA site and I saw see a piece of debr... Never mind, it was just a bug crawling across my monitor.
i've got 2 words for you.
elevator
This is being spun as a great day for NASA and for the United States of America, One Nation, Under...
[whateverthefuck!]...
But my heart goes out to the next of kin of that poor bird. He never had a chance to get away.
Really sad that we have to slaughter poor, innocent creatures -- because they happen to get in the way, or happen to have brown skin or are otherwise in the way of us taking over their oil.
But don't let silly things like, oh, facts get in the way of all your flag-waving.
Oh, but don't let silly things like, oh, understanding the facts you presented from getting in the way of all your sophomoric insights.
The best thing that NASA could have done at the time to replace their shuttle fleet would have been to fund or buy Buran from the Russians when they ran out of money. the Russians built an amazing robot spaceplane in the 80's, something that NASA still has not achieved.
There was no neeed for a "robot spaceplane", and the the Buran was never intended to be used as a "robot spaceplane". Look, the shuttle could be remotely piloted, like any other aircraft. It's not because there's no point in remotely piloting a manned aircraft. The idea of remotely piloted manned aircraft was never popular in the US, even though the initial Soviet launch vehicles, specifically the Vostok. You can read all about it in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff.
A simple example:
If the shuttle's re-entry angle is wrong, EVEN WITH NO DAMAGE, airframe stress becomes critical, it breaks up and everybody dies.
If a Russian space capsule's re-entry angle is wrong, they experience slightly higher G-forces and the pickup helicopter takes a couple of minutes longer to reach them after parachuting to earth.
Let me point out the obvious. A capsule isn't an airplane; The shape of the object helps to determine what stresses it can take. The Russian capsules are compact gumdrops. The shuttle is long and wide. Of course it has a different stress pattern. I'm not even an aerospace engineer, and I know that.
NASA's shuttle is a bastard design created from political compromise: the military wanted it, the scientists wanted it, the politicians wanted it. As a result it works for almost nobody
No argument here.
and is a 30-year old deathtrap. I'm suprised the loss rate has been so low - I have no idea what drugs NASA is ingesting, I'll be very suprised if this one isn't lost as well.
Your sleep at the local Holiday Inn not withstanding, you don't know what you're talking about. You have some individual facts, but you don't have any understanding of them. Come back when you're actually a rocket scientist, and not simply just playing one.
The shuttle should be killed and replaced ASAP, preferably taking some serious clues from bulletproof no-compromise brute simplicity Russian space engineering -
I'm dissing the Russian space program, they managed to keep Mir flying well beyond its intended lifespan, but they have no funding, not equipment, nothing. They're plenty smart, but don't have the ability to actually implement anything they design.
which is currently the best in the history of the world (until the Chinese or commercial sector catches up and passes them).
Yeah. That's why "Russian" is synonymous with well built dependable products, and not rusting, broken, semi-dependable, and kind of sad given their former greatness.
The world has seen that fabulous Russian engineering during the Cold War. Like the Chinese, they copied. The TU-144? The Concorde. The Buran? The space shuttle. The A-Bomb? Given to them by the Rosenbergs. Then there's the whole fiasco with the soviet engineers touring the American factory with special soles on their shoes to pick up metal filings for future analysis.
Coming back to the space program, my favorite quote from the movie version of The Right Stuff comes from an American general learning about Sputnik. He asks the scientist, "Are you telling me their Germans are smarter than our Germans?" Who got space first? The Germans.
I grew up during the 80s, and was told by the
The goal of all NASA shuttle missions will be to search for damage on the shuttle after a launch and then return home. Today's itinerary involved camera checks of the shuttle. Tomorrow's itinerary? The shuttle crew will be doing an EVA to check the shuttle for damage.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Russian Space engineering is currently the best in the world?
Tell me:
How many Russians walked on the moon?
How many Russian missions to Mars?
How many Russian space telescopes?
While you're certainly right that Soviet politics caused a lot of harm to the Soviet space programme (The N1 Lunar rocket is a good example as well), the Soviets generally overengineered everything they designed, possibly because they were used to such low quality engineering and workmanship. The results became obvious later with the Soyuz boosters performing remarkably well with no serious problems even in the chaos of post Soviet Russia.
And if you take a look at the Energia booster (the most powerful booster ever, I believe), the thing just looks extremely robust, even if it only flew twice. Once to launch a military payload, and once to launch Buran.
But you're dead right about Buran. It's laughable to judge on the basis of one single flight.
As I posted on the Slashdot shuttle launch thread yesterday, minutes after launch, Sky News here in the UK spent a lot of time replaying the moment of launch showing something falling and hitting the tail of the shuttle just as it left the launch pad. Said object then bounced off the tail. This was clear to see on any of the shots of the launch so if you have TiVO or a VCR, watch it again. The object was silvery. Why isn't the media covering this? Didn't ANYONE else on Slashdot watch Sky News for the launch?
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Topic title: "Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch".
Summary: "While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle"
While I understand that finding dupes and checking for facts or reading the article are hard work, would you please at least check that the title and summary do not state exactly opposite things ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
An upright climb would probably incurr too much negative G for the crew, risking red-out I think. Either that or it would probably place too much load on the EFT struts and tear the EFT and boosters away from the orbiter before the fuel is finished consumption.
But otherwise it's a great idea.
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
Oh, but don't let silly things like, oh, understanding the facts you presented from getting in the way of all your sophomoric insights
Fair enough - I did go off on a rant there. However, I believe my original two points were true:
(1) Buran exists (or existed) and the Shuttle is not alone in return-from-orbit ability.
(2) Buran could carry more than the Shuttle.
Let me point out the obvious. A capsule isn't an airplane
Well, thanks for pointing that out. But why don't we leave the capsules with their almost 100% safety record for the people. Let the oven-ready robot spaceplanes carry the cargo until they are a little more mature.
That's why "Russian" is synonymous with well built dependable products, and not rusting, broken, semi-dependable, and kind of sad given their former greatness.
Yes, it is sad that the most Buran is doing lately is having a museum roof collapse on it because they can't afford to maintain the building it's in.
I grew up during the 80s, and was told by the media to fear the Russians because they would kill us all.
You must have watched too much TV. I also grew up in the 80s and never feared Russia. I do, however, remember when Buran launched and yearned for it to be the start of the cooperative space age - Russia using Buran and the US using the Shuttle to build the International Space Station was going to be the height of amazingly cool. I thought that it would be the start of the new space age that science fiction novels long for.
I was wrong, and I'm still upset about it.
That's the reason the Soyuz capsule sits on TOP of the Rocket. The other reason is that should the rocket explode (*cough* challenger *cough*), the astronauts still have a chance to survive.
The shuttle design is stupid.
You need to learn how to construct an argument.
You're right, I wasn't very clear.
You can't claim the Shuttle is a shitty compromised bastard design, and then also say that NASA should have bought and used the Buran
Right. Except that the Buran's tile system is more robust than the Shuttles (according to a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan).
Anyway, the Russians still had their capsules. Building Buran to be completely automated suggests that they intended it to be for the heavy lifting - and that they were still going to use the capsules for humans (as they still do now).
You can burn up a capsule with a re-entry angle which is too steep. Just like the Shuttle.
Yes, again you are right. But in the shuttle you have to maintain the craft's orientation by moving control surfaces. There's an angle of attack that must be maintained relative to the direction the craft is actually moving in. There's a system there that can fail.
A capsule is a teardrop shape. Once it's re-entry trajectory is defined, the shape of the craft gives it aerodynamic stability. The correct attitude will automatically be found and maintained by interaction with the atmosphere. Push it out of alignment and it'll drift back. You could be tumbling and that motion will simply be stopped by the airflow. Almost nothing can go wrong.
And you'll have to supply a link to the alloys you claim will withstand 3000 deg F
There's an introduction here in an article entitled building a better shuttle, scroll down to this bit:
"So-called hot structures would replace thermal tiles, heat blankets, and other thermal-protection devices external to the craft's skin. Instead of relying on the continuous shunting of heat away to prevent structural materials from melting, engineers are developing metallic alloys or ceramics that don't melt--or even lose strength--at any temperature they might encounter during space flight."
The specific search you want to use is "hot structure" spaceflight to find out more information. There's even a NASA paper from 1976(!) referenced in one of those links that talks about hot structures.
Maybe you should stop waving the hammer and sicle
Sorry about that, it was a gut flag-waving reaction to some flag-waving that pissed me off.
That is a completely assinine comparison. The fact that the Buran existed illustrates how inappropriate that comparison is.
But Russia still had/has their capsules. Buran was designed for heavy-lifting. Manned spaceflight wasn't the primary mission. I was trying to make the point that capsules are safer because less can go wrong.
And their technical merits can stand on their own without your help
Thanks. Next time someone posts a "USA #1" comment that's completely untrue, I'll just pat them on the head, sigh and leave them in their ignorance.
no biggy
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
My web domain.
Headline: Debris Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch
...
...
Summary: While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle
So Debris does not hit the shuttle, and someone decided to go with headline of Yes It Did!
And tomorow?
Headline: Bill Gates Seen Eating Babies!
Summary: While Bill Gates has never been seen eating babies, we did review his latest software release
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
I'm hardly an expert, but I thought the purpose of the tiles wasn't to simply survive heat but to prevent its conduction. Can you take a modern alloy of similar weight and thickness, heat one side with a torch and hold your hand on the other? Then you have a fair argument.
In that case, why don't they put the heat tiles on the inside of the shuttle - then they woulnd't keep dropping off...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Up until yesterday, the Russians (and the Chinese) still had the only spacecraft that could reach orbit and back without a fatal accident. Don't forget the very impressive Russian track record:
:) I like our cars, but not our manned spacecraft. You'd have thought it would be the other way around, no?
The first spacecraft was Russian.
The first animal in space was Russian.
The first man in space was Russian.
The first woman in space was Russian.
The first remote controlled vehicle on another planet was Russian (it drove 10km!)
The first probe to enter the atmosphere of another planet was Russian.
How many Russians walked on the moon?
We've not bothered going back either.
How many Russian missions to Mars?
That would be the Klipper, a manned vehicle capable of Mars, being jointly produced with the European Space Agency.
How many Russian space telescopes?
US focus now is on large ground-based scopes that are better than the Hubble. The problem is that you can't fit anything larger than the Hubble into the Space Shuttle. And in telescopes, mirror size is everything.
If you give me a choice of flying on a Russian or an American spacecraft - I'm choosing the Russian one. The funny thing is that I actually drive an American-made car.
So lets find a solution which is ok with falling debris. How about adding some lightweight cover on the sensitive shuttle parts? Something which quickly falls off when the shuttle reaches high velocity (air pressure) or evaporates when it reenters the atmosphere?
The space shuttle is 30 year old technology and has long outlived it's design life. The problem isn't so much in the design, it was successful. The real problem is that we aren't going to have anything to replace it with for quite some time.
That said, we should keep reusing the space shuttles untill we run out of either shuttles of astronauts willing to fly on them.
I reakon it was the missing WMD's!
So, let's imagine the NASA execs says they don't want to take any risk, and they send Atlantis or whatever other shuttle they have in standby. What if they *also* see debris there during launch and declare there is too much risk for that one as well, and they can't go back either...?
What then? a Mega-Soyuz magically comes and picks them up? Is there a backup backup plan?
Debris falling off are *part* of the launch. They should know that by now...
If this stuff just falls off all the time anyway, it can't be that important - why put it on there in the first place?
paintball
First of all it's not a "troll" it's at worst "flamebait." Secondly, it makes a legitimate point or three. Digg does look slightly interesting but it hardly has any readership, it's similar to any number of other sites, it's hardly any sort of imminent threat to Slashdot, and it's disingenuous of the grandparent to pretend otherwise.
Also, posting whiny criticisms about the articles accomplishes exactly nothing. An well thought out critical email to one of the editors will do more, to info@ostg.com or info@vasoftware, probably more, and to Slashdot's principal advertisers, probably most of all. Certainly, by continuing to read and post to the site, the grandparent poster is part of the alleged problem.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Perhaps this is naive, but I really can't help but think that it's about time to replace the shuttle. (I'll list my reasons below)
1. Each shuttle was designed to have an operational life of 10 years, all have surpassed this age.
2. The shuttle has not had an admirable safety record - It was expected that 1 in each 100 flights would be unsuccessful and end in total failure (like Columbia) however 2 in 113 have ended in failure. I'm not sure what statistical distribution this was modelled on, but surely the number of failures are significantly larger than initially postulated.
3. The shuttle has intrinsic design flaws due to the politics of the cold war - it was hoped that the shuttle could be used for launching reconnaissance satellites and consequently the shuttle had to be fitted with a much larger cargo bay and develop vastly more thrust to deliver the large (approx. 18 tonnes) payloads to polar orbits. It was also hoped by the airforce (who demanded these changes) that after a single orbit the shuttle could land (should the mission be aborted), (against the wishes of NASA who preferred a "splash down") and so the shuttle was fitted with delta shaped wings that are prone to being stuck by debris due to their large size. As a result of all of this additional weight the shuttle had to be fitted with high thrust SRB's which are completely uncontrollable (unlike cryogenic propellants used by Apollo et al).
4. The shuttle sits on the side of its fuel tanks making a detachment impractical should an abort be called at lift off.
If safety concerns were paramount, the shuttle really should have been much smaller, with little wings sitting on top of a rocket propelled by cryogenic fuels.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
I boggle.
Private efforts have already demonstrated that they can "prevent debris from falling off the tank" because they don't use the pork-barrel cluster-frell that is this "space shuttle" thing.
The space shuttle is a perfect example of design by committee, and budget by politicians. THAT is why it keeps failing. It's an expensive, unreliable method of getting into LOW earth orbit, a place that is practically useless which is why all the real payloads have to be brought up with their own boosters attached to them.
The most effective thing "we" could do for space travel is abolish NASA. Quit throwing good money after bad, auction off all their assets to the highest bidders and let it go already! Before more people die pointlessly.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I dunno about you, but it seems to me that "OMG, M$ is teh SUXXOR!!!!!" seems to be flamebait, not a troll.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Did anyone else read the title as "Debian Seen Hitting Shuttle During Launch"? :)
the only part that needs human interaction is the deployment of the landing gear, and that could be automated if they wanted to.
Any person with an IQ above mud will know that the America military has and has had for a very long time a shadow secret space how shall we say real space project with real black budget money, the American military with the help of companys such as skunk works and lockhead have all kinds of advanced space flight equipment, lets cut to the chase the real action so to speak regarding space has been no were near Nasa for decades. If this ship comes down and god forbid has an acident there are lots of poeple to blame just like there are lots of people presently to blame for the fact we are still using oil when we all have had the technology for years to be off that stupid form of energy, go read about roswell, go read the witness evidence at the disclosureproject, is all a big joke lets wheel out what we really have in space travel... there are plenty of plants out there china can have one they like and the states can have any one they like lets grow up the public are not babys and Id like to kick back and see abit of the universe and other life forms before I pass on to some were I have been shortly during an OBE experience (thanks bob monroe for your gateway course)
Learn to write English correctly. The bulk of what you have said is true, most people are brain washed by the media and believe every thing they are told. Alien life has been visiting Earth for thousands of years and most of the Slashdot community are aware of that. This is a good site. http://www.unknowncountry.com/ This is a great site. www.rense.com
to ensure that water doesn't leak into the thruster assemblies while the shuttle is sitting on the pad. They're designed to fall away during liftoff,and even have little parachutes.
I agree lets all stop pretending that Nasa has any thing to do with Americas future plans for space travel and dominance, that's an important point "dominance", America has and will continue to seek dominance "through Military" via selected High Tech black budget projects, lets talk about were all the back engineered UFo crash off world disk have gone and unless you are thick and unread on the subject yes there has been many.. I mean lets really throw the ball out here lets think about what the black ops have been doing for the last say 25 years "when tech really started with warm up", the first few years after crash retrial things were being sussed out and the theory was being understood over the last fifity years think about the advancements that have been gained, as said lets push the boat out here id guess or say that it is intirely possible certain other worlds are currently held, occupied or being used by special projects teams. If you read all the evidence and use your brain what I have said is MORE than realistic, how about..
Why the bird jumped? Had she just finished with her boyfriend or was it just some womens rights protest?
It was a copy of the NASA shuttle in concept and substantially in design. It had the same design criteria and mission goals. It flew one flight, unmanned and without cargo. Whether it was better or worse than the Shuttle at its intended tasks is pure speculation, as it never attempted any of them. And it was demonstrably less cost-effective than the Shuttle...unlike the Shuttle program, it ran out of money after one flight.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Well other aircraft empty their tanks.... ;-)
except for the post two minutes before it that also said the same thing
5 &cid=13172546t
And yet another reply which said the same thing and was posted a minute after mine got rated as "5, Insightful":
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15712
Doesnt it hit anyone that attaching a rocket tank to a space shuttle and blasting is way to space is kinda archaic ? here we in the year 2005 and we got all this tech guy toying around with the principles of matter and that kind stuff and humanity is still blasting his way to almost anywhere.i dunno i think is about time they ditch that and start seriously researching for a more secure / cost effective way of reaching space. just my lousy 2 cents
From HumanSpaceflight@yahoogroups.com and sci.space.shuttle:
5 7.wmv
Quoting DRLunsford :
> WB-57 chase plane video:
>
> wm.nasa-global.speedera.net/wm.nasa-global/RTF/WB
>
> There appears to be a burn-through of the SRB, as in the Challenger
> accident - first visible as a faint glow at about 1:28 and clearly
> visible by 1:47, shortly before SRB separation.
>
> -drl
> Herb Schaltegger Jul 27, 9:22 am
> Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
> From: Herb Schaltegger - Find
messages by this author
> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 09:22:33 -0500
> Local: Wed,Jul 27 2005 9:22 am
> Subject: Re: Burnthrough on SRB from WB57 video?
> It appears to be nothing more than recirculation of exhaust gases
> around the base of the stack due to flow separation at the low ambient
> pressure during that phase of flight prior to SRB sep, as seen on
> previous flights, but examination of the recovered SRBs (and the film
> from the SRB cams) will tell the full tale.
Now to my untrained eye, the plume that appears next to the lower segment on the SRB looks like a Challenger type plume. You can still see the glow after the SRB separates.
Neurowiz
The tile damage to the nose seems very minimal. I doubt it is worse than anything observed before. The big debris chunk seen after the separation of the right SRB was scary. If that hit the orbiter it would have been scary. Makes you wonder what happened in the vicinity of the left SRB. It is pretty obvious from the new video footage that the debris environment surrounding the orbiter prior to Columbia's demise must have been pretty bad indeed.
an ill wind that blows no good
"Debris Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch"
I thought that said :
"Debian Seen Falling Off Shuttle During Launch"
I looked twice to make sure!
If you can't wire it on or weld it on, you probably don't need it anyway.
WTF? Over?
+5 Informative? Yeah right. The Buran was a pathetic attempt to copy the U.S., and the thing only flew ONCE, UNMANNED!
And how do you compare Buran vs. Shuttle, then switch to Shuttle vs. capsule reentry without your brain melting?
We are sticking to the old Shuttle because the government won't fund a replacement that will eliminate precious jobs from Florida and Texas.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
More specifically, a deorbit burn (such as for the shuttle on reentry) is around 100 m/s (200 mi/hr). So if you can get the object anywhere near that velocity, it will reenter very quickly.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
BTW, the real problem with the new metals is mass. It takes at least 7 tons of fuel to carry 1 ton of heat shield (ignoring that you also need to add tank mass for the new fuel, requiring more fuel, etc.) At $5,000 per pound, adding mass is seen as a bad idea. Though an argument could be made that using the metals would lower the cost per pound...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Modern metal alloys are tough enough to survive re-entry without protection from heat tiles. Get that?
No, I don't get that, O Clueless One, because it isn't so. The white "Low" Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation tiles have to withstand up to 650 C, far above the point at which aluminum alloy has any strength and within 10 C of where it actually melts. The black High Temperature Reusable Surface Insulation tiles have to withstand 1260 C. This is way too high for even titanium or stainless steel. It is even too much for inconel, for God's sake. Get real.
How did a traffic warden manage to slap a parking violation on a shuttle?
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
So, we pay $5000 a pound to put up these large objects, bring them back, and spend $5000 a pound to put them into space *again*?
Go back to Saturns. Instead of spacehabs, have a real space station. Build it up every flight. Put the friggin robot arm on the space station.
But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.
Because its hard bolting down things
Cooperation is bogus, I like doing stuff on my own.