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Shuttles Grounded Once Again
PipianJ writes "After discovering that the piece of the shuttle that fell off mysteriously, not actually striking it, (as reported earlier) was a piece of foam insulation not unlike the piece that ended up in the destruction of Columbia, Yahoo News reports that NASA has once again grounded the shuttle fleet."
So how are they going to ground the one in orbit?
...how to keep the external tank completely intact, eh?
The point is, now that we're looking intensely for problems in this area, we're going to find them. We're looking with eyes, cameras, satellites, lasers, sensors, robotic arms - all with unprecedented scrutiny. What do we expect to find? The shuttles are the most complicated pieces of machinery ever built, designed to launch into space with a controlled explosion, and then return to earth. Regardless of whether some here think the shuttle is junk, whether it's unnecessary, whether Air Force jocks doomed the program for the beginning, whether manned spaceflight is sentimental tripe, etc., the fact remains that flying something like the shuttle is a risky endeavor.
It's all about smart management of risk. Eliminating risk, especially for something like the shuttle, is impossible. This focus on debris falling from the shuttle is nothing more than a reactionary CYA tactic in the midst of a media circus in case something else like this were to happen again. Doing get me wrong: it's wise to consider the problem, to attempt to prevent it, and to ensure there is not undue exposure. But that exposure cannot be eliminated, and this intense focus on debris in particular beyond anything else, even in light of Columbia, is unwarranted.
NASA is operating in panic mode: one more catastrophic shuttle failure, and that's the end of the shuttle program, and essentially the practical end of the ISS and a lot of scientific research to boot. If you're paralyzed with fear, you're, well...paralyzed.
This New York Times article, which I posted in the previous article on this, sums up the situation quite nicely, for those who may have missed it.
Notable:
"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 harder they look, they'll find more things."
"There is risk in anything you do."
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 an
I'm probably not the first to say it but...
Dangit, not again!
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
Isn't that kind of hard to do with one of them already in orbit? I thought that the idea was that they could scramble Atlantis for a rescue mission if Discovery was seriously damaged...
Does that mean Discovery is Spaced?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
They mean "grounded except for Discovery" right? I think it's going to be pretty hard to ground as it's orbiting at the moment.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
...to wake up to, if you're on the Shuttle in orbit! That has just GOT to be a major morale booster for the people currently in space.
"Uh, yeah. Remember Columbia? Well, to make sure it doesn't happen again, none of the Shuttles are going to fly. Oh, except you guys. You're cool. Trust us."
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This sounds like the death of US space travel, but maybe this will speed along a space shuttle replacement.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
NASA is a failed government venture and has become a laughing stock and waste of american tax dollars.
we need to give money to the private sector if we ever want to advance in space.
if aviation had stayed strictly military air travel would never have been as available as it is today.
Perhaps the shuttle fleet should be grounded permanently? We seem to be so intent on getting back into space that we don't actually fix anything.
What do you suppose Burt Rutan could have done with that kind of funding? This is a disgrace.
NASA needs to re-adopt the paint on the external tank. At least on the shuttle side of the tank, the foam insulation needs a coat of paint to eliminate the porosity of the foam. That will lock the ice out of the foam and prevent it from tearing it off the tank.
The paint probably ought to be non-stick coated to inhibit excess ice formation too. Then put heaters in critical locations to break up the ice while the shuttle stack is sitting on the ground, or still moving at slow speeds. That way, supersonic chunks of ice won't go zinging into the shuttle body and we don't have to wonder if we've launched another one way mission to space.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
If all the crews currently onboard Discovery wanted to try to come back, will they be allowed?
It'll be interesting if they managed to land safety, thus making this whole foam debris risk highly questionable.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I think that Atlantis is in need of a new Zero Point Module before it can be used for any rescue missions.
(*Damn* I hate that show.)
...to code. Imagine a company actually waited until no more bugs could be found before shipping a product. We'd never see applications on sale.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
In the two years since the shuttle program has been grounded, you think out goverment could have pumped more money into NASA to build a new transport craft.
The Space Shuttle fleet is decades old technologically speaking and desperatly needs to be retired. There have been several attempts. I think it was the X2 I watched live collapse as one of its tripod legs broke.
The shuttle simply shouldn't even be in use today. I realize the cost of a replacment design would probably reach into the billions, which seems like an awful waste of money with all the problems we face here on the Earth, but it is something that NASA and Congress have put off for way too long. The shuttle needs to be retired.
-Sumit
This looks like a simple and fundamental design flaw. Now if they had attached the main tank and boosters to the other side of the shuttle the vulnerable tiles would be out of the way of anything that falls off.
Why keep using technology that is proven unsafe, proven cost-inefficient, obsolete, slow to develop and deploy, and one-size-fits-none? Just to show that you still can? I, for one, am glad. Time to move on, design and build something smart, safe and economically good, that won't be a cold-war-era presidential "ego" extender, but a set of tools to bring different stuff into space and do it well.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
maybe this is a case where the private sector will eventually take care of this. it took a ton of tax dollars from the USA and USSR to get their space programs to where they are now, but maybe something like the shuttle should be picked up by 3rd parties?
i might be oversimplifying things, but all the data on the space shuttle exists, after 20 years there is enough info that another country, corporation, whatever could pick it up and run with it. i realize it is an incredibly complicated and dangerous thing to do, but maybe they need fresh blood to attack the current issues.
maybe NASA should focus the bulk of their efforts on breaking new ground? that's what they traditionally were great at. use tax dollars to do something groundbreaking and get people excited about space exploration again.
it may sound crappy, but how many medicines have their early research funded by tax dollars, then the product ALWAYS ends up in the hands of a private corporation. i don't know if that's right, but maybe the same idea could be applied here?
this is troll, but the being.. its is clearly obvious that there are better modes of getting into space nowandays.. look at all the new non-government space projects getting into space and back with much less money thrown into it all. granted, there is MUCH more sophisticated insturments for scientific research on NASA's ships, if they were to throw all the great scientific tools into a better mode of getting into space, then we wouldnt have all this waste of tax money (grounding shuttle flights, exploding shuttles, etc.. cost much money).. its just the truth, and eventually we will be forced to change.. i think his "we are gounding all shuttles until this is figured out" really translates into "we need to find a completely new design for this shit".. and that is in complete honesty
It would certainly aid in the evaluation of why the insulation fell off this time.
I noticed that the view from one of the tank-mounted cameras showed the tank kind of oscillating; going from perfectly round to oval in one direction then the other. It was really visible, clearly not an artifact of vibration. The struts, shuttle, etc. were perfectly still. I'm sure that's accounted for in the pliability of the foam insulation, but still it must be one of the challenges to keeping the foam intact.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
That's probably because a leaky DLL never caused the server to explode, instantly killing the entire IT staff.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Maybe after all these years, perhaps going with the lowest bidder wasn't the best strategy.
I see it! I see it! http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/TECH/space/07/27/space .shuttle/top.shuttle.debris.jpg
See that red arrow? THAT'S what hit the shuttle!
They can just send up the military space crew on the military space shuttle and they have to follow orders even if they might die in the process.
... it's almost like they are spending all the money in some far off land for something noone really cares about ... oh, wait ...
Seriously, other nations don't try to fly 20+ year old space hardware, why are we so far behind
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The foam didn't even strike Discovery! It's just that it *fell off* at all, and the fact that everyone is paying attention to it now because of Columbia.
Yes, they'll be coming back. And no, it won't be particularly interesting if they land safely, because the foam didn't even hit the shuttle, not to mention that the shuttle has been hit by debris over 15000 times in the history of the program. Over a hundred tiles alone fall off and need to be replaced on every mission.
There's nothing interesting about this except the media circus. It's to bad they don't pay more attention to the *actual science* that NASA is doing with the shuttle, on this and the hundred-some other missions instead of obsessing over foam.
Let's see here: budget cuts, failing space program, failing economy, global criticism regarding human injustices abroad, rapid decrease of freedom and increase of governmental power...sounds alot like the SOVIET UNION doesn't it?
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
First of all, I'm pretty sure grounding the shuttle program means all the launches scheduled from now on are cancelled until further notice.
As for the shuttle in orbit, the astronauts have been trained to replace damaged insulation/tiling in space and so I assume they will fix this part of the shuttle while in space before re-entry.
I knew it was odd when those NASA guys bought all that glue at Big Lots the other day :(
I wonder where the other $999,999,995.00 in repairs went.
what do we expect to find? The shuttles are the most complicated pieces of machinery ever built, designed to launch into space with a controlled explosion, and then return to earth.
we expect to find what we did not see before.
we expect to improve the design drastically, so that it is no longer the most complicated pieces of machinery ever built
moore's law works on the shuttle too. if only NASA, and the government goons, would open the development and research funding to the public market.
it is about time hyundai were making launch capsules, or Mercedes at least. let the shuttle only drive that issue forward. please.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The shuttle as currently configured is simply a bad design. If they had just put the booster tank behind the shuttle like every previous rocket, instead of beside the shuttle, then it wouldn't matter what fell off the booster -- it couldn't possible strike the shuttle! I've been told the shuttle was originally designed to be launched off the back of another aircraft at a high enough altitude that it wouldn't need the booster. If this is true, then the booster itself is a last-minute kluge -- no wonder it doesn't work properly!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I see it! I see it! See that red arrow? THAT'S what hit the shuttle!
This is why I always use blue arrows. Red arrows are dangerous.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I guess you've never heard of an embedded system.
Those can't ship with bugs. Try applying a patch to several hundred 512 byte micros that are controlling the charging systems on the shock paddles in hospitals.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Jokes about the shuttle fleet being grounded while one is on orbit aside But I ... was just about to .. then you ... and I ...
You preempted my clever +5 Funny -- which I was all about to post with a high degree of self satisfaction -- in the first CLAUSE of your comment, DAMN YOU DAVE SCHROEDER, DAMN YOUUU!
Give the rest of us a chance at some karma, wouldja? ... I told them not to touch the red stapler ... then on Slashdot ... said to put the joke aside ... aside, I tell you ... going to burn down the server ...
The Parent poster is cracking a joke, referring to the science fiction show "Stargate: Atlantis". There is no such thing as a "Zero Point Module" yet.
... It's DONE.
Time to send 'em to museums, and develop a modern, robust system based on all we've learned from 20+ years of 'experimentation' with reusable spacecraft.. Maybe see if the Skylon has merit...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Nothing that's worth doing doesn't have a risk of failure, possibly even a risk of life. Exploration of space is no exception. But we were lucky for so long that we forgot this. Now, the idea of astronauts taking a risk, or possibly dying during a flight is simply unacceptable to too many Americans. We have to accept the fact that people will die doing this, and that they willingly took that risk. Yes, we need to develop a better way to go to space than the shuttle, but we have to regard astronauts as specialized test pilots, not fragile figurines that must be protected at all costs.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
In practise it may have questionable impact to NASA capibilites but the public perception could be devastating. It just adds more fuel to the fire when people talk about cutting funding. In a subtle way NASA may never recover from this one.
The Shuttles have been grounded for 2 1/2 years, what's another 2 1/2 while the next gen space race moves forward?
...
Not 2 1/2 years, they seem to love Five Year Plans in DC nowadays
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You've obviously never worked in Critical Systems then..
NASA's bumbling makes the Pentagon look like the paragon of efficiency -- time for space exploration to be returned to the Air Force. That or just sell ISS to the Russians and back out of the whole thing except maybe satellite launching, which we still know how to do the old-fashioned way with a single-use multistage.
Just wait until the computers controlling cars start embedding Windows. Insert lame crash joke here.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Need A Shuttle Alternative
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Good
I hope I got the correct link.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Is the article's characterization "grounded" based on anything more substantial than the near-tautology "Until we're ready, we won't fly" from the cited article?
The same could've been said about the fuel sensor malfunction.
I wonder how risky was the cross atlantic sailing were in the mid 1500's. I am sure mortality was a lot higher then 1% then it is with the shuttle program. If you are going to ground the fleet when a takeoff was near perfect and inspection did not show any problems, but there was a bit of derby that the experts expected anyways, just seems like the politicians are in control and have no courage, because there are a few winers about it (Which would consist of probably the same percentage of people that the morality rate of the shuttle). Yes compared to Airplain, Boats of this era, and even cars, The shuttle is dangerous, that is why highly skilled pilots are on board, because it is dangerous.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
so, Thom Patterson - CNN reported last night that it was a 1.5" piece of tile. MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer - on the yahoo! news - says that it's a "sizable chunk of foam insulation -- the very thing that doomed Columbia" - but then later says that it was indeed a 1.5" piece of tile while in the latest report from yahoo! it's simply "a large piece of foam insulation broke." interesting to see this evolve. at least it's not being sensationalized...
Enought moaning about this. There are people with a few brain cells to spare here, why not come up with an idea or two on how to stop this happening instead of complaining.
Why not put a fine nylon net over the fuel tank to prevent the larger chunks of foam from hitting the shuttle?
While I'm sure they have a lot of guys working on this problem, I have no reason to suspect that this wouldn't work. It would also be fairly cheap, light, and would not require a complete redesign.
What do you think? Any other ideas?
Being a supporter of manned space flight, I hope foam problem proves intractable and we abandon the shuttle, and consequently, the ISS. The shuttle and the ISS are the two biggest obstacles blocking a serious manned space program.
Instead of investing time, money energy into a real, sustainable manned space program we are wasting these resources maintaining an outdated, technically backward monstrosity that is barely even a faint echo of the reusable space truck it was originally designed as.
Sometimes the smartest thing to do is take a step back, rethink strategy and then take two steps forward.
What is needed is a lobbbying effort to ground the shuttle. It won't be easy. Too many powerful congressman's district depend on the pork of lucrative shuttle and ISS contracts.
not true.
someone is confusing the fact the shuttle is transported cross country on the back of a jumbo jet with the idea the shuttle could be launched from one. (it can't, and nothing really could either.)
it's not a last minute kludge, it was designed from the very beginning that way.
The Columbia was damaged by a chunk of foam striking the shuttle at liftoff. Now, the Discovery lifts off and a big chunk of foam falls off. The fact that it missed the shuttle this time is irrlevant. NASA has proved in tests that the foam can cause fatal damage when it hits the tiles so if they cannot prevent chunks of foam from falling off at liftoff, then the shuttle must be grounded until they can solve the foam problem. This isn't rocket science...well, okay, maybe it is.
Yes, I know the shuttle is a heavily modified jet, but do we really need a full straight-up-in-the-air launch? Is there any reason a differently designed heavily modified jet can't take off like a regular jet and keep climbing at an angle into space? Regular jets have been doing this safely for years, so rather than stop at 27,000 feet, why not create a space-equipped jet to keep climbing?
I'm no rocket scientist by any means, but why the burst straight up versus a more "normal" take-off? Is there any such thing as a hydrogen-powered jet engine? Can one be engineered with the millions upon millions that NASA gets in funding each year?
Just a thought, please give some insight if I'm way off base in my thinking here or if I'm wrong on some of the details, but I hope you get my point.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
It's time. We don't need spacecraft with foam layered on it. We need something different or build some new 'tanks' without the need of thick foam.
It's laughable that foam was used in the first place on the exterior.
The shuttle was originally to be the second stage of an Apollo V launcher. Why was it rejected? I bet it had more to do with politics and pork barreling than anything else. One advantage would have been less cross-sectional area for drag.
Not true.
Certain computing systems absolutely must operate reliably. Unfortunately, modern engineering does not offer a solution to the problem due to a number of constraints.
Essentially, teams setting out to write flawless systems will be practically incapable of doing so in reasonably complex instances.
Because of this, we use redundancy. It is of note, however, that people have been killed by buggy software, and that this is something that we can control with proper practices (by which I don't mean any of the more asinine things that the industry has come up with).
Instances of software both behaving well, and killing people because of malfunctions, can be found in domains such as health care and the military.
So a piece of foam that was like the one that hit Columbia fell off - the key difference being, that this one DIDN'T hit the shuttle.
On one hand, I can understand NASA's safety concerns - but, at the same time, it seems that they didn't do a lot to change the external fuel tank - its construction, etc. In fact, you could even say that this is why the shuttle was grounded from a July 13 launch - the sensor that was faulty was built in 1989.... they considered it to be in 'good condition', but, I mean, if it's a 16 year old piece of equipment, how good of condition is that? (I'm not exactly sure how this could be true - external tanks aren't reused, and so unless NASA stockpiled them in the late 80's, the tank would be newer; did the article just mean that it was a 1989 design?)
On the other hand - we know that pieces of foam have fallen off twice in the past 2 launches - once with devastating effects, and once without. I don't know if anyone at NASA saw fit to review old launch tapes and look for falling insulation à la the stuff that struck Columbia, but it seems possible that, given the construction of the external tank, it might be relatively common - and thus, nothing THAT BIG to worry about since its only been a problem 1/115 times. (Its still an inherent design flaw).
So, now the shuttle fleet is grounded again - will it be another 2 1/2 years? Making it early 2008 before the shuttle flies again? I mean, if it seems like foam just flies off of external tanks, the only way to REALLY solve this problem would be either encasing existing tanks in a new (heavy, expensive) "exo-tank," or just designing new tanks, right? I mean, this isn't some minor design consideration.
All this makes me think... with NASA already pressing for a new manned vehicle by 2010, are the powers that be in NASA just saying, "We don't want to fly the shuttle anymore, its a $2bn death trap, doesn't get us cool places and is damned inefficient at lifting cargo" and asking instead to concentrate on a new vehicle, just forgetting about the shuttle? I mean, if NASA spends $500m and 30 months modifying the shuttle fleet just to retire it 24 months after that, that seems dumb, right? Even by government standards?
Anyone?
Tim
If they had continued with development of the X-33 instead of turning it over to the Air Force and canceling the NASA development work, we would probably have a replacement by now. Instead, it will take probably a decade and substantially more money to bring a replacement vehicle to fruition from this point.
I suspect that politically, the manned space program is dead here in the US, given the huge budget deficits and slipping technology base.
There is the possibility that a superior insulating technology will be arrived at quickly and the remaining few shuttles might fly again, but I wouldn't bet on it. There is too much to be gained politically by stabbing the wounded for that to be allowed to happen.
Ah, the problem is that we can't build any more shuttles right now and don't have a replacement ready.... So losing one more shuttle would be a major inconvenience.
Otherwise.... 1-2% chance of being a martyr vs. 98-99% chance of being a genuine hero...
Gentoo Sucks
*incoming!*
...In Soviet Russia, the Buran fleet grounds you!
"42"
Since the reason for the foam insulation on the tank is to prevent condensation from forming on the ground between the time the tank is filled with liquid fuel, and the time of launch, and is not needed past T-0, how about this?:
Jettison the foam at T-0, during engine ignition.
Velocity at that point in time is low enough that no foam strikes will have any chance of damaging orbiter tiles.
The foam and ice stay on the ground. The orbiter, and tank, go up. Probably a few thousand pounds lighter, as well.
Sure, there's the problem of getting all of the foam off in a few seconds, leaving none behind. Maybe by forming the foam around a fine, mesh netting, and attaching that netting to the ground via cables, it all slips right off at T-0.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You mean the earth pin of my old SN41G2's power supply has been unconnected all this time??? What a safety hazard!
didn't they hit a bird?
is there a plan for fowl avoidance?
I seem to remember a caller on CBS telling us why the Columbia failed.
I beleive it was shot down by Jackie Martling because he throught Howard Stern was on board.
I am pretty sure that is the reason as another caller claimed that a tooth from Gary Dell'Abate (aka Baba Booey) fell off the shuttle into this guys yard.
It was on real live TV. So, it must be true.
5.3 VFI... (VERY Fuckin' Informative)
5.5 WFI... (Wayy Fuckin' Informative)
5.7 TFI... (Tooo Fuckin' Informative)
5.9 YBA... (Yo' Brains'll Asplode)
For sucky sig
(i hate clicking on that shit)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Not really.
The X-33 was over-budget, late, and suffering major development problems. The performance was getting worse and worse. And then you would have had to hope that Lockheed-Martin was willing to put up their portion of the funds to build the production booster.....
And, at the same time, Iridium was bankrupt, "Dark Fiber" was eating into comsat requirements, etc.
And worst of all the Skunk Works had said, "Hey, we've been building all kinds of classified stuff all these years. I know that nobody in the public field can make a multi-lobed composite hydrogen tank, but we can pull one off, winkwinknudgenudge" So when it was shown that they couldn't, people lost faith. Especially because the only actually novel, testable parts of it was that multi-lobed composite hydrogen tank and the linear aerospike... everything else wasn't going to be getting a proper workout because it wasn't going to have enough speed to really properly test the metal skinned TPS or much else.
The problem was the X-33 was the riskiest design of the three contenders. So it was mostly doomed from the start....
No, they'll probably figure out how to dust off the shuttle yet again and fly it. Remember, it's just the PAL ramp that's the problem, so they might just be able to change it to using a metal cover.
Gentoo Sucks
But there are factions within NASA that are either infatuated with shuttle or are afraid that the loss of the shuttle will mean the loss of their jobs- even though the exploration initiative will saturate every center with new work- it just might not be the same as what the have been doing for the past 20 years. Often these are folks who know shuttle like the back of their hand but are out of step with where the rest of the industry has gone since 1981.
This concept is still being assessed by NASA and there is still hope that it may be selected. The designers want everyone to see this truly wonderful concept- it really ROCKS (and could have been developed with the money already spent on shuttle return to flight). It is not bigger than shuttle or as impressive at launch but it has it where it counts- flexibility, power and mission capability. It could put us on the moon way before 2015.
Oh and it doesn't have any external foam either.... and if I do say so it is darn pretty- a sort of functionality-driven simplicity and elegance of form.
... is that the average slashdot poster is not as smart as a rocket scientist. :p
Close, but not quite.
The shuttle-as-the-second-stage-of-a-Apollo V was an alternative to the SRBs later in the design.
I liked that idea signifigantly better, because the Saturn V stage would have been useful for other things...
The shuttle was initially supposed to be all-reusable. Two shuttle-vehicles would launch together and one would go all the way to orbit and the other would go back to the ground. They could do it, but not in the budget given with the performance required. They could have made it smaller but fully reusable and in budget, or use a drop tank and make it bigger and stay in budget.
Gentoo Sucks
If aviation had stayed strictly military air travel would never have been as available as available as it is today
That is a bad example. Aviation did stay mostly military until WWII. And paradoxically it was the WWII military forces of both sides that finally enabled postware airlines to take up the thread where it was left by the pioneers like Lufthansa, Pan American etc.. before the war. Both the old airlines that survived the war and the mulitude of new ones founded by ex military pilots prospered after WWII not only because the technological advances in military aviation over the war years spilled over into the civillian sector and because of the easy availability of cheap surplus mlitary transports. Air travel is commonplace today because hundreds of thousands or even millons of soldiers on both sides during WWII had been regular passengers on miltary transports during the war and had come to regard air travel as normal mode of travel where as it was considered an exotic luxury before the war.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
side mounted payloads on rockets make no sense. Side mounted payloads that include living, breathing people are even stupider. Inline rockets with launch-escape towers don't have to worry about falling foam or other debris hitting brittle cutting-edge materials. Spacecraft should be delibrately robust, not fanciful and unnecessarily dangerous.
So, NASA, you proved the point. If enough money gets thrown at the problem, yes, anything can fly. Even pigs and white elephants.
The count as I understand it: one debris strike knocked off a piece of wheel-well tile, one bird got skewered on the ET during liftoff and the huge chunk of foam narrowly missed the right wing after SRB separation. Any other "anomalies"?
I just hope that Discovery makes it back safely. After she returns, let's put the Orbiters in museums for a well deserved rest. It's been a good run, but these birds are done.
If you've read my other posts here, you know my solution to the "ISS needs Shuttle" line.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Is it not clear to everyone that these vehicles are
a DEAD HORSE and that they, and most of the NASA beaurocracy
and engineering going on into this is
about as fruitful as flogging that dead horse.
Why does the US seem unable to deploy the expertise
that it has and spend these research and devopment
funds wisely,
all the existing crew seems good at is dreaming up
slogans:
RETURN TO FLIGHT --- nonsense
Abandon this mess, and find some good engineers,
fire the spinners and apologists!
sorry, but not beeing able to lift off a shuttle properly in 2005... nasa is just a bloated beurocracy. open the space for private investors, and all will be fine
beer as in "free beer"
So, NASA will put the remaining shuttles on eBay and some geek with a lot of money will buy one, case-mod it and then try to sell it as a "Shuttle Case". Then he will get sued, saying that that name has been taken... Hmmm.
It seems to me, and take this w/ a pound of rock salt as I'm no rocket scientist, but the problem of freezing and flaking foam is a really difficult one. I presume some really smart people have been working on solving this issue and a simple solution doesn't exist. It also seems that the whole reason it's an issue at all, is because the vehicle and the rocket are launched side-by-side -- in other words, if you put the launch vehicle on top of the rocket, let the foam flake off, it won't have anything to hit. Of course, a capsule on top of a rocket probably doesn't have the cargo capacity of the shuttle. Would it be possible to do a double launch though? Shoot up the cargo on one rocket, and shoot up the astronauts on another, then have them rendevous in orbit. It might make an OK interim solution until a new shuttle system free of current problems could be developed.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
NASA has just narrowly avoided another tragedy.
I have two things to say.
1. Come on. A piece of foam almost killed everyone on a rocket for the second time. Can't they be more careful?
2. I don't want my tax money going towards this. Private companies are doing better. If the government didn't suck the life out of my bank account, I'd be more than willing to donate money to a company that has a competent space program.
How much are they going to spend to get these ten (or less) flights going? Also, it could be substantially less than ten flights. If there is another accident, that will be the end. If there is another safety problem after the foam, that could also be the end. So ten more flights is a best-case scenario.
When the shuttle was originally sold to Congress in the 70s and 80s, they said it would be a cheap way to get stuff into orbit, because it's reusable and they could fly them routinely (once a month or more). In practice they have never made anywhere near that number of flights and now we'll be lucky to get half a dozen more flights from the fleet before it's over.
Isn't it time to cut the losses on this boondoggle? It seems that they should have cut the losses on it years ago, and with the current situation, it makes more sense than ever.
Don't fix this safety problem. Don't fix any more safety problem. Find three museums that want to house the remaining shuttles.
------------
mobile search - coming soon
Part of the problem here is that space exploration is inherently dangerous and risky. There is no way you will ever remove all of the risk -- and because of this there will be future accidents and loss of life while we explore the stars. The men and women who volunteer to do this are extremely courageous individuals that should be honored and thanked many times over. Each time a shuttle goes up, there are a million ways something can go wrong yet only one way everything can go perfectly. NASA, along with the government and general public, must understand that although the risks associated with space flight are huge, the potential rewards are far greater. Hopefully our government will give NASA the funding needed to develop a better way to put people in orbit. Until that time, we must realize that there are risks associated with each launch but we must keep aiming for the stars because, in the long run, humanity stands to gain far more than the risks from occasional loss of life that occur when something goes horribly wrong.
The foam in question insulates the disposable fuel tank so ice doesn't form on it. It does not reach orbit and is not part of the shuttle. The problem with the previous shuttle was that the foam hit the shuttle tiles as it fell off. Since this foam did not hit the shuttle, there is no problem with it.
Infuriate left and right
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 7palrampimages/
looks an awful lot like the unidentified chunk of debris that missed the starboard wing (scroll to bottom of link).
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 6images/
...the Russian space fleet consist of spacecraft made out of old tin cans - and they work.
And yes, in Russia tin cans are made of old spaceships.
Yup - use goose feathers.
;-)
They are waterproof so moisture should not be a problem. Goose fat can be used for this.
They have excellent thermal properties
They are lightweight and don't form chucks.
They were made for flying and have been tested for millions of years.
The birds that provide the feathers can be used for other purposes - IE - we can eat em!
One way to attach the feathers might be to use skin. Maybe they can be tanned then sewn together like a giant touque. If NASA puts a zipper then at lift off perhaps the zipper can be unzipped and all the feathers can fall away.
An insulating system like this should be reuseable - all NASA has to do is wisk it away from the fire at the bottom.
... rebar?
Seems to me the problem is that it isn't strong enough from just spaying. So how about a mesh, or fibreglass base (or top) coat to avoid this?
No, you are talking nonsense,
the entire reason for the shuttle was to make
frequent, 3 x weekly, launches, which it has never
done!
The design is a failure, that much is obvious,
what is not obvious is hou long the oversight,
which should come from the Congress will let this
waste of taxpayers money coninue.
NASA just need one sentence in their request for more budget. "We found terrorist in space, send us money."
putting the insulation inside the tank, or making a double-wall tank, like a thermos?
What I'd like to see is NASA, the ESA, China, Japan, India, Pakistan and any other country who wants to join in working together to get things into orbit.
Like putting man on the moon, the shuttle design was heavily influenced by the need for a propaganda tool. My hope is that we are reaching a climate where there will be more political captial in achieving world peace and unity - maybe these powerful political forces can be channeled more productively.
I like the idea of a space elevator. Unfortunatley the viablity of the shuttle is not just an engineering decision. There's too much political capital in a vision of X-wing fighters buzzing about the place. America might be able to lead the way on this one while its still ahead. Pretty soon though I'll have to be making the same appeal to the Chineese. Which is OK by me, but I want to see us working together productively on this sooner rather than later.
To quote "The Right Stuff" (the movie, not the book): "You know, I went to my high school reunion and all my old girlfriends were talking about how cut throat and stressful their husband's lives were. I wonder how they would feel if when their husbands left for work in the morning, there was a one in four chance he might get killed."
I don't know how close that one in four odds are to being accurate, but back in those days the death rate among test pilots was frightfully high. And yet they continued doing it, and it is due to those pilots that we are in space now.
How much is space worth to us? Is it worth the ~2% chance (based on what's happened in the past) of a shuttle disaster? If we can't lower that risk below 2%, should we never leave this planet again?
Tiles fall off. Fell off the first shuttle, will fall off the last. If none fell off, it wouldnt be a good use of engeneering. Examples: Airplane wings bending. SR-71 leaking fuel until it gets up to speed.
"If the shuttle was made in Japan, no tiles would have fallen off." - Head of MITI, Japan, regarding the first shuttle launch.
It is reasonable to expect that a new car that you buy will last 100,000 miles with no major malfunctions. This is because everything in a car is basically designed (as much as possible) with a 100% safety margin. For example: drive trains can usually handle twice as much power as the engine can produce etc. Experience has shown that this is the way to do engineering of something which can be expected to work reliably.
However race car drivers are pleased if they can get 500 miles out of a race car when the performance is pushing the limits of what the machinery can do.
The shuttle is to a high performance jet fighter what a 21st century Formula 1 car is to a 1947 Ford. The shuttle is by a huge margin the highest performance reusable vehicle every built by anybody anywhere at anytime. There is nothing else even close.- with the possible exception of the Soviet version of the shuttle - which was never flown manned.
Can we make the shuttle as safe as a passenger jet? Absolutely, we know how to do that. What we don't know how to do is make it that safe and still be light enough to get off the ground, let alone lift a crew and cargo into orbit.
Space flight is dangerous, but so was sailing across the ocean in wooden boats - where would we be today if no one had ever possssed the courage to do that?
If they cannot land the shuttle there's always the Space Station. This would mean up to seven new astronauts/cosmonauts in addition to the two already stationed there. In which case they'd run out of food and other resources pretty quick. The Russians would have to launch a Soyez to send provisions until they figure out how to get off that island.
"Now sit right back
and you'll hear a tale,
the tale of a fateful trip
That started from Cape Canaveral
abord this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailerman
the skipper brave and sure
five passengers set sail that day
on a nine day tour
***
The weather was impeccable
but the insulation foam was lost
if not for the courage of slash dot chat
the Discovery would be lost..."
***
The crew set foot on the ISS
a small galactic isle....
[...what comes next?!]
The budget has gone up, not down. Further, tax revenues were will above expectations this year.
Failing economy
Unemployment is at 5%. You could possibly argue that the shit is getting ready to hit the fan, but most economist will disagree with you. It isn't the 90's, but it sure as hell isn't the 30's either.
global criticism regarding human injustices abroad
The global criticism around US human rights injustices doesn't even exist on the same scale as the Soviet Union. You would have as much luck comparing Texas executions to the Nazi holocaust.
rapid decrease of freedom and increase of governmental power
I am not sure what Soviet Union you are talking about, but the one I recall had a rapid INCREASE in freedoms and a rapid DECREASE in governmental power right before it all fell apart. Further, I would hardly call what is happening in the US a "rapid decrease in freedoms". The US still maintains extremely liberal speech and protest laws. Hell, I was in DC during the height of the anit-war protests, and the place felt more like a hippie commune then a Gestapo police state.
Um. No.
The US might be declining. It might fade away to something more like Britain. It will always be a power, but perhaps not THE power. It certainly isn't going to go like the Soviet Union though. The key difference between the US and all other "empires" is that the US has an extremely stable political system and civil society. Hell, it could be argued that the US has one of the MOST stable political systems in the world. The US might be young as a nation compared to Europe, but it has one of the worlds longest running continuous governments in the world. The US political system is so stable that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could pull it apart, and if there is a nuclear holocaust in the US, you can bet some other place in the world is now the world's largest pane of glass.
The decline of the US is going to be very slow and very boring. The few territories the US holds are connected to the US only in that the US military will defend them. Other then that their governments are almost completely autonomous and could break off at any point. US military bases would be evacuated before they would fight over the land, as a base in the middle of hostile territory isn't worth anything anyways. I hate to dash your hopes, but the decline of the US is going to be dull.
The only possible exciting part would be a battle for Taiwan... but that would suck for everyone, even those not involved. The economic damage would make the fighting look like pocket change.
hawk
A nice black nylon stocking over the tank...
Functional, and, the shuttle would look *SEXY*
It would look like.... a MAJOR AWARD.
Aside from sending cos/J-astro-nauts up to the ISS, aren't they doing other things, too, such as secret missions?
Maybe they have a bird or two up there than needs human hands on it, and maybe the tile/foam falling off (real or digitally contrived) is an excuse to delay the shuttle so some secret repairs or bird releases can occur.
Why is almost everyone in here biting the foam video bit. We already know that over 10,000 foam strikes have happened since the shuttles first launched, and only TWO losses, one to faulty seal, and one to an unfortunately-located set of missing tiles. Hell, for all we know, other missions were probably near-fatals once inspectors went to work doing their near-rebuilds.
On the other hand, if it's not special bird ops, then some payload experiments that got backed up but not launched on rocket missions might have sued to get their projects on-line. Maybe they threatened NASA that if they don't meet such and such deadline, they'd divert funding efforts to non-shuttle alternatives that might prove a hastening fatal for NASA.
Could be other things going on here, boys/girls.
Hah!!! Anti-Script word image: PROTON...
I AM CAPTAIN PROTON!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Not to downplay the importance of the safety of the astronauts currently in space, but here's something else...
This probably means an end to the Hubble telescope. NASA had said that a mission to do maintenance to the Hubble wasn't worth the risk, and their wouldn't be such a mission, since going to the Hubble would leave the shuttle unable to get to the ISS if necessary. Then it started sounding like maybe they were reconsidering a trip to the Hubble. But now it obviously won't happen.
Go figure, a government protected monopoly needs more time, more money, and more people to fix a recurring problem.
I call shens on NASA.
Seriously, other nations don't try to fly 20+ year old space hardware, why are we so far behind... The Soyouz design is older (recall the Soyouz-Apollo joint mission). The difference is that the shuttle is a (mostly) reusable rocket ship, the first design of its kind. Soyouz is a crew capsule launched atop one-time-use rockets, based on lessons learned from earlier designs. But no matter what ship you fly in, space travel is a difficult and dangerous undertaking. Space travelers are more akin to test pilots than to airline crews, a situation I expect will remain true for a long time to come.
That's the occasion for NASA to ask for more funding for the next generation spacecraft program!
>the entire reason for the shuttle was to make
>frequent, 3 x weekly, launches, which it has never
>done!
Right, and the reason it doesn't is because of whiners like you. You can't get practical experience with all the engineers sitting around on their hands and worrying about *everything* that could go wrong. You have to have some cajones and go for it. It's not the Astronauts that are holding the thing up. It's nancy pants like you and politicians with an axe to grind who are making this thing "fail".
Just what safety problems have they been working on these last couple years?
You're about the 30th person to say this, so I'm thinking you're joking. If not, please, proceed to the nearest highway and lay across the left lane at night.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The message to all astronauts, every time, is "You'll probably survive." And that's the most anyone should expect. Discovery's crew knew that before they took off, and they knew it after they learned that something fell off, and they know it now.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Besides, we need more money to fight those darn terrorists.
Disgrace? Not hardly. Cudos to Burt, but I don't see him spending days in orbit. I don't see him taking space walks. I don't see him delivering satellites. I don't see him repairing satellites in orbit. Cut the "Burt Rutan can do NASA better than NASA" crap. The shuttle has been a great workhorse.
Yes compared to Airplain, Boats of this era, and even cars, The shuttle is dangerous. . .
Actually, since saftey is measured in passenger miles, the shuttle is doing pretty good. It's just that when it fails it always makes international news.
Seven people in a minivan going off the road only makes local because it didn't blow up real good while being televised live.
Interestingly though, the needed rate of technical development and cost in real dollars of mounting a sailing expedition in the Age of Exploration was similar to that of the shuttle program, even if St. Brendan managed to do it on the cheap. He only went across the little pond on the short route.
KFG
Cover the whole bottom of the shuttle with a metal shield, to protect the tiles during takeoff and in orbit. The shield will burn away during reentry to expose the undamaged heat tiles.
to superglue some foam?
What's wrong with this picture?
Give me a billion dollars - I'll invent a better shuttle in time for Christmas.
AND take out Saddam at the same time.
Oh, wait, that's already been done. Okay, well, Osama is still out there, right? I'll take him out.
Throw in a date with Andrea Corr and I'll add Bill Gates to the list.
Throw in a date with Angelina Jolie and I'll add every neoconservative in the country to the list.
Throw in another hundred million and I'll invent conceptual processing - however, no time frame on that one.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"- Prior to the Shuttle U.S. spacecraft had all the most delicate and important manned part of the stack, that had to survive the whole mission, and keep the crew alive at the top of the stack. Debris and ice rained down all over Saturn V but there wasn't anything fragile to hit and the stuff on the bottom is ditched early and isn't around for reentry. The crucial heat shield was totally protected since is was between the capsule and the stage below so it couldn't get damaged by debris. All the new designs return to putting the vehicle at the top of the stack because that is a good design. Handing it on the side of a cryo tank was a now fatal mistake."
Can you say TOP HEAVY! It's like balancing a Buick on top of a metal post, and expecting it to be stable.
---
"The "are you a script" word for today is subset.
Poor NASA scientists getting treated like 5 year olds...
Scientists: But mom it was an accident!
NASA Mom: I don't care, you are grounded!
Scientists: But my friends are in SpaceLand!
NASA Mom: Well as soon as your friends get back they are getting grounded too.
Isn't it funny that it is not acceptable to lose any lives going into space, but it is when you invade a middle eastern country!
The primary problem identified in the Columbia incident was that lack of sound scientific reasoning in the judgement of the observed foam debris. The reasoning used for disregarding that foam impact goes like, "well, we have seen this thousands of times in previous shuttle liftoff, since it never was a problem before, it won't be a problem this time either. even though we have never made any study on foam impact to the shuttle."
Yet, I see posts here using that very reasoning here again. "Don't worry, debris is normal. It had never caused any problems for the last hundred of so flights (except for Columbia). It's cool."
"I'd rather have a rocket with the payload where it's supposed to be: on top. Saturn V never worried about ice shedding, it was expected and not a problem because the payload was on top."
You're limited in how much and what size by doing that. In case you all haven't noticed. The orbiter plus the solid rocket boosters form a powered triangle. A more stable formation for carrying a big load, say a telescope.
"Side mounted payloads are suicide."
And siting on top of a roman candle is safe?
---
IMHO flying like a plane into space mught be better. Not as fast or as dramatic, but safer.
Astronauts are on government pay scales GS-11 thru GS-14.
The lowest step of GS-11 is $45K per year, the highest step of GS-14 is $99K per year.
Another way to look at it is that they do it in spite of the middling bucks, because that's the sort of person they are.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
He keeps omitting the fact that foam shedding below a certain size were expected and considered permissible from the earliest shuttle launches, as were small amounts of tile damage--it's a fact of launching things.
What Dave doesn't mention is the foam shedding we're seeing now is widely considered to be an artifact of changing the foam application technique and chemistry. Peices this large shedding from the external tank are a new phenomenon.
Additionally, Dave state that "...over 15,000 pieces of debris that hit the shuttle on the previous 113 flights didn't cause any problems 112 of those 113 times." This is patently false.
Read the CAIB to get the facts. The shuttle was damn near destroyed three times by debris strikes before Columbia was done it. Like challenger, the problems were getting worse over time and NASA ignored the engineers.
Columbia was destroyed by a known issue that slowly became an "acceptable risk" over a relatively short period of time. On one occasion, Columbia landed at Edwards AFB with no more than millimeters of thermal protection in a critical area. The technicians "turned white" when they saw it. On two other occasions, damage far in excess of that calulated was seen, investigated, and slowly morphed my management into "an acceptable risk".
Additionally, the manager of the flight following Columbia "did not want any bad news" that might compromise "her (upcoming) flight". So, she pressured NASA engineers to stop asking for imagery of Columbia.
You people really need to read the CAIB. It's a fantastic piece of work, explaining the history of the foam failures and the pressure on management to "launch on time, no matter what"...even if it means changing safety rules and, quite honestly, putting people's lives in jeopardy.
What? No! It's a shit design! Too many cooks spoiled the brew; everyone wanted it to be capable of running their pet project, with the result that it went way over-budget, and could never, ever, in any reality, have flown for its advertised price.
The shuttle is not a reusable design. It is barely salvageable. All the marketroid pep talk in the world won't change that.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There's 2 kinds of software developer working in Washington State. Those with your attitude, live in Redmond. Those that know better, work for Boeing.
I cannot imagine NASA actually replacing the damned shuttle, which hasn't worked right from day one. I'll believe it when I see it fly.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I wonder how risky was the cross atlantic sailing were in the mid 1500's. I am sure mortality was a lot higher then 1% then it is with the shuttle program.
Although life was worth less then, at least there was an immediate economic incentive to making such a risky voyage. You could even frame it in terms of thousands of colonists that depend on those ships for trade. The only reason to send people into space currently is to send people into space. I personally think that's a decent reason, but I for my money's worth I'd rather put up a few new space telescope to find nearby planetary systems with or whatever, or send off a few robots to explore Mars or the moons of the gas giants.
The other problem with your argument is that no matter which century you live in, if given the choice between two transportation systems, all other things being about equal you should go with the more reliable one. Russia has a safer system, we should use it until we've built something comparable of our own.
How right. And if you consider that Christopher Columbus was laughed at by Portugal before Spain financed his journey west, we maybe looking at the same situation here. Instead of Portugal's flag all over the New World, it was Spain's. Instead of the United States flag flying all over space, it may be China's.
Example: Airbus' fly-by-wire system, designed to override a pilot when a dangerous decision was made, erroniously concluded a forest was a runway after a very low pass was made over it. Deciding the speed was too high, it cut the engines. Both pilots and something like 18 journalists were killed. Airbus blamed the pilots - a safe decision as the pilots couldn't answer back, being dead and all, and the only one they could have made. Blaming the computer could have put them out of business.
ALMOST an example: Electromagnetic interference, caused by badly-screened and improperly-earthed electronics throughout Manchester, caused the computers operating Manchester Ringway's Radar system to shut down. Given that it is one of Britain's busiest international airports and that temperature inversions will often cause some really nasty orange/yellow smog, that could have caused more than a delay.
New York's phone system shut down, one time, due to a digital exchange propogating a negative number of users through that area. As routing worked by picking the least-congested path, the exchange suffered the telephony version of a Slashdot Effect. This included an effective shutdown of 911 services. It is unclear how many died as a result, if any, but the potential for a real disaster was there.
Many of the cascading power blackouts that have occured since the 1950s (there have been four or five in the US, and at least a couple in the UK) have been due to bugs in the design of the response systems. It is arguable as to whether this is quite the same as a system crash, but the effect was the same. It's not clear how many died from those, either, but the mid 100s to low 1000s would not be unreasonable.
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)
Do you know where they make the fuel tank that shed the insulation? The same place where they installed the fuel gauge that busted, delaying this take off, and the same place where they built the fuel tank that shed the foam that struck Columbia.
New Orleans.
Can't they just stick to boobies-for-beads? Why do they have to make frigging SPACE SHUTTLE parts? I mean, have you heard about New Orleans schools lately?
who knew?
"US military bases would be evacuated before they would fight over the land, as a base in the middle of hostile territory isn't worth anything anyways."
Do you think Castro knows this?
Sorry, you made some good points, but you missed on this one.
It would seem if the foam is falling off that the contact to the surface area of the tank is not adequate. Perhaps they should weld some very lightweight spines that would essentially work like rebar in concrete - albeit an order of magnitude lighter - just for the extra suport.
If I were up there, I don't think I'd be anymore worried about foam that fell off and hit nothing than I already would be simply based on the hype that surrounds this mission. There's nothing fundamentally more dangerous about this mission than the 70 or so missions that were successful (with a few small mishaps, perhaps) that were flown between the last flight of the Challenger and that of the Columbia, and quite a bit that's much better as a result of 2 years of review. Nonetheless, the media, and as a result 95% of the US population, is holding their breath expectantly (eagerly?) waiting for the shuttle to spontaneously explode in a shower of ceramic tiles, duct tape, and tax dollars. Is this hysteria really going to help the space program? I don't think so.
Granted, it turns out the foam around the tripod area falls off more often than previously thought, but people are ignoring the fact that this only caused fatal damage in 1 out 113 flights, it probably didn't cause any damage this time, and we now know it's a bigger problem and can address it further. People need to calm down. The point has been made. Sit back and let the engineers take care of it.
PS - the parent's comment was a lot funnier than it was insightful. Silly mods.
Look, we are now getting paranoid. This foam has been falling off on all the missions since it was first applied. We are simply seeing it because we are looking. The shuttles were going to be launched at about 1 every 3-4 months. If they keep it going, the likely hood of anything happening are very slim.
Instead, NASA could focus on getting CEV going and use the SafeSimpleSoon approach within 1-2 years. It would have the advantage of giving us a true heavy lift that we lost after Nixon killed the Saturn V program.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I second that! How were the seven seas conquered? With "iron men in wooden ships, not wooden men in iron ships". Though in the future (that ever distant future), I sure hope that space travel is safe and routine, so anything they do now should be seen as an investment towards that goal of safer space travel.
In the meantime, I must admit I'm more a robots-in-space person than a manned space exploration fan - when was the last time a human discovered anything in space? In my opinion, compared to robotic probes, the most exciting and useful (scientifically) manned project was done nearly 40 years ago on the moon.
The Daedalus uses Asgard technology which is why it is able to do the galaxy hopping.
didn't seem to have problems shedding parts while winning the X-Prize. Granted, they're designed and built for different purposes, but I think the shuttle needs a bit more modern replacement.
Someone really needs to figure out how to make anti-gravity. That would pretty much solve all the problems in the world. Well, that and a replicator.
The above is not worth reading.
Agreed, space flight cannot be safe yet with conventional standards.
But the wooden boaters stopped after a while and asked if this is the way to go. They fixed the problems quick enough and we have now ocean liners that are safe. Don't you think this shuttle thing is being extended for too long? Also the technology involved in too comprehensive and old to be upgraded straight away.
New thoughts and new design seems to be the only way out.
Do you fall towards the earth or does earth move up to meet you? ;)
Join Tor today!
After the foam is applied to the tank, they should spiral-wrap a long monofilament thread (nylon, rayon, kevlar, etc?) around and around and around the entire circumference of the tank and from top to bottom, spaced fairly tightly to effectively tie the foam in place firmly to the body of the tank in addition to whatever adhesive holds it in place now. The string/thread/fiber/whatever would not add all that much weight to the tank, and would secure the foam in place firmly during the ride up. It would be relatively cheap to do also. It's probably such a low-tech solution that nobody has ever thought of it before, but I'd bet it sure would keep the foam insulation tightly secured in place much better than simple adhesive glue on one side of the foam alone is doing the job right now.
I would agree that if a $1 B X-Prize type competition were set up to develop an alternative Shuttle program (at this point NASA's proposed budget for each flight) it would be money much better spent than trying to keep this fleet of dinosaurs running. And as NASA has pointed out so cleary here, they havn't even learned their lessons from the past.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The time for NASA to shine has passed. The agency is in need of serious restructuring or complete irrelevance. They have an impressive history, but their current track record is abyssmal.
In short, fix the problems NASA, or get out of the way. This half-hearted effort to keep the shuttles running is a total disappointment.
Better yet, wrap a long continuous thread (carbon fiber, kevlar, nylon, rayon, something) around the foam in a tight spiral wrap from top to bottom to secure the foam against the tank in addition to the adhesive holding the foam to the tank. It would be much harder for chunks of the foam to come off out from under the spiral wrap thread, and it would be lightweight and cheap too.
The Discovery channel documentary in May showed one of the most oppressive beaurocracies ever concieved. NASA's slogan is "if you have an idea, save it for your recruiter". They have low end managers converting the input of every 5 engineers into nothing. The result was a lot of managers stating they solved the problems heroically, when they never solved anything at all or only approved the most hopeless, rediculous tile repair technique.
After that documentary, we figured the next flight would be just as defect ridden as the last one. Sure enough, the foam popped off, the tiles chipped, nothing changed.
The decline of western economies and hyper competition to get away from outsourcable jobs and into management has created an environment which can never hope to solve the kinds of problems you need to solve if you want to access space.
U.s. needs to let the pros handle space flight for a few years while it figures out how to encourage creativity instead of hide it on the other end of an undersea cable.
I remember seeing the Appollo 11 command module in the National Air and Space museum. It looked a little scorched, but there was enough that could have been reused that it may have made sense to salvage parts for future flights. Most of it was just sheet metal anyway, so what's the point of reusing such a large amount of the orbiter? If the engines are so valuable, make them part of the reentry vehicle (or put them on their own reentry vehicle).
I hope the engineers designing the shuttle's replacement keep in mind that it doesn't HAVE to land like a glider, just get the darn thing back to the Earth's surface. The landings are boring anyway. I know that the idea was to truck stuff back from a space station or capture satellites and return them to the shop for upgrades. I think that has happend maybe once or twice that we know of (what with the military missions of the 80's), so that was a great success.
Maybe the next "launch platform" will be more than one solution- the right tool for the job at hand.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
NASA: What a SHAME!!!
You Americans: They spend BILLIONS of dollars per year, and I mean "Billions" with the uppercase "B"... and for what? after 2 years of carefuly inspecting and paying specilist engineers you say to me that: a tiny part of the shuttle just fall from it on the launch? WHAT THE HELL is this? Are they serious? Nasa is a pointless endevour, must be shutdown this piece of crap that cost too much money.
And every single engineer at NASA knows it. It's the bureaucrats that keep the damn orbiter where it is.
Lagrange points http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/lag range.html
---
HAS NO COMMA!
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is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
If we could just set up 24 hour video transmission of life on board the ISS after that shuttle docks. 9 astronauts, 1 Soyez for 3 passengers. ISS Survivor Reality TV.
Interestingly though, the needed rate of technical development and cost in real dollars of mounting a sailing expedition in the Age of Exploration was similar to that of the shuttle program
Can you provide a source or explanation for this?
They've undoubtedly thought of this, but if foam hitting the shuttle is such a big deal, couldn't they put something between the shuttle and the tank to protect the orbiter? I know a big sheet of steel would be ugly, heavy, and probably not aerodynamic, but even a layer of sheddable plastic or something. It may be a big design undertaking this late in the game for the shuttle, but safety is very important. If the barrier was a durable enough material, it conceivably could protect the shuttle even if the external tank exploded, if the shuttle wasn't torn apart by the violent inertia.
Hill said, "then by God we're going to take the (boom) down and we're going to get them more data and that data are going to look like they were sitting right there in front of the tile with their hands on it, it's going to be so good."
Seriously, get the man a tissue! I imagine him clenching his fist as he says that, perhaps holding it high and then striking his palm with it.
Perhaps then gestigulating wildly with his index finger, accusing and taunting the very heavens with his wild mannerisms.
I hope he is on medication for this, else he might hold his pinky to his mouth and laugh ala Dr Evil.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Though I'd call those hardward problems rather than software problems -- though a smart enough system might be able to figure out that some of that is lethal and shouldn't be done.
Then again, the original topic was the Shuttle & its assorted hardware problems, so...
A rusty tank with liquid oxigen can't replace a good trebuchet. Or a catapult for that matter! Heck, they even launched pigs with those things back then!!
I would say: Put the foam insulation on the inside of the external tank shell. That makes the tank somewhat heavier but trades weight for safety. Coat the outside of the tank with a non-adhesive paint that makes any forming ice peel off quickly.
In addition to that, before launch keep sprinkling the tank with a de-icing chemical similar to that used in civial aviation during wintertime.
--- Eat my sig.
Sort of interesting, what the Russians are using is more or less from the 1950's, seems to work pretty well for them.
It seems that it was design decision to save the expensive parts, such as rocket engines, and return them safely to ground, while disposing of expendable deadweight - the reservoir. Multistage rockets let their stage rocket engins burn in atmosphere after the fuel in a stage is depleted. OTOH, that may be more efficient in terms of payload (Shuttles carry its' heavy engines up to the orbit for nothing). Besides, perhaps designers were toying with idea of better, more efficient rocket drive, that would make for a compact spaceship carrying all needed fuel in tank in part of the cargo compartment.
Perhaps the best modification to Space Shuttle system would be automatic (unmanned) rocketplane first stage (save both the reservoir and the engines and glide first stage safely back to the ground after fuel was spent and first stage ceiling reached) and glider spaceplane (present shuttle without main engines, or with smaller engines and small fuel reservoir inside the hull) on top of it - basically the vertical setup with top mounted payload. The critical part is the one connecting the "carrier" to the "orbiter", as it needs to assure good aerodynamics and structural integrity during the lift and still easily get off the top of "carrier" before the "carrier" starts the landing phase.
They should get Russia etc to send up the CARGO SEPERATE on a seperate launcher and put the manned part on a manned ONLY and no CARGO launcher.
That way, less weight concerns in a all in one solution out to the lowest bidder. That is the problem, they tried to be hey we can FLY into space egomaniacs. Seperate them into cargo launches and human launch vehicles, each one dedicated to its task.
Hmmm, I'll belive that when Discovery is back on the ground in one piece not one hundred pieces. (Scene on board Disovery: "Houston, we need more toilet paper.")
Fox are already bidding for the rights to this. The idea is they keep evicting astronauts until theres 3 left then Fox send up 3 "TV Pretty" Astronaughts and the previous 3 have to compete against them in a bid to get the places on the escape pod. Then as the twist it turns out that the escape pod has been lying to them all the way through and its actually a Volvo.
How come they don't shrink-wrap the foam? Or Plasti-Dip? Or anything??
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Check this link. There's a plenty of cool pictures available for free, just not on a CD. (hey, that rhymes :-)
I guess you've never heard of an embedded system. Those can't ship with bugs.
They can and do, as anyone who has ever used a flakey piece of such equipment can atest. The big diff is they usually just lock up or reset without any indication of what went wrong, so all you can do is curse and shrug. And buy a new product.
Now, embedded systems do tend to have higher standards of quality then, say, a word processor. I suspect that's due to a number of factors. One is mindset (people expect "computers" to be buggy these days, but not a stereo). Easy of fixing is another (it's easier to load a new patch to MS Word then to your microwave).
But the big reason is complexity. Simple systems are easier to build right then complex systems. You don't see many buggy coffee maker designs, because all a cofee maker has to do is get hot at the right times. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of lines of code in many software projects...
There is a lesson here. Simple designs enable robust designs.
Of course, it is true that getting into space is a complex problem, but many argue that the STS is needlessly complex.
Some apt quotes (I'm a quote junkie):
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C.A.R. Hoare
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The shuttle was to help us learn how to make space travel routine.
The problem that many people have is that, apparently, be haven't been learning the lesson very well.
The STS has basically taught us that the STS design is a bad way to design a spacecraft. (Well, that's not really fair to all the dedicated and brilliant people who work in the STS program, but it makes the point I want to make.) Conventional rockets are definitely cheaper and quite likely safer.
But we continue to use the overly-complicated, expensive STS.
I can't help but think that the lives of 14 astronauts (so far) is a very expensive tuition, indeed. Maybe we should study harder.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I keep seing comments about NASA paying the lowest bidder for things. Now instead of paying the lowest bidder they are making competitions for people to do their research.
My favorite spacecraft that died before it's time was the Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X). SSTO. VTOL. Resable. It showed real promise of being practical, cheap, safe, and versatile. Alas, they never got enough funding to continue engineering and trials.
I can't find a single "best" link, so a Google search is the best bet for learning about this very interesting design:
http://www.google.com/search?q=DC-X+delta+clipper
(Before some bonehead chimes in: Yes, I know the DC-XA exploded when it tipped over during landing. Perhaps you missed the word "experimental" in the name. These are scale trials designed to evaluate designs, not production craft. They gave up too soon.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
i want to know why they dont use Magic Shell!
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I am watching news right now / NASA TV right now 0718 EDT Th 28 Jul 05, no mention of any grounding or upcoming / anticipated grounding ...
Question Authority before IT questions You
If they wanted to explore the crew, wouldn't an endoscope be cheaper?
Blank until
... their slogan could be something like:
... Durex, your payload is safe with us !"
"...And when you're done, you just slip it off
listening to AC/DC and tippling Toohey's New* to bother with civil wars.
More power to them.
*I personally liked the dry version a lot better but it's less available.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
--John F. Kennedy
http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kenn edy/3.htm
Maybe everybody is looking in the wrong direction. It seems that debris falling off the spaceship is a pretty commom event. There are other things that can trigger a Columbia like disaster.
Just after the Columbia disaster, some scientists argued that the Shuttle was struck by a Hyper-Lightning during it's reentry.
There are a lot of information about that here: http://www.superforce.com/shuttle/
May seem too easy a solution if I thought of it and it hasn't been implemented. Perhaps it is, I don't know what the external tank looks like on the inside. BUT
What about making the Liquid Hydrogen Tank double or even triple chambered with a vacuum between the layers? This would help insulate it with less ice formation outside. Add the foam and you may not have much ice at all, reducing damage any falling foam would produce. The additional weight aded to the tank for the metal wouldn't be great compared to the shuttle's thrust capabilities.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
I think with the current cost of maintenance, and launch cost, recovery and turn around costs it may be time to retire the aging shuttle fleet.
I remember as a child, staying up all night to watch an early morning shuttle launch, Chevy Chase and Dan Akroid were still regulars on SNL.
Now after this launch had numerous delays of everything from equipment failure to several instances of an aborted launch due to "falling debris", what exactly is that? Falling debris, well if they can not say "outer foam cover number three port SRB, then I think NASA may just need to go and flip burgers, "fried up".
In all seriousness several new shuttle designs have been submitted, a few of which would cost billions to realize, but the money saved in launch costs and even mission turnaround times would pay off in the long run.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
It's important to realize that this is NOT permenent, this is not the same as a catastrophy, it's just figuring out what went wrong.. it's similar to when the fuel gauge reported incorrectly. It's not a grounding like when there's an accident.. they just want to make sure there's not a major problem
An Aerospace engineer once pointed out to me that a good portion of the shuttle's weight is in componants designed for only a small percentage of the mission.....re-entry. With the cost of lifting each pound in the thousands of dollars NASA has to lift the weight of the wings, wheels and everything involved with gliding back to earth.
In hindsight it's obvious how non-economical (in addition to high maintanance costs and safty issues with side mounted to a rocket) the shuttle really is.
Fact of the matter is...a capsule type ship is cheaper and safter
If you saw the video from NASA, the chunk of foam flew directly below the shuttle's wing, not far from where the foam hit Columbia...fatally damaging it.
The "problem" is that foam and debris has always been shed on ascent, impacting the shuttles numerous times. It was supposed to have been fixed this time. Clearly it was not.
That's the "problem".
Moore's Law type performance growth was relevant at one point to aviation, but that was long ago, and the doubling time was a bit more than 18 months. Moore's Law is an approximation describing the initial (exponential) part of what previous technological developments suggest will eventually be a rough Sigmoid Function. Aviation technology is well into the linear region.
Actually, I would say that the Peter Principle might be more relevant than Moore's Law, both in the organization running the shuttle and in the manner in which the shuttle itself is used. The accidents are merely signs that the shuttle design has been promoted to its level of incompetence. (No, this is not a good thing.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Obviously the deficient 'safety culture' at NASA still exists .. Here's what the NY Times of today 7/28/05 has to say, quoting a NASA official (but note that the last part of the quote is NOT in the
NASA interview but seems to be a NYTimes comment, though its hard to imagine how it might not represent the agency's view ..they did , after all, OK the launch! :
' "We had enough data that showed we had had very few problems with the PAL ramp." The ramp, they found, performed a valuable protective function, he said; with no other obvious options, they decided the shuttle was safe to fly.'
Anyone who can tell me what having 'no other option' has to do with safety will probably not find a job at NASA !
jon
tkj@gmail.com
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
>The shuttle-as-the-second-stage-of-a-Apollo V was an alternative to the SRBs later in the design.
>I liked that idea signifigantly better, because the Saturn V stage would have been useful for other
> things...
Picking nits, but it's a Saturn I, not a Saturn V, rocket.
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
True. Of course, there's still a 300-odd G$ deficit, and a seven-point-mumble T$ debt.
The US political system is so stable that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could pull it apart
You obviously haven't read enough of the "Peak Oil" doomsday scenarios. The general theme: "Inadequate petroleum supplies impact fertilizer and fuel production; with reduced fertilizer availability and increased farm equipment operation (fuel) costs, crop yields go down while prices rise. Fuel costs increases also impact current (diesel trailer) transport systems, impeding local distribution of food supplies. Food shortages and rioting ensue." Enter "peak oil" and "food" into your favorite search engine for colorfully terrified elaborations.
Of course, there's the likelihood of a serious oil war (think "Fallout", not this current localized mess) breaking out when things get that hairy, and that might involve someone throwing nukes around, but "nuclear holocaust" would then be effect of (or shared effect with) the US political collapse, not the cause.
Anyone know the source (and original phrasing) of the quote: "Civilization is only three missed meals away from anarchy?"
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Here are some ideas... perhaps NASA has already considered these, but who knows.
1. Insulate the interior of the tank instead. In this design, the tank would be like a big thermos, without the risk of external debris. To me, this design doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to build. (or, they could place an outer skin around the foam on the exterior of the current tank, thus producing the same design without reducing tank capacity)
2. Apply the foam in a vacuum. Probably easier said than done because I doubt there is a vacuum chamber big enough, but it's an idea. The problem caused by air pockets in the foam is that the air pockets are at atmospheric pressure, and once the exterior pressure on the tank is reduced at high altitude, these pockets can "pop" and cause chunks of foam to break free.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
There are currently two Soyez's docked with the ISS, which means that six can leave (three/capsule), and three must stay.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Interestingly, all of the remaining Starships are parked about 20 miles from me at Pinal Airpark northwest of Tucson waiting to be destroyed. You can see them parked in a kind of herringbone pattern here
Ah, no.
It's a S-1C, which was the first stage of the Saturn V rocket.
And once you start to consider the Stage-and-a-half S-1D and the Flyback F-1 designs, you start to realize just how much sense it made.
Gentoo Sucks
From what I have seen/heard/read, they now have some sort of goop that can fill in for missing tiles, punctures, etc.
(The reason that the whole lander isn't covered with this goop in the first place is that the goop is much heavier than the tiles.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
The situatio with NASA and the shuttle reminds of reminded of Paul Harvey's recent radio address in which he quoted Winston Churchill:
"We have not journed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy."
The death of astronauts is one of many sacrifices we make with the space program. 2 billion dollars could provide many doses of desperately needed HIV/AIDS medication.
Our failures in a culture of arrogance are many and obvious. Although not so easily visible our failures in a culture of Carebears are greater in number and consequence.
Russian shuttle program, even if it crashed with USSR, was promising. They didn't waste shuttle weight on placing any (main) engines on the shuttle itself, as it actually doesn't need any. They could have used higher payloads and still glide back home like current shuttle design does.
Why Venator-Class Star Destroyers was able to enter the atmosphere but the latter Imperial-Class couldn't? Because of expensive heat-shield tiles?
did Discovery return the favour? I imagine the outside of the ISS looks a lot worse!
Lots of speed = lots of heat, and you need a way to shed it if you don't want to burn up. They've known that for years and it doesn't change just because you have a famous name and don't work for NASA.
... I disagree. Lots of speed = lots of energy you need to do something with. Aerobraking is only one way to slow down. It's not the only way. It just happens that it's pretty efficient in terms of mass penalty on a spacecraft. You could use a retro-burn with your engines, slowing in a controlled fashion, but the rocket equation says that's going to carry a pretty big mass penalty in terms of the additional fuel required. The fixed ablative heat shield is a much more economical method. The Shuttle's "brick" exterior is less efficient (mathematically and practically) than one that's ablative, but they insisted on it being re-usable. Personally, I think the whole allure of "re-usable" is completely irrational, as expendable boosters are soooo much better at getting stuff off this rock. Who cares if it's not re-usable? It costs less to build a new EELV than to refurb the so-called "re-usable" Shuttle ... why is the re-usable one better?
Ehhh
Why is this modded to 5 Informative as it has NOTHING to do with the grounding of the shuttle fleet?
story. Yes, future launches should be postponed until the problem of falling tiles(off of the rocket booster) can be solved satisfactorily. However, I am more worried about the chunk of shuttle that fell off of the orbiter.
They used to do something sort of like that.
They had a hard epoxy paint coating on top of the foam for the first launches. But the extra wheight involved seriously impacted the shuttles already limited payload capacity, so it was scraped.
The problem with the shuttle, and any reuseable air gliding vechicle is that you are always hauling this giant wing up into space, one that's producing a ton of drag due to air friction, and extra really heavy up with you into orbit. The only time it's of any use is during rentry. This is really dumb design. You want to make anything that's only used during rentry as light as possible, and fuel consumption is not a factor on the way down, you got gravity doing all the work.
This is why a rocket/capsul style design is always more fuel efficent than the shuttle type concept. You could always biuld a capsul with a replacable reheat shield, and slap a new one and new parashutes on for every launch. At least you could reuse the crew and cargo cabin that way. The boosters could parashute back down too.
Seriously traditional Saturn V style rockets had a lot more bang for the buck, and lift for the same gallon of fuel. The shuttle is just bad engineering from the get go, but since a lot of the people who approved the spending were old air force guys we got stuck with something with a wing.
Until we get a order of magnitude more thrust out of a pound of fuel (nuclear power) the shuttle concept just doesn't work.
One of the 'solutions' that NASA came up with if the Discovery is 'damaged' was to deliberately crash it to earth. How pathetic. This is a ship already in orbit that could be used as a ready made orbital transfer vehicle. As far as we know, it is airtight and its propulsion systems are intact. To crash it would be ultimatly stupid. I know the Homeland Security people read these posts, so I hope some good American up there has the good sense to pass this info on to some place where hopefully reason and intelligence reside and this stupid idea and the one who wrote it can leave the presence of NASA. I once worked on the Apollo Program for a major contractor, and know that real quality goes into space equipment. It is shocking that one would even think to waste such a major piece of equipment as the shuttle.
It is interesting about the goop. They have apearentyl already used it or so the news is reporting.
It apears though the goop doesn't exactly aplly itself in zero (reduced) gravity and now they are concerned that some is sticking off the shuttle and might cause an issue on return. I know they are being opverly causious. I'm wondering how many times worse damage has happened and everythign was fine. It would be interesting (and maybe expensive) if they could have some satalite re-enter first to see the effects first hand.
Millions *would* want to, most of those *could* not.
You apply to the astronaut corp.
Typically 3,000 applicants reduced to 120 candidates down to 15 astronauts per class.
It is a very rigorous competition of skill, experience, and attitude.
Once chosen, they work harder than most people imagine.
Luck has less to do with it than attitude and persistence.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The energy required for the acceleration to M25, and for lifting the vehicle from the surface to orbital altitiude is supplied by the fuel. The fraction for acceleration dominates completely, so, in a rough order of magnitude (ROM) discussion, the aerospace community usually ignores the lift fraction.
Since the kinetic energy of a body varies as the square of the velocity, the acceleration from M12->M24 needs 4x the energy of a M0->M12, and M6->M12 needs 4x the energy of M0->M6. So we see that, as a ROM, the energy expended to get from M0->M6 is at most 2% of the energy needed to get to orbit.
The Oxygen saved by an air-breathing propulsion system is as a ROM, limited to the total Liquid Oxygen (LOX) consumption in the air-breather's flight envelope, which is M1->M7. So as a ROM we are talking about MAX a 2% LOX saving.
In that discussion, a few potentially significant elements are ignored:
1>plus side: a lot of weight is shed early on in flight, so the total liftoff weight is not accelerated to M25
2>plus side: air entrainment can increase the mass flow of a propulsion system, which improves propulsion efficiency
3>minus side: a flight profile which derives max benefit from air for propulsion will also have higher drag, which costs fuel
4> minus side: the air-breather's flight profile include very signficant dynamic pressures (MAX Q), which need a beefier structure, which in turn reduces vehicle payload.
5> minus side: sustained operations near MAXQ limited high Mach number flight result in large aerodynamic heat loads, which must be delt with by additional structure, again at the direct cost of payload.
In summary, even ROM discussions show that air breathers have little to recomend them at this time. However, at some point our knowledge of high Mach/high Reynolds flight aerdynamics will allow for more precise design, and better materials will reduce structural weight and heat load problems. At that point, we should see a mixed cycle, hybrid engine which utilizes air entrainment, waverider aerodynamics, and aerospike expansion. Those technologies are, for now, mostly hand waving.
I hope this helps by sorting out some first order issues and opportunities. Good luck with your studies.