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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?
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
...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...
Except Discovery is not "seriously damaged".
(And another shuttle would hardly be "scrambled".)
And the fact that the 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. You might say once is too many, but we're only finding issues here because we're looking so hard.
And, no, it's not "hard to do" with one shuttle on orbit. The fleet is grounded. Discovery is on orbit. Once it returns, no further shuttles will be launched until further notice. Quite simple.
Maybe they should start painting the foam again, as called for in the initial design spec. I know if was heavy and expensive, but it might stick together better.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
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!
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 ...
Need A Shuttle Alternative
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Northrop Grumman and Boeing are getting prepped for the CEV, the successor to the space shuttle. According to this page, they are expecting flight demos in 2008 and manned CEV flight by 2014. If Griffin (the new NASA administrator) has his way, this will be fast-tracked to 2010. Exciting times are ahead...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
How about switching back to the older foam that shead less. NASA switched to an "envrionmentally friendly" foam a few years back, even though they have an exemption...
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
>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.
You're kidding, right, AC? The Shuttles can carry at most 28 tons of cargo. Saturn V could lob 118 into LEO. Proton can boost almost as much as Shuttle, for far less money, including a series of integrated space station components (Zarya, Zvezda, Mir baseblock). Maybe the trunnion pins were great for launching Hubble, but that is the exception. Your "triangle" thing doesn't make sense, inline thrust structure is more efficient, less mechanically complex and makes trajectory calculation simpler.
>And siting on top of a roman candle is safe?
Yes, comparatively. For manned flight, a rocket under the crew is far safer than having components next to them. Launch escape towers are safe, accurate tools for keeping crews safe from an exploding "candle". There is footage online of a Soyuz capsule popping off the rocket right above the pad, the rocket failed but the crew lived. The same can't be said for low-altitude launch problems with Shuttle.
Capsules, rockets and tugs for station components make sense. Buck Rogers spaceplanes don't.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The facts of the crash are not as cut and dried as either of you state and many are wrong. The pilot survived, along with most of the people on board, and was found guilty of manslaughter in the 3 fatalities connected to the crash. The funny thing is that two primary claims of the pilot in his defence were Operational Engineering Bulletins from Airbus Industrie regarding:
OEB 19/1 Engine Acceleration Deficiency at Low Altitude
OEB 06/2 Barometric Cross Setting Check
In a nutshell, the bulletins state that the engines didn't respond "normally" to throttle input and that barometric altitude indicator did not comply with airworthiness regulations. Air France chose not to share this information with the pilots. Naturally, this is the kind of thing that the data recorders could shine some light on. The data supported the claims that it was pilot error and the case was closed.
In 1998 it was determined that the data that was supposedly from the flight had been compromised. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders had been tampered with during a 10 day period when they were not in the hands of the magistrate's office. They were in the hands of the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC), contrary to their own regulations. The funniest thing is that one of the boxes presented as coming from the crashed A320 spontaneously changed its markings during the interim. An independent body from Switzerland determined that there had been a switch by comparing photos of the CVR being recovered from the crash site with the one presented as evidence.
While the "official" verdict was pilot error there is enough evidence to call that verdict into question. Who lost the least with the verdict? Airbus was introducing an advanced aircraft and attempting to challenge Boeing, and they were selling the "advanced" electronics of the 320 series: even admitting that there may be an issue with the system would have had devastating consequences.
The onboard computers did lead to a few incidents with the A320. In 93 a Lufthansa pilot made a landing with a very low sink rate, so low the flight computers would not allow the deployment of thrust reversers or brakes for a number of seconds. The plane ended up going off the runway. I guess you could make too soft a landing.
Admittedly they seem to have solved those problems, and I have no qualms flying in an Airbus but then again I flew Aeroflot a couple of times.