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Discovery's Dangling Gapfiller Removed by Hand
Cyclotron_Boy writes "According to the New Scientist and NASA TV, Discovery's gap-fillers were removed successfully by hand by astronaut Steve Robinson earlier today during the eva. They didn't even have to use the forceps or the makeshift hacksaw-blade tool."
...Good news everyone! You get to live!
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I, for one, think that the less makeshift hacksaws we are forced use on multi-billion-dollar equipment, the better.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
They pulled on the dangly thing on the underside until a substance came out, and now there is no chance of overheating on reentry?
Hope no one takes that outta context...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Shoudn't have at least used a glove? I hope he sealed it with duct tape. Boy, this space age stuff is too high tech for me!
Landing in a space shuttle where you can pull the filler out by hand (like it were bathroom tile grout?) Scary. Rather than using tiles wouldn't it be better to use some sort of spray adhesive that does the same thing?
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
What exactly is that? Is it like the caulk between tiles? Also perhaps it is normal for those to be dangling, considering no one has ever done this!
Wouldn't it have been better to leave there then have a gap now? Now if they fill it back with something that might be better but I dont see how removing a barrier is better? Sure it could pull off a long piece but I would have cut it then stuffed it back in. And no I didnt RTFA.
It was using a makeshift hand....fashioned from duct tape, toothpicks, and Doritos.
FYI: This would be modded +5 funny if moderation weren't currently broken.
Steve Robinson sneezing, and hundreds of tiles slowly peeling away towards space...
I guess the engineers at NASA know better than I but I'd be a little wigged out if I was able to pull something from between the heat tiles by hand.
or by a little bit of filler?
A scary case of a common saying having a literal outcome?
I filled a gap on my rusting car's fender about 6 months ago, and not long ago I could pull everything off by hand as well. That'll teach NASA not to use bondo...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This whole thing reeks of "see, we can fix the shuttle in orbit so it wont a-splode anymore".
From what I understand, this type of thing is normal, and the filler stuff tends to peel out on every flight, and it's basically designed to that.
The whole thing just seems so staged. But if it keeps the shuttle from a-sploding, then good for them, I suppose.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Transcript of conversation between Discovery and ground control:
Discovery: OK, Houston...I'm in position..I see the dangling gap-filler now.
Houston: OK, Discovery...just grasp the gap-filler and pull.
Discovery: OK, Houston...I'm pulling now...it's coming out...it's coming out rather easily.
Houston: Just keep pulling gently and firmly...you're doing well.
Discovery: It's still coming, Houston...there's a lot more here than I thought...
Houston: Say again, Discovery?
Discovery: I said there's quite a lot of gap-filler here...about twenty yards so far...
Houston: STOP PULLING, Discovery...it seems you're unravelling the whole belly of the ship!
Discovery: I'm what, Houston? Say again, ple...OH SHIT! THE GODDAMNED TILES ARE ALL FALLING OFF!
Houston: Don't panic, Discovery.
Discovery: DON'T PANIC, YOU ASSHOLE? WHAT SHOULD I DO? WE NEED THOSE TILES!
Houston: Stand by, Discovery...we're working on a solution.
Discovery: SCREW YOU, HOUSTON! We're going to the ISS now...send up another shuttle to carry our asses back home!
Houston: Um...yeah...about the other shuttles, Discovery...
Discovery: What NOW?
Houston: Yeah...the shuttle fleet has been permanently grounded...too many people freaked about the foam thing...
Discovery:Nobody up here CARES, Houston...you get us a flight outta here NOW, or we start smashing satellites!
Houston: OK, OK, Discovery...no need to get violent...I'll make some calls.
Discovery: Yeah...you do that...and just so you know we're serious...
Houston: What do you mean?
Discovery: When we hear some good news from you, you'll get CNN back. Not before.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
but I"m feeling really pessimistic and evil today, so:
Their success with this operation is going to be all the more ironic/tragic when Discovery disintegrates upon reentry.
Someone send those guys a few Gemini modules...
Nice to see an old fashion NASA hand job still works these days.
A qualified redneck can fix anything with a hacksaw and duct tape. Maybe crazy glue if things get really tough. Perhaps some Bond-o if structural materials are called for.
Crippling bombshell
What's the breakdown in the mod system doing to the wretched karmawhores?
I can hear the psychic screams of their existentialist angst echoing down the threads.
Like you do with clothes.... You just pull a little thread, the next you know, what you were wearing is completely falling apart....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Everytime I approach my wife with my Dangling Gapfiller, she threatens to hacksaw it off!
I thank you!
Oh come on... If he was able to pull it off with just his hands it would have gotten torn apart or cooked off during re-entry.
Buuut... Better safe then sorry, I guess.
I for one welcome our makeshift hacksaw overloards.
>earlier today during the eva
>They didn't even have to use the forceps
A spaceship full of Jedips! Holy pincers!
I always suspected the Shuttles are in fact old republic Star Destroyers and now here is the proof.
sure, i'll believe an anonymously posted, uncited claim on the internet of shocking material, i mean, you can't BUY a more reliable source!
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
if i had a dime for all the times i've had to remove my dangling gapfillers by hand...
"What's Bond doing?"
"I think he's attempting reentry, sir."
It's also kind of the only re-entry in recent history.
☠
...but seriously, if those fillers could be pulled out by hand, I wonder how easily the others will be pulled out by atmospheric friction. If the adhesives of any other gap fillers are dried like the second one, I expect another disaster. Scary, but far too likely.
I'm glad I'm not up there; I'm just hoping they make it down here.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Kewl. How'd it do? Paper or plastic bag?
If your read the article to the end, you'll notice the passage that they put some material samples in a bag to see how they fare in open space environment. Well, let this to be told: one of these samples was a LIVE MOUSE !
... that's one very expensive mousetrap.
Hmmm
On a more serious note, I imagine they're running this experiment to prepare for the eventual necessity of resusitating a human after exposure to vacuum. We use animals in medical experiments, to test new food additives, and even to make sure our beauty products are safe for people.
So, unless you want to give up medical research, beauty products, and dozens of other things that we take for granted--and need to ascertain are safe before they come to market--get over it. They aren't tortuing animals for the thrill of it, they're doing important science designed to save human lives, and regardless of what propoganda may be coming out of the mouths of PETA zealots, human life is more valuable than animal life. That's why we eat the critters and wear their skins, after all (or have you never owned a pair of leather shoes?).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I understand on some levels it's important to get the shuttle craft out of orbit, but since there is apparently a Soyuz capsule strapped to the ISS anyway, it might be that a safer solution would be to ride down to a hard landing on the proven Russian re-entry vehicle, which can later be returned to the ISS by rocket, and bring Discovery down on computer control.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Gotta learn to use that Preview button.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I've got your dangling gap filler right here! *grabs crotch*
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
One wonders if that could not be done cheaper in a vacuum chamber on earth ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
It is nice to see the new nasa doing thinks like this, before they would have been cowboy's about the deal and just said bring her in, we have never had a problem before. I agree that nasa is very bloated, but it seems that the new system is working better. We should have more x-prize type of prizes, but with a shorter time line, say 50 million/moon shot in 5 years. I think it can be done.
The gap filler is needed to keep the tiles from rattling on LIFTOFF. Once in space, we don't need it.
The reentry has very different pressures/angles - I believe the pressure of the reentry keeps the tiles from moving enough to bump each other too badly.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I was watching CSPAN this morning during the live spacewalk, and the NASA commentator said these fillers are to help quiet the 'chattering' of the tiles during liftoff and have nothing to do with the actual heat protection.
I've never owned a pair of leather shoes, nor have I ever worn all-cotton clothing.
But I know where I sit on the food-chain. Now where'd I put my steak knife?
Like what I said? You might like my music
The headline made me flashback to the 2000 elections in florida. Except this time the good guys might win.
That would have been funnier if I said it right. I wear all-cotton clothing, it's the only proper way to keep cool in the heat.
Like what I said? You might like my music
It finally makes sense that NASA Houston has a Saturn V up on blocks in their front yard.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You have to do that. Otherwise they just come right back in the house.
That would have been funnier if I said it right. I wear all-cotton clothing, it's the only proper way to keep cool in the heat.
:-)
It's hilarious either way. Pass the A-1, would you please?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Inquiring minds want to know.
Wouldn't that mean the whole exercise was pointless sense anything that can be removed by hand would surely be blown away by wind going 1000s of miles per hour...?
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
I've got a dangling gapfiller for ya right here...
...as long as no one here starts thinking of putting their solid rocket booster into a space shuttle, I guess we're fine.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I believe I heard one news reporter say that it "could" act like a torch. I'm guessing that because it's cloth it could direct a bunch of heat on renetry into a specific location like a blow torch. Which could cause a hole in the tile and then into the underside of the shuttle, which would be, ummmm.... bad.
Although like many others have said, this has probably happend before and only because of all the examination we've done on the shuttle are we noticing it now.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
rm -rf /shuttle/gapfiller is a lot safer than rm -rf /shuttle/gap* - it's always better to do it by hand.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
with all the negative comments here - I guess it would have been much cooler to have a buzz-droid crawl along the shuttle exterior trimming off protrusions.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
One wonders if that could not be done cheaper in a vacuum chamber on earth
:-)
Yeah, but not nearly as much fun.
Seriously, if they had used a vacuum chamber on Earth they would have had to simulate extreme heat and cold (passing from sunlight to shadow), radiation levels, etc. All of which are subject to guestimates and error.
Far better to stick a little mouse in the cargo hold along with the gyroscope and everything else they're taking up there anyway, and get the science exactly right without introducing simulation errors into the experiment.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Maybe the experiment depended on how quickly the pressure dropped? I can't imagine how they could evacuate a chamber on earth faster than simply opening an airlock to space.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"dangling gapfiller?!!" Who the hell wrote that headline?!!! Who the hell greenlighted that particular submission?!!!
Hey! How come makeshift hack-saw blade tool wasn't one of the options on the current (broken) poll "Favorite tool of destruction?"
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
ROFL! Ah yes, the joys of reading at -1 because Slashshit can't get their moderation system fixed. And pass me the bowl of monkey brains while you're at it - nothin' like an Indian delicacy nibbling on our distant cousins to curb ones appetite!
the sooner we are going to start moving again.
I'm sorry but way more people died travelling to california when america was being explored. We have become so risk averse it is paralyzing us.
It may just be that the best we can hope for is 1/50 blows up. Do we give up space so we can save a few lives when millions die without purpose everyday to allergic reactions, cancer, stupid accidents, animal attacks, religious stupidity, stupid stunts, hazing, beer chugging, etc?
I'm sure many astronauts would accept a higher risk if it meant they could fulfill their purpose and go into space. How terrible it must be to train for many years and then watch all your dreams disappear in a suspended program.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They can remove this thing with a hacksaw or by hand.. and yet they can't leave it there to just burn off? Something is fishie..... if it is that small that it can be removed by hand shouldn't it just burn off like other debris and dust?
NASA should recieve a RED GREEN duct tape savings tip of the year award...
Because this sounds just like Red during one of his car repairs, "Uhh, this cordlike thing doesn't look like it needs to be there, I'll just yank it off and charge Old man Sedgewick an extra $5 for the touch up body work."
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
I've been noticing that no or very few comments have been moderated in the last few stories...what's going on with that?
My blog
>put some material in a bag to see how they fare in
>open space environment. one of these vacuum
>samples was a LIVE MOUSE!
How is this different from nazi cats gassing jewish mice in Art Spiegelman?
A: Russian rocket burn in the atmosphere, Shuttle is reusable.
Q: What is the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?
A: Astronauts burn in the atmosphere, cosmonauts are reusable.
Roofing cement - $100 million per bucket!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I'm just finishing reading "Comm Check," a book on the Columbia accident by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood. I've read a lot about the shuttle ever since its first flight 24 years ago, and if there's one thing that's abundantly clear, it is this: the shuttle is a lemon.
What's so tragically funny here is that, in the book, a NASA rep is quoted as saying "the shuttle isn't a lemon" right after the CAIB report pretty much said NASA was flying a platform that was not only unreasonable unsafe, but also one having such serious design flaws as to be much less safe than necessary. Spaceflight may never be as safe as an airplane ride, but the level of risk associated with the shuttle is just much more than it could've been with a better design.
Disocover magazine had a lengthy article about twenty years ago on how the shuttle was developed, and it was an amazing insight into how so many compromises can add up to a vehicle that is not only hugely different than what was originally invented, but also one that just doesn't do anything really well. The cargo capacity was too small. It can't achieve high orbits. It lands as an unpowered glider with a glide ratio of a brick wall. It has solid boosters that can't be throttled, trimmed, or turned off. There is no practical escape or abort manuver during the most dangerous parts of the flight (launch & re-entry). Worst of all, it's designed in such a fashion that there are an amazing number of "criticality-1" items. If a crit-1 item fails, it will result in "loss of mission, crew, and vehicle." The shuttle system has several thousand crit-1 items. To the average I.T. geek, that's like running a few thousand servers, each holding billions of dollars worth of data, and not having any redundant hard drives, power supplies, or UPS's. In other words, madness.
There isn't a single solitary thing the shuttle does better than the Apollo-era capsules it was supposed to replace. Launch costs for the shuttle were supposed to be 1/10th those of the throwaway boosters, but instead they are more than ten times what the Saturn V cost in adjusted dollars.
So, to sum it up, the shuttle is more expensive, less reliable, less capable, and more dangerous than its predecessor. Yeah, gimme more of that.
The ISS is also a boondoggle for many of the same reasons. Why do we have a shuttle fleet? To build the space station, of course! Why are we building a space station? To give the shuttles somewhere to go, of course! It's a circular argument. No shuttle equals no station, and no station equals no shuttle. No wonder NASA has its head so far up its exhaust nozzles it can't see the shuttle is an amazing failure. To admit failure would be to kill off the two biggest projects the organization has.
As has been said elsewhere here, our technology is just not yet at the point where something like the shuttle is practical. We just don't have the propulsion and materials to do it just yet. What we should be doing instead is using the best practical technologies out there, namely BDB's (Big Dumb Boosters). The aren't sexy, but they work, and they can haul a cubic buttload of cargo into orbit -- or beyond.
Unfortunately, I have the sinking feeling NASA is going to have to kill another seven astronauts before they finally, regrettably put the shuttle to bed. It was a good try, but you have to be able to admit when you are wrong. Build us a modern version of the Saturn V. With modern materials and modern computers, it could be made more cheaply and even more reliable than before, probably with more lift capacity as well. Make it so it does one thing very well. We don't need a Swiss Army knife of a shuttle to get into space, not when you've got much better proven technologies that are already available. NASA can get this right. The big question is, will they?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nasa removed the old filler but I haven't seen anywhere that they replaced the filler. Whats up with that?
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
Watching the mission on NASA tv makes it clear how delicate spacewalking can be. Whilst approaching the under side of the shuttle the astronauts were extremely careful to not let anything near it other than Steve Robinson's outstretched hands, so there was no chance of doing anymore damage to the tiles. The gap filler itself came out very easily, seen from Robinson's helmet camera. I don't think leaving it there would have caused any danger to the shuttle and its crew on re-entry, but better safe than sorry I suppose.
Whilst the two astronauts were outside the shuttle you could see lots of sharp looking points and edges protuding off the shuttle around them, which looked like they could easily tear through a space suit if brushed against. To me this looked like a potentially bigger danger than the gap filler problem.
by simply opening an airlock to already evacuated vacuum chamber?
Deliriant isti Americani.
i mean, yeah, congratulations on the fix, yo. but, like, its a bit hard to overlook the image of this going on up there, while http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/07/29/niger.a idgroups/index.html">this is going on down here ..
..
.. someone prove me wrong, or an idiot or something, and cheer me up again ..
yeah yeah, i know, space exploration is good for the whole race, not just a select, privileged few, we shouldn't stop doing it, i know
its just, such a mundane action to have spent billions of dollars on, on the one hand, in light of the lightness of the other hand, is all i'm trying to say. i'm somehow saddened by the Discovery mission
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Good news! It's a suppository!
Oh, I see what your point is. It's OK for them to kill the little mousie because in the FUTURE WHEN WE'RE ALL TRAVELLING IN OUTER-SPACE AND GET BLOWN INTO THE COLD HARD VACUUM THEN THEY'LL BE ABLE TO RESUSCITATE US BECAUSE OF THE KNOWLEDGE LEARNED.
Get real, idiot. They just wanted to see its eyes pop out like Arnie in Total Recall. There is no other explanation.
you have a good point. Although I do not completely agree re the space station. I think the ISS is necessary as a place to do general experiments in space. If we go on any ambitious space exploration project we will probably need the ISS to do testing and/or in space assembly.
But it can be easily serviced by simple cheap capsules instead of the expensive and dangerous shuttle.
But yeah the main problem with the shuttle is that NASA has too much money. If congress had any balls they would cut funding for the shuttle and tell nasa to find something cheaper.
The Russians have the much cheaper and safer soyuz, not because they are especially smarter, but because they just cannot afford to run their shuttle.
Technically, both Challenger and Columbia were not in space. Challenger was well within the atmosphere during liftoff, and Columbia was about 40 miles (about 65km) up, well below the 100km mark.
However, the Russians did have 3 deaths in space, on one of the Soyuz/Salyut missions (my apologies to any Russians, I don't remember the specific mission number). Komarov on Soyuz 1 was probably not an in-space death as well -- his chute tangled, and I believe he died on impact, which is definitely not an in-space death.
So out of 18 known in-flight deaths (and I am not counting Apollo 1, that wasn't in-flight), only three were in space.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Everything was going good for 20 years...
Tell that to the Challenger crew.
For that matter, there is a huge difference between "nothing has gone wrong that has caused a major problem" and "nothing has gone wrong that could cause a major problem". One of the Investigation Board's findings was that NASA would routinely ignore potentially serious issues just because they hadn't caused a major problem yet.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Surely somebody has already optioned the rights to this little mission by now. I wonder if this guy was out there in space wondering whether Gary Sinise would play him in the movie?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I suspect much ado about nothing here. How many times has the shuttle gone up and down? How many times have they had problems with the gap filler? Probably lots of times, they just never when looking for it. They had to use a bunch of new cameras to find this problem. I'd also suspect that if anybody checks, there has been "falling foam" on every shuttle launch.
Where do they have one of those on Earth?
The first time around, they had to use von Braun's team to get the US space and missile program going. They'd learned how to build rockets by blowing up a few hundred of them before they got one that worked. Apollo and the Shuttle were designed by people who had worked on US ICBMs, and there were dozens of failures in the early days there.
All those guys are dead or retired. The next big spacecraft will have to be designed by people who haven't done it before.
There aren't even many aircraft designers left. In the 1940s and 1950s, aircraft were designed and built at a frantic wartime rate, with many failures and some great successes. This produced a huge group of trained aircraft designers and builders. The Apollo program hired several thousand from Canada, when Avro went out of business. Today, there are few people with a track record of designing a novel flying machine. Other than Burt Rutan's people, almost nobody gets to design more than one kind of flying machine.
An alien canvasser had come along and couldn't find the windshield wiper and just shoved its flyers for interstellar satelite tv which read "A googleplex of channels for only 9999.99/cycle!" whereever it could find a spot...
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
...everyone at slashdot seems to think they know more than the NASA scientists.
"Doesn't it seem stupid that they'd have to drop the engine? Why not just work on it IN THE CAR?"
Please stop stalking me, bro.
The Russians have the much cheaper and safer soyuz, not because they are especially smarter, but because they just cannot afford to run their shuttle.
The Russians understand something that NASA does not, namely that their technology is limited and thus must be overengineered for saftey. Everything about the former Soviet space program was overdesigned for a reason, just like our Saturn V was: to give good safety margins without going gonzo with costs. If you've got four engines making enough thrust to get you into orbit, you add a fifth for safety and then run all your engines at 80% rated thrust for even more safety. Is it efficient? No, but it's safer.
Now, I'm not about to argue that space exploration is, or ever should be, perfectly safe. That is obviously absurd. However, the more of a design margin you have, the less meticulous you have to be when preparing to launch the vehicle. Almost all the cost overruns in the shuttle program are due to the incredible number of inspections and maintenance needed to turn a shuttle around. With a throwaway booster, you don't have any of that. Sure, you're junking valuable hardware every time you launch with a throwaway booster, but it actually costs less to do it that way. Why do you think commercial satellites are launched on Delta rockets instead of the shuttle?
Take a modern top-fuel dragster as an example. It is designed to do one thing: go as fast as you can in one quarter of a mile. Everything inside the engine is designed to last roughly just that distance, and it is torn down and rebuilt pretty much completely between every run. It is, in essence, a throwaway booster. Dragster teams do it this way because it is impractical to build an engine that can survive multiple runs and be competitive. Sure, it's expensive. But losing the race is even more expensive.
NASA needs to get away from giving us a Ferrari of a shuttle, with all its myriad valves, camshafts, and amazingly expensive maintenance, and instead give us a slightly-updated version of the 60's-era Chevy Big Block. Sure, a Ferrari can get 400hp out of a 2.5-liter engine, but it must use exotic techniques to do so. A big block V8 can make 400hp all day long without working hard, and it costs pretty much an order of magnitude less to construct and maintain. We need the Chevy, not the Ferrari, if we're going to get back into space on a large scale.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If the belly of the shuttle gets nice laminar air flow across the tiles (which I assume is the goal), I wouldn't expect much force in the 'out' direction away from the shuttle. If anything, I'd expect force pushing the gap filler into the tile behind it, sticking it in place.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
If seven more astronauts die, that'll be the end of NASA. The anti-science wingnuts controlling Congress (and the Executive Branch) will gladly take that opportunity to shut it down.
My question is: If we can just safely remove these gap fillers, why the hell are we blowing shrinking NASA/STS budget money on them in the first place?
The Shuttle needs to be retooled instead of jury-rigged and duct-taped. After 25 years there must be a better way to heat-shield and power it than crumbly square tiles and ungodly amounts of hydrogen and other violently flammable liquids. (After all, it only took one Hindenburg to convince most people that pure hydrogen is kind of dangerous.)
Hell, in most states a 25-year old vehicle qualifies as an antique.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Rockhound: You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?
You know, back in the day, our trolls used to be literate.
I am ashamed at the quality of troll education and call upon everyone to appeal to their congress(wo)man to throw more money at the problem.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the trolls?!
I dont get it, if the gap filler was there to prevent tiles from rattleing and causing damage, and they pulled it out because it was sticking out. What did they replace the gap filler with? Did they replace it with anything? If not, isnt that a bad thing as the tiles can vibrate and come loose upon decent? If they did fill it i wonder what type of adhesive they used to make it stay in place? One that doesnt need air to bond Id imagine.
Yes, lets remove the gapfiller and leave a hole in the insulation, that will prevent the shuttle from heating up......
Everybody knows the world is flat, the moonwalks were faked and no men or women have ever gone into space. Sheesh.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
I hear they patched the gap with a "Real astronauts do it by hand" bumper sticker.
The physics makes sense. The hanging material could focus the superheated particles on a particular spot and burn a hole right through the tiles, or perhaps through a weak joint between tiles, and this entree will then pry open the heat shield like popping the yolk of an egg in the frying pan.
The question is, why is the system this fragile? Sure, it's incredible engineering. I've read that every single one of the hundreds of tiles is uniquely shaped, a miracle of 1970s engineering.
But wouldn't it have been simpler to just slather on a whomping ceramo-steel multi-layer heat shield, as the old capsules had? I don't care how thick. Make it 20 centimeters for godssake. Whatever it takes to have an impervious, smooth, crack-proof and meteorite-proof hunk of toughness between the fragile humanity within and the incredible heat of reentry.
But the shuttle wouldn't be reusable, people will say. It would then be the same as a single-use Apollo or Soyuz command capsule. To that I would respond: so what? If it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to turn around and launch a shuttle (some quote $1 billion) then surely some of that hard earned cash could be spent on reinstalling the damn heat shield. Would it be worth it to protect the humans aboard? Hell, yes!
The Russians have always criticized NASA for overengineering, and there's some validity to that. Soyuz hasn't lost a human life since 1971. Can NASA claim such a track record? Let's get away from this better-lighter-cheaper-stupider track and get back to where space exploration ought to be: engineer the machines to explore space and bring back their passengers in one piece, period.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
If you want to destroy our shuttle,
Hold this thread as we fly away.
Watch us unravel, we'll soon be toasted,
Scattered over Texas, we're all well-done.
"If we go on any ambitious space exploration project we will probably need the ISS to do testing and/or in space assembly."
It is unlikely the ISS will ever do any "in space assembly". The only in space assembly I've seen in any recent proposals are simple dockings of modules as has been done for 40+ years. Space is still a hard and expensive place to build things. You are going to do it if you have to and chances are you don't have to when you know how to dock things.
As for doing experiments, especially on zero g physiology it is great. The problem with it and its a question Mike Griffin raised in congressional testimony before he became administrator, is the knowledge you gain from the experiments worth the price tag? The cost for the remaining ISS assembly missions, ISS support and Shuttle budget when he testified was still a whopping $60 billion. That is $60 billion that would be far better spend on a heavy lift launcher, CEV, and a moon base. Going to the moon is something of a waste in itself but its a lot more useful place to do things than the ISS, especially to prove systems for an eventual long duration base on Mars. The Moon has radiation issues, ISS in LEO is useless for dealing with radiation issues and that is one of the BIGGEST problems to solve in real space exploration. The Moon has resources. ISS has nothing you dont fly to it from Earth. We need to learn to exploit resources on the Moon and Mars to live there for long duration at a reasonable cost.
From Mike Griffin:
"Given that ISS is to be completed, there are specific tasks associated with going to Mars for which it can be useful. Certainly, it can be useful in carrying out controlled experiments to study the effects of microgravity, and proposed countermeasures, on humans, provided of course that it is equipped with a habitat module or modules. It can serve as an aid to crew training, acclimating a proposed Mars crew, or extended-duration lunar crew, to the regimen of spaceflight in company with each other. It can serve as a testbed for the space qualification of specific systems, or even vehicles, prior to their use on extended voyages far from home. In a word, ISS can help us learn to live and work in space."
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"Equally important is the delay in pursuing the President's vision. Respecting present budget constraints, we return to the moon in 2020, thus accomplishing in 16 years what it required eight years to achieve in the 1960s. This is not because the task is so much more difficult, or because we are today so much less capable than our predecessors, but because we do not actually begin work on the task until 2011. I do not need to point out to this body the political pitfalls endemic to such a plan."
"I, and others, have elsewhere advocated that the shuttle should be returned to flight and the ISS brought to completion, if only because the program's two-decade advocacy by the United States and commitment to its international partners should not be cavalierly abandoned. But, if there is no additional money to be allocated to space exploration, this position becomes increasingly difficult to justify. It is worth asking whether our international partners might judge the issue similarly."
@de_machina
Hell, everything about Russian (and Soviet before that) industrial design focused on simplicity and maintainability to the exclusion of features. Given their resource constraints, that absolutely makes sense, and they still managed to pull of some amazing design wins with what they had to hand. Prime example that comes to mind is the Mig-25, an interceptor capable of mach 3+ flight at the edge of space, built using things like riveted steel and vacuum tubes. Other examples of "simple, kind of ugly, but works without fail" abound in their weapon systems designs (SKS, AK-series, T-34 and descendents, etc. etc.)... (They did focus too much on that, but given how many times they've been invaded in their culture's history it is kind of understandable. Ultimately they built better guns, we built better blue jeans, and consumer products/culture did more to bring down the iron curtain than any armed force.) Our aerospace community could learn a lot from their design ethos.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Good arguments. I have a counter to offer you: Consider how many people continue to use Windows even when there are obviously better alternatives. Would you expect a massive retooling away from Microsoft tech overnight? By comparison, most (all?) people have far, far less invested emotionally and financially in Windows than NASA does in the shuttle.
Ok, cheap shot maybe, but I think the same basic logic applies here and there are strong parallels - especially when it comes to those critical components you mentioned (DLL hell, security holes, etc. in Windows vs. fragile materials, complex design, etc. of the shuttle.).
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
A real man would have found a way to use both those tools anyway!
And after all this, they will have to actually re-enter the atmostphere on this piece of suicidal garbage. Man, I wish I had this kind of courage.
Are we really all that cynical that we can't wish Commander Collins and her crew a "good job folks"?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I heard about this on radio. I notice that NASA is being very cautious with Shuttle flights. I heard that they had practice, repractice, and planned backups to what amounted to the astronaut yanking the offending material out. I heard he was instructed not to touch anything else on the Shuttle as it was very fragile. Though I know all these precaution were necessary, I can't help but wonder should they design these thing to be a little more rugged. I mean they can withstand heat, radiation, and high g-forces but if an astronaut touches he could irreparably damage it. If the US plans to move human spaceflight beyond Earths orbit, we are need a more rugged workhorse.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/orl -asecdiscthomas27072705jul27,1,748691.column
Since the end of the Cold War many have over estimated how good, the simple reliable Russian system were. They had some good designs, but they have had alot of utter crap.
Apparently, you haven't read the many articles that are all over the space subset of the Web that describe the plans that are forming to build new rockets that will be able to carry people and cargoes, have you? You waste all this space saying "we should do this" and "we should do that" without realizing that ... we are doing it! But this kind of thing isn't done overnight; it takes a while to complete.
SafeSimpleSoon.Com
i am a soviet space shuttle
Is that like a "hanging chad"? Could they replace it with a dangling participle?
What?
It's not so much that they're anti-science as pro-God.
You're not anti-God are you???
I remember seeing a recording of a failed Soyuz T-10-1 launch. The rocket exploded on a launch pad, but the crewed was catapulted into the air mere sub-second before that
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Additionally, isn't there a good reason for that separation substance to be there in the first place? If not, why did we pay $BIG to send it up there in the first place?
I'm sure there's good answers to these, but, hey, I don't know 'em. :)
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
That this would be a hand job!
This is great stuff
Many, many people have a huge false sense of security when it comes to cell phones (and phones in general for that matter), thinking that what they say won't and/or can't be intercepted by anyone. I've witnessed people giving out credit cards, social security numbers and other personal information over their cell phone numerous times. If it's really this easy to grab conversations from the air, i's just more fuel to the identity theft fire.
After all, this implies that you can do some easy scamming by just go a highly populated area and phishing away. Of course, it might be hard to explain to passerbys just what that big tube-like thing you're holding is for
If I had mod points I'd mod parent up - the article was a fascinating and informative read.
I can just imagine Bill G. using the three-finger-salute to reboot a rocket that has malfunctioned.
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Why not just use two of those massless "fifth" engines?
-Peter
Okay, I misunderstood the "Everything was going good for 20 years" comment. In the context of just the
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
So? The SR-71 needs similar refitting and costs many, many times more to produce and service. That the Soviets were able to acheive that speed and operational envelope at all with the materials used is worthy of acclaim.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
"That's one small tug for a man, one less thing to worry about during re-entry"
Okay, I misunderstood the "Everything was going good for 20 years" comment. In the context of just the TPS, there have been no major disasters in the history of the STS prior to the final flight of Columbia. I was thinking of the STS as a whole. My bad.
That said, I still stand by the rest of my comment. The fact that it problems never resulted in a disaster prior to 2003 does not mean that there were never any serious problems. I see this attitude all the time and it's wrong. People get away with doing stupid things for a while -- years, sometimes. Then, for whatever reason, they stop getting away with it and come to me and say, "Fix it", and won't listen when I point out that it is their behavior that is the problem.
"We've always done it that way" makes a lousy epitaph.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Why are these things not glued down? It sure sounds as if Ductape would have been better...
Oh well, what the hell...
The SR-71 can maintain Mach 3 (the aircraft can fly Mach 3.3 what limitations in the handbook has yet to be declassified) while the Mig-25 can only fly at 2.83 for limited amounts of time. The SR-71 has a range of 2,900 miles unrefueled, while the Mig-25 has 537 miles in the same conditions. The SR-71 routinely flew at 80,000ft, while the Mig-25 had a maximum service altitude of just over 67,000ft.
How much the Mig-25 actually cost to develop and produce is unknown, just going by the cost per an aircraft is not a accurate measure because the Russian Air Force already ate the cost of the aircraft development, while when you talk about cost per an aircraft in US circles, we talk about total cost of the project divided by the number of aircraft produced. Which is why many aircraft top a billion per an aircraft.
The MiG-25 wasn't designed to intercept the SR-71; it was designed to intercept the B-70. The B-70 maxed out just over mach 3 (3.08 I believe was the maximum speed ever attianed in flight testing), and while it could maintain top speed for a much longer time, it also had 6 engines that were among the largest ever fitted to an airframe. The XB-70 was large fast and extremely heavy, built for straight line speed above all else, and thus any plane designed to brng it down would likely have had to be the same. The XB-70 was a fascinating airplane in many repsects, but had it ever made it to production, I suspect the MiG-25 would have been more than a match for it.
Moreover, as a ground based interceptor, the MiG-25 had much different requirements than either the SR-71 or the XB-70. It could only fly at top speed for about a half hour because that's all the farther it would ever need to fly to intercept an enemy plane entering it's airspace. The other two planes which were designed to fly halfway around the world and their only defense was to fly as high and fast as possible any time they were within enemy airspace.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Note: I'm not saying the shuttle isn't more dangerous than Apollo, I'm just saying that there's no good evidence that it is. If we'd been able to examine the service modules on all the Apollo flights, we might have made some hair-raising discoveries.
So? The SR-71 needs similar refitting and costs many, many times more to produce and service.
It also did much, much, much more than the MiG-25, so the comparison here is an unfair one. The SR-71 could cruise for hours at Mach 3+, the MiG-25 could ony do it for minutes at a time. Further, the speed record set by the MiG-25 was acheived at the cost of ruining the engines of the fighter for that one sprint.
The MiG-25 was indeed a great Russian acheivement, but to say it's in the same class as the SR-71 is somewhat of a gross distortion. And the SR-71 didn't cost that much to run compared to other surveillance platforms of the day -- namely satellites!
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In fact like many Skunkworks aircraft it was cheap for the capabilities that it delivered.
Touche. However, if you know anything about rocket engines, you know the weight of the engine is just about inconsequential when compared to the overall weight of the vehicle and (above all) fuel.
According to wikipedia, the Saturn V launch vehicle weighed approximately 6.3 million pounds. Of that, each first-stage F-1 engine weighed 18,500 pounds. This means all five F-1 engines comprised only 1.5% of the total vehicle mass. Admittedly I've left out the ancillary things associated with extra engines (mounting struts, extra plumbing, extra turbopumps, etc.) but the point should be clear: adding engines doesn't hideously impact the cost of the system unless you have to haul the whole damn thing to orbit. Expendable stages really are still the best answer to getting into space cheaply, quickly, and reliably.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That should read "adding engines doesn't hideous impact the weight of the system," not cost. That's what I get for not proofreading it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Discovery Gapfiller" -- the shows that are on between American Chopper and Mythbusters.
Anyone have a source to verify it?
all it *IS* is a test bed. Sadly instead of collecting valuable data *about the shuttle* on every single launch
Scale versions of the shuttle should be launched frequently to learn more about things that can go wrong. Then questions like overheating wouldn't have to be answered on the real one.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
"Discovery's Dangling Gapfiller Removes Hand"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I read Comm Check, too, about two years ago or whenever it came out. However, I recall that the major problem was not the vehicle, but the culture. NASA officials involved in the Columbia flight were in denial right to the bitter end. They could have peeped the orbiter before re-entry, but didn't because "what could we do, anyhow" or words to that effect.
Not to say there's no problem with foam falling off, but the larger issue was the wholesale disregard of specialist opinions by NASA management.
That said, does anyone know anything about foam debris pre-orange tanks? They stopped painting the tanks to save weight, AFAIK, but did the paint have any positive effect on foam integrity?
Oh, and as far as admitting NASA was wrong about the shuttle... THere have been numerous plans to replace the shuttle, but each costs money, and the collective think tank known as Congress would rather keep driving the car it has now then invest in a new one. SO what if the thing is held together with duct tape, or whatnot. This gang would rather drive it into the ground first than replace it with a shuttle derivative.
The recent replacement plans covered in the New York Times show a great first step. Let's hope they continue an that course.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I just heard one of NASA's talking heads say on CNN that the gap filler has several roles, among them preventing the channeling of heat through the gap to the shuttle body. So, by removing a gap filler, are we preventing one way of concentrating heat and allowing another?
What we should be doing instead is using BDB's (Big Dumb Boosters). The aren't sexy, but they work, and they can haul a cubic buttload of cargo into orbit -- or beyond.
Is that a metric buttload, or an imperial buttload?
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
The thought of having my dangling gapfiller pulled out by forceps or (gasp) cut off by a makeshift hack saw is just unnerving.
Amen and hallelujah. Shuttle derivatives have been on the drawing board for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, Congress has lacked the intestinal fortitude to make the changes.
;-)
Perhaps we should move the seat of government to a LaGrange point and see how long it takes for Congress to cough up the dough for a reasonably safe, reliable and cost-effective launch system.
Then there is the argument for private launch insudtry, but that's an argument for another thread.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
The big block engine may be too heavy. You have to look at tables of "Thrust to Payload" ratios to get a good idea of efficiency. http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/a_single_stage_ to_orbit_thought_experiment.shtml
e ltav.html
l ement/75SummerStudy/4appendM.html But it is quite feasible to create a safe and effective nuclear rocket.
The idea of the Shuttle is to work as a service module and to allow astronauts to exit and re-enter the vehicle. Rockets are still used to launch satellites--but they can't be used for space stations and repair missions. Or at least, you would have to add a lot more of a return payload to the lifting body and add other complicated devices that would have to be thrown away. So the thought is, by the time you fix a rocket to do this type of work, you are better of with some kind of shuttle (not necessarily the one we have).
There is also the Delta-V to consider. Weight of propellant is not the only issue--its Volume to Mass ratio also has an effect, giving denser fuel an advantage. http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen_d
Anyway, the ideal engine would be an Atomic engine for real power. But say "Nuclear" to anyone and rationality goes out the window. http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSett
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Wasn't destroying the Saturn V blueprints one of the conditions for getting funding for the shuttle (ironically so they wouldn't rely on Saturn V and build a better vehicle)? I very much doubt today's NASA could built a better Saturn V in a cost-effective and safe manner.
Well, this is NASA, so I guess they have analyzed this to death already :)
The mouse has a little space suit, with a little EVA pack on it. The point of the experiment is to get the mouse to perform some complex tasks in a zero G environment. Then Nasa will analyze the data and compare the results with those of similar tests done in an earthside laboratory.
What's really amazing about the mouse suit is that the little mouse gloves are completely articulated so that the mouse has full range of motion, and can properly manipulate the controls of the little EVA pack and of the experimental apparatus.
So relax, PETA, nothing to see here, move along now.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Dude, the mouse was going to die when Discovery crashes anyway.
Y'know, I'm start to get a little sick of this.
The Apollo capsule was designed to keep three people alive on a trip to the moon. That's it. The Shuttle was designed to do a hell of a lot more than Apollo could ever dream of.
The Shuttle can launch satellites. Okay, that's a rediculously expensive way to launch a satellite. The Shuttle can retrieve satellites and return them to Earth. This might have been useful 24 years ago, but nowadays it's usually cheaper to send up another one than to retrieve and relaunch the original. However, how would you do that with an Apollo mission? Maybe if the satellite was really small. The shuttle was designed as a "platform" for repairing satellites in space. Think you could do that with an Apollo capsule? I don't think so.
Heck, compare the size of the Shuttle's crew area with the available crew area of an Apollo capsule and tell me again how Apollo is "more capable."
Yes, Boosters can haul more "cargo" into orbit. But, then, how do we connect all that "cargo" together? You need a place for the people who are putting that cargo together to work from. I agree that if all you want to do is stick "cargo" into orbit, the Shuttle is a complete waste. But if you want to do something with the "cargo" once it's up there, the Shuttle shines.
I was reading an editorial in the LA Times the other day where someone was griping about how the Shuttle was supposed to make flights into space "routine" and how it didn't succeed in it's mission. I would argue, instead, that it's people like the commentator that show how "routine" the Shuttle has made spaceflight. It's so routine that we take the capabilities of the Shuttle for granted.
By the way, in regards to the ISS, the ISS--to me--is a stepping stone kind of thing. I've seen lots of comments on Slashdot and such about how we can build interplanetary ships in orbit. Of course, we've never actually done this before. The ISS provides us the opportunity to learn how to assemble things in space. It may eventually take the Shuttle's place as a "platform" for doing big things in space.
Your argument sounds like you're saying that the Mercury, Gemini, and all Apollo missions short of Apollo 11 were a complete waste of time. We should have just built the thing and gone. Imagine how much money we'd have saved!
One thing to remember when reading Russian recommendations is that they built in a large margin of safety. This not only comes in terms of when to performance maintenance, it extends to when to retire aircraft & components.
Somesmall jets that were due to be retired and melted down to slag by former soviet bloc eastern european countries ended up being purchased by western aviation enthusiasts for acrobatic purposes. They've more than doubled the number of hours the soviets recommended for retirement and aside from normal wear 'n tear the airframes are fine.
Therefore their recommendation that 30 minutes of flight is the maximum sustainable should be taken with a grain of salt.
With you at NASA's helm, we'd never have found out if mice could sort tiny screws in space.
Moof!
I know almost nothing about rockets. When I wrote my post I was imagining solid fuel rockets. Probably because that's all I have any experience with
-Peter
How much does it cost to have one of those worked on by hand in space?
The russians as well as the americans before the shuttle have done numerous space walks and various repair missions from capsule like vessels. And it is true that on reentry the vessel is usually wasted, but all the equipment inside of it is not and can be placed inside of another vessel.
The things that make the shuttle problematic and expensive and dangerous -- the fact that it carries its own boosters and its wings are of no help whatsoever for these missions.
Also, I think it is very rational to be against nuclear rockets. You have to keep in mind that every type of rocket crashes into the earth at least once. Some do it many many times. And if you spread a ton of uranium over a huge field or even worse in the ocean you will never be able to clean it up.
Actually, they wanted to find out if mice could sort tiny shrews in space.
That wasn't a recommendation, but experience: record-speed flights with the MiG 25 usually resulted in EOLing the engines.
Also the 30 minutes of maximum flight is a fact. In order to maintain Mach 2.83 the engines must be red lined with afterburners on. You red line any engine and you aren't going to get more then 30 minutes of flight out of the aircraft.
You waste all this space saying "we should do this" and "we should do that" without realizing that ... we are doing it!
Oh really? Where are the plans? Where are the prototypes? Where are the engineering teams testing out launch and recovery scenarios? Where is the budget? Where are the simulators? Where? Where?
They don't exist! NASA has nothing on hand to replace the shuttle right now. It doesn't even have anything firm on the drawing board to replace the shuttle! If NASA had to ground the shuttle permanently (which it may very well do after this flight), the U.S. would be out of the manned spaceflight business until a replacement were designed, prototyped, tested, built, tested again, flown experimentally, and then flown operationally. That process can take a decade, perhaps more. And NASA hasn't even officially started looking for a successor to the shuttle! There's no money budgeted for a specific design. Hell, there isn't even an agreed upon design direction! How in the hell can you possibly say "we are doing it!" when there is absolutely positively no "action" going on in that direction?
Sure, there's a lot of talk, but talk is cheap. When NASA has blueprints being sent to fabricators, then you can say "we are doing it!" Until then, NASA is just doing more of what it's been doing for the last 34 years: blowing lots of hot air and going fast in circles.
At this rate, the last man to stand on the face of the moon will be dead of old age before the next man follows in his footsteps. Forty years ago we were preparing to land a man on the moon, and today the best we can do is low Earth orbit with a vehicle that cost ten times as much to operate and has killed 14 astronauts due to the most pedestrian failures (O-rings and foam)! How the mighty have fallen! NASA should be ashamed, and we are not worthy of those who came before us if this is the best we can do.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This must be a troll, because it completely fails to take into account that all this is very new and you can't just pull something finished out of your ass and declare it working. Yes, I agree that they talk a lot before they do anything -- but if something gets funded to actually get done, they will do it. There was funding for this in the next budget bill, if I remember right.
If nothing comes of it but more talk and debate and no studies are done and no early work gets done within a couple years to make it look like something is being done with that money, THEN you can bitch.
Until then, sit down, take a stress pill, and think things over.
i am a soviet space shuttle
This must be a troll
/. reasoning. Immature, unthoughtful, shallow, but very typical. Bravo! You should be proud of yourself!
I disagree with you therefore I must be a troll. Don't back up your argument with facts, don't try to argue about provable things, just call your opponent a troll and move on. Yep, typical
because it completely fails to take into account that all this is very new and you can't just pull something finished out of your ass and declare it working.
The original design lifetime of the shuttle had it being retired before 2010. It is now 2005, meaning we have at most five years to completely pull off an entirely new launch system. The shuttle has been known to have major design flaws and limitations since 1986, yet NASA has killed every idea designed to replace it.
Further, the shuttle has failed to achieve every single design advantage goal proposed by the original design. It is not cheaper to operate. It does not get into space any more regularly than a traditional booster (far less, AAMOF). It is not safer than what came before. It cannot haul more cargo than what came before. The very concept of saving money and time by going with a reusable spacecraft is flawed, and nothing makes that more obvious than the fact that all the talk about replacing the shuttle is arrayed around non-reusable capsules.
There was funding for this in the next budget bill, if I remember right.
There is funding for studies about getting back to the moon and Mars. There is no funding for a shuttle replacement because there is no shuttle replacement. You can't fund a thin-air idea, you have to fund a design. NASA has no design, and it doesn't have one because it's been stubbornly refusing to even entertain the concept of shutting down the shuttle for almost two decades.
If nothing comes of it but more talk and debate and no studies are done and no early work gets done within a couple years to make it look like something is being done with that money, THEN you can bitch.
I can (and will) bitch because the actions you speak of should have already been in progress years ago! Does GM wait until they are ready to shut down a car production line before they start even thinking about making a new car? Absolutely not. A new car design is started the day the prior design goes into production. That way, if design & testing takes five years, you can pump out a new model every five years. If NASA takes a decade or more to design a shuttle replacement, they should've been designing and testing something back in 2000. It is now 2005 and there isn't a single piece of hardware on any NASA drawing board anywhere aimed at replacing the shuttle.
Until then, sit down, take a stress pill, and think things over.
Until then, sit down, put your head in the sand, and think happy joy-joy thoughts, because that's apparently where you are comfortable.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
You're right about the troll thing, and let's take that away. Now, I will respond to the rest of what you said, and let us stop being incendiary at each other and let's actually hold a good debate here.
Here's what I think, so far, in order:
The design lifetime of the Shuttle was for 100 flights per orbiter. That means that with a fleet of four, the design lifetime is 400 flights. Each orbiter has on average flown only about 25-30 flights, which means we are only 1/4 of the way through the design lifetime. Aircraft lifetimes are measured by the amount of time they've actually been flying rather than the amount of time they've existed.
While it is true that not all of the design goals have been met (which is a shame), keep in mind that no one had ever built a spaceplane anything like the shuttle before and therefore the only experience that it could be based on was that of airline service. It is now routine to fly aircraft long distances several times per day and work routine maintenance in around the schedule an airline must keep. This we do very well. But it turned out over time that the Shuttle was more complex to work with than anyone thought. While it seems easy enough to say that "they should have thought of that", is it really true? I don't think so. You only gain confidence in statements like that when you've had a lot of experience with the situation at hand -- which we didn't have with the Shuttle. It would have been great had it worked out that way, and we thought it would because we thought we knew what it would be like to operate it but it didn't happen. I don't think it's out of laziness or incompetence or anything else, but out of inexperience. Now we know more about what works and what doesn't, so in the future if a better spaceplane is tried, we will have years of Shuttle experience behind us as well as more years of expendable rocket experience. It will happen, but not yet.
In order to try again to build a shuttle replacement, we are going to have to get through the study phase. If there is serious incentive to build it, after the studies are completed, there will be designs, then testing. While it's easy to say "oh, if they were serious they'd be doing real work", the truth of the matter is still that these things take time. I think we'd all like to see it happen sooner rather than later, but we just can't get around the fact that major stuff like this takes time. Originally, in fact, the CEV wasn't supposed to be ready until 2014-2015 or so. Now, there has already been a lot of "let's move that up to 2010" debate. Can an entirely new system be built in a few short years? Sure. It's been done before, when properly funded. The Saturn family of rockets first began real flight testing in the mid 60s and was flying operational missions by the end of the decade. All that was needed was enough people to build it and the funds to build with.
There are actually designs in progress that are looking pretty good and are based on existing hardware so in theory they will take less time and money to complete. SafeSimpleSoon.Com has some great information, and these can be turned into flight hardware relatively quickly. See what I said above about what it took to design an entirely new system from scratch; if we're starting from existing hardware, it's not so hard.
I do not have my head in the sand. I am a realist and I know what is involved in these things. I'd like to see it all work out as much as the next person, but you can't just snap your fingers and make it happen.
i am a soviet space shuttle
You're right about the troll thing, and let's take that away. Now, I will respond to the rest of what you said, and let us stop being incendiary at each other and let's actually hold a good debate here.
I agree. Much more productive that way. My opinion of you just went up several notches.
The design lifetime of the Shuttle was for 100 flights per orbiter.
Very true. What you're forgetting, though, is that the shuttle was originally designed to be turned around in about four weeks, not four months. If you take that into account, the planned lifetime of the shuttle was (100 / 12 = 8.3) 8.3 years assuming a maximal usage and minimal turnaround time. Double that figure for a slightly more optimistic launch schedule (by 1975 estimates) and you still only get a rough lifetime of 16.6 years. Columbia was first launched on April 12, 1981. Add 17 years and you get 1998. To paraphrase an old saying, it's not the mileage, it's the years. The shuttle is just old. The very ideas and concepts it is based upon, its very structure, power-to-weight ratios, everything is based upon how things looked 34 years ago. If we had a clean sheet today we'd build a much different vehicle I'm sure. Back then we had to make certain compromises to make the shuttle work, and most of those compromises were under the heading of "safety." To take your argument at face value, an unused Saturn V booster, having sat in a warehouse somewhere for 34 years, is still an economical and safe way to get into orbit. While it may work just fine, it represents old thinking in many ways, compromises that we made back then but no longer have to. We can do better. We should do better.
While it is true that not all of the design goals have been met (which is a shame), keep in mind that no one had ever built a spaceplane anything like the shuttle before and therefore the only experience that it could be based on was that of airline service.
Agreed, the shuttle was a first try at a totally new concept. However, if you research the birth of the shuttle carefully, you'll find the engineers were dragged kicking and screaming to the current shuttle design. Did you know the original design didn't have solid boosters? They were deemed too dangerous for manned spaceflight due to the fact that they can't be throttled, trimmed, or even turned off in flight. The original design allowed for an ejection system as well but was cut for weight and cost reasons. Never before had NASA sent its astronauts into space without some kind of escape system, be it ever so humble. The original design had air-breathing engines for a powered landing on the return flight. These were scrapped, again for cost and weight issues, meaning the shuttle must land perfectly all the time, every time. Did you know the original specifications for thermal protection tiles demanded that no debris be shed during launch? And yet NASA continued to launch knowing that foam, ice, and other things were impacting and damaging the tiles even from the very first launch? NASA knowingly operated the vehicle outside its design specifications, which is negligent at best and criminal at worst. Yet it did so because that was the only way the platform could be operated. When you have to operate something outside its design specs in order to actually get it to work, something is dreadfully wrong. All this has been known since 1981, yet nothing has been done about almost all of it.
It all adds up to a ton of things that must function perfectly or people die. All that perfection runs up costs and turnaround time while simultaneously greatly increasing risk. The original shuttle engineers knew this, but they were overruled by NASA brass and the politicians.
While it seems easy enough to say that "they should have thought of that", is it really true? I don't think so. You only gain confidence in statements like that when you've had a lot of experience with
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Unfortunately, there are way too many idiots out there who really don't know what they're talking about, so it's gotten to the point where I get very frustrated trying to hold debates. Most people will just say things without doing their research. Ugh.
Okay, now, here we go.
Yep. Quite true the Shuttle turnaround time is longer than expected, and this is one of the things I had in mind when I said that we didn't have enough experience to realize there would be problems. Aircraft are turned around in far less time and made ready to fly again, and since we have so much experience in that we didn't realize how different it would be to work on the shuttle -- which is also built in a far different way than a plane is, and it's something that had never been built before. I place no bad intentions or blame on this because it's just a fact of life that doing something for the first time takes longer than it does when you've got some experience.
Indeed, the shuttle is old, and a lot of things have been learned since it was built -- but then, there are a lot of other things that are old that work just fine; we could replace them and get more out of the replacements, but it's a big deal to do that.
A few examples of old things that are still in use: The Boeing 747 (1969, improved over the years). The VW Golf (1970s, also improved). The VW Beetle (1936, virtually unchanged until 1993, then discontinued). The Intel x86 microprocessor (1980s, updated over the years). And so on. Why do we still use these things today? Because the designs still work very well even though they are no longer new, and over the years it has proven to be expensive, a hassle, or similar to replace them. It is not necessarily a bad thing to keep using something that is old just because it is old. It is, however, important to add improvements that will improve safety and efficiency; that 747 has electronic controls today, for instance; new Golfs have computerized management and emission control systems; the Beetle, even though it looked much the same when it was discontinued, had modern improvements like better seatbelts, air bags, CD players, and so on. And so it is with the Shuttle: while some major design elements could not be changed, many under-the-skin. But now there's more interest in coming up with a successor.
It's also not such a bad thing necessarily to use a vehicle for a long time. Soyuz was designed for manned lunar flights and first flew in the mid-60s, but it's still in use today and works just fine and a number of variants exist for whatever job is needed.
The cutbacks you mention are all indeed true (and liquid boosters were considered, as were monolithic one-piece solid boosters, which were not done for political reasons). Keep in mind however that it's not really the engineers' fault that none of the better ideas were used. They were not used not because the engineers did not want to use them; they were not used because thbe bureaucrats decided for whatever reason that they did not want to provide the funding, probably so they could waste a lot more money by throwing it at the Defense "We buy hookers with your money" Department or something -- we need to be fair; NASA has done an amazing amount of great stuff with the money they get (about 1% of the budget) and it's not really their fault when they can't do the things they'd really like to. Instead, we need to blame the bureaucratic system that allowed vital safety systems to be removed.
It is ridiculous that nothing was done to fix the major problems that were fixable; however, some of them are inherent in the design, like foam shedding is going to be a problem as long as you have the crew cabin mounted on the side of the booster instead of atop it. That's something that can't be changed without a complete redesign; however, a lot of other safety issues have been addressed with ongoing upgrades, and that's a thing to applaud.
I am not so sure if I dismiss the value of experience too easily, though. While it is true that it didn't take
i am a soviet space shuttle
Capsule versus shuttle is very debatable--there are too many designs to consider to rule anything out. Though as material technology gets better, reusable shuttles get better.
But also, disposable electronics get cheaper--so it goes on. Just take a look at the X-33 and others. The space shuttle we currently have is big and expensive. Also, an airplane is much more efficient for lifting at lower altitudes where you have an atmosphere -- but the shuttle doesn't take advantage of this -- so it doesn't represent what could be its a winged space planes greatest asset.
Also, I'll disagree with you about the safety of Nuclear fuel. They ship nuclear fuel on the highways in the US-- and it would take much more than your average highway reck with a bomb blast to open it up.
Basically, a nuclear rocket could use thousands of small bomblets. Each one sealed and only able to go critical at a neutron bombarded chamber for propulsion. If the space ship cracks up, you don't even get any fire (other than liquid oxygen that might be used for the crew). With proper precausions and small parachutes for nuclear fuel (there are many thigs you can do for a rare exploding vehicle) the risks involved in a nuclear rocket could be many times safer than liquid or solid rocket propellent. Nothing would burn or explode except for the controlled chamber.
Like I said, you say; "NUCLEAR" and logic goes out the window. The only problem with Nuclear is if you combine it with cost cutting and greed -- now that creates risk.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I place no bad intentions or blame on this because it's just a fact of life that doing something for the first time takes longer than it does when you've got some experience.
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Well, I agree with you that the shuttle was indeed a learning experience, but I don't agree that it should take this long for NASA to figure out the idea wasn't a good one. Again, I'm going to direct you to the "Comm Check..." book I mentioned earlier. There is abundant evidence of how NASA violated its own safety procedures routinely just to operate the shuttle. There were certain things "the book" said you should never allow, such as debris strikes during launch, that happened with every single launch. The TPS wasn't designed with that in mind, and it said so in the flight manual. NASA, instead of saying "hey, we've got a major design problem here" just decided to write a waiver and launch anyway.
The comparisons to the fatal Apollo 1 fire are chilling here, as are the comparisons to Challenger. In all cases, NASA knew it was doing something in a way that made things more dangerous than they already were, but NASA went ahead and did it anyway out of expediency, neglect, inertia, ignorance, politics, and plain laziness. People died as a result.
A few examples of old things that are still in use:
You raise a good point, one I'll come back to in a minute. My favorite example of a design that just keeps on going in the venerable B-52 bomber. The "52" in the name reflects the year the design was started, and the first one flew in 1955. Today, it's projected the B-52 could keep flying until 2045. That's an unprecedented lifespan for a front-line bomber, something never before seen. If you examine sharks today, you'll find they are little changed from million-year-old fossils. Why? They are the pinnacle of evolution for their particular function, just as the B-52 is with jet-powered bombers.
Unfortunately, the shuttle does not belong -- and will never belong -- in this category. It was an interesting attempt, and had it remained true to more of its original design intent with fewer compromises along the way, the idea might've held merit even today. But, it didn't, and NASA has known this for some time.
It is ridiculous that nothing was done to fix the major problems that were fixable; however, some of them are inherent in the design, like foam shedding is going to be a problem as long as you have the crew cabin mounted on the side of the booster instead of atop it. That's something that can't be changed without a complete redesign; however, a lot of other safety issues have been addressed with ongoing upgrades, and that's a thing to applaud.
Agreed. But the remaining flaws are both amazingly dangerous and -- and here's the worst part -- they're amazingly obvious to anyone. Even a layman can understand that if you place your crew vehicle alongside a giant tank full of cryopropellants, you're going to have to worry about debris. Apollo had no such worries because it put the valuable, fragile stuff like humans at the top of the stack. You can't look at all the design compromises in the shuttle and tell me NASA didn't realize it was building a much more dangerous vehicle. There are too many smart people there for me to believe that. However, there are also a lot of bureaucrats and yes-men there, and they also happen to more or less run the place. That's why we ended up with the lemon we have now, and that's why fourteen astronauts are dead. NASA not only could've done better, it knew it could've done better and didn't. That is unforgivable.
Also, as I said, there's quite a lot that is being done, within the bounds of the current design, to reduce risk. We will never entirely eliminate it, however. That is part of life and part of walking out of your house every day. Heck, it's still possible to get killed while at home. Life is risky
Again, no disagreement here about space travel being risky. H
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is a more brief reply this time, because we're starting to reach an equilibrium point where we point out everything that needs to be pointed out, but I still want to follow up on a few things.
Waivers aren't always a terrible thing. For some critical items, they are bad, but they are also used for things that, if failed, wouldn't result in loss of mission or vehicle. If a mission launches with some waivers on file, just pointing at their quantity isn't the best way to figure out how many problems there are. Instead, look at how many of those are affecting critical systems instead of something like "in the mid-deck, the third stowage drawer in the second row down is jammed shut and we don't have time to fix it so we won't use that one".
There are a lot of attitude problems that need to be fixed, although I don't think they're insurmountable. While all goverment agencies have a certain amount of stupid bureaucratic crap, and this one is no exception, the crap doesn't always, and hasn't always, stood in the way of doing the right thing. So I really do still think that it can be overcome. It takes effort, but if enough people care, and enough pressure is exerted to do it right, it can be done. I like to take an optimistic view.
The side-mount design flaw, as we both know, is one that can't be fixed without flying something entirely new. Fortunately, this is known, better now that we have proof that it doesn't work than before when we could just say "hey, there's probably going to be debris because everything else launched has had some stuff fall off it, so I bet there's going to be a problem". So if you look at designs for future cargo and crew launchers, almost all of them are inline, and the sidemount CEV/cargo pod still puts the part that has to reenter above most of where debris is shed, and it has a boost protective cover (as Apollo did) over the crew vehicle to protect it, so debris hits won't affect it. So that's being addressed. We just don't know when the flight tests are going to start for sure yet, though right now I think they're looking at 2008-2011 or so. Somewhere in there. Like I've said elsewhere and here, this stuff takes time, so one can't really say that nothing is being done about it. It is, it's just not ready to fly yet.
As for "someone screwed up and we shouldn't have done it this way" -- yes, that's true, but instead of being negative and pointing fingers and saying "you're an idiot" or whatever, I'd rather say "okay, yes, we've had problems, now what can we learn from this to put into the next design to fix them?" Like I've said, all the new designs are inline, and they also (Delta IV or STS) use already-flown components, in some cases man-rated components, instead of starting from scratch. I think that's a good approach.
Also don't forget that while 17 people have died so far, all of them were volunteers and knew the risks, including all the faults, and went anyway. Would I go on the Shuttle were I asked? You bet. I am willing to die for some things, and this is one of them. So that's another thing that's lost on all the nay-sayers.
Again, as for being able to do all the great things that need to be done -- I'd rather be positive than a nay-sayer who doesn't believe anything is possible. As long as we assume that something can't be done, it never will be. Negative prophecies have a way of coming true.
To pull a semi-famous (?) example out, in the Harry Potter books there's a prophecy that says that "out of these two people only one of them will survive and the other must die". or something similar to that. If you are one of the people referred to by the negative doomsday prophecy, you can choose to either accept your fate and stand there and wait for the end to come, or you can choose to want to live. It takes effort to do that because you have to then figure out what the threat is and how to combat it and get through a lot of trials on the way in which you can die, but if you want to survive in the end, you have to have the will to win, know w
i am a soviet space shuttle
So much for being short ...
No problem. I'm enjoying this debate thus far. I agree with most of what you said until this point:
The side-mount design flaw, as we both know, is one that can't be fixed without flying something entirely new. Fortunately, this is known, better now that we have proof that it doesn't work than before when we could just say "hey, there's probably going to be debris because everything else launched has had some stuff fall off it, so I bet there's going to be a problem".
If there had been nobody pointing out this glaring flaw back when the shuttle was still on the drawing board, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Many, many engineers pointed out that if Apollo had taught them anything, it was that you can't adequately protect something side-mounted. These knowledgeable engineers, steeped in experience from years of Apollo, were overruled by non-engineers, bureaucrats and bean counters all of them. I'm in a highly technical field myself, and I'm called upon frequently to give my opinion on this design or that design. It is extremely frustrating to see your recommendations be ignored by those who know less about the problem (or system) than you do, but it happens. In my line of work, though, if the worst comes to pass, nobody dies. NASA did not have that luxury. It still doesn't, which is why such decisions should never be made from the top down. I just don't think NASA has learned this, not even after two shuttle losses and the Apollo 1 fire.
As for "someone screwed up and we shouldn't have done it this way" -- yes, that's true, but instead of being negative and pointing fingers and saying "you're an idiot" or whatever, I'd rather say "okay, yes, we've had problems, now what can we learn from this to put into the next design to fix them?"
Your response here would be absolutely on the mark if it weren't for the fact that NASA was widely informed about such shortcomings before the first weld was ever made in the shuttle spaceframe. Therefore, it's not an issue of ignorance -- which could be tolerated due to inexperience -- but instead one of willfull omission, purposefully ignoring the elephant in the living room. I have no problems with people making mistakes when exploring the unknown, but when the make known mistakes, I have absolutely no tolerance for them, even less so when human lives are at stake.
Again, as for being able to do all the great things that need to be done -- I'd rather be positive than a nay-sayer who doesn't believe anything is possible. As long as we assume that something can't be done, it never will be. Negative prophecies have a way of coming true.
And I agree with you. However, when a knowledgeable engineer is told to butt out because he's saying something that's politically or budgetarily inconvenient, there should be no mercy whatsoever if things go exactly as the engineer predicted. Those people making such a call should be drawn and quarter, or at the very least have their careers ruined beyond recovery. They have no business playing dice with the space program, to paraphrase Albert Einstein. There is too much at stake to cut corners like this.
As for the rest, not being a big Potter fan, I can't really comment, although I do understand your analogy. Make no mistake, I think the rewards are definitely worth some risk, perhaps even great risk. But to accept additional risk due to the whim of someone's uninformed judgement is just lunacy, and that's exactly why we have a shuttle now that can't make it beyond LEO, can't carry more than 25 tons of cargo, can't be aborted during launch, can't survive even moderate debris strikes, can't beat the cost of expendable boosters, and can't even "go around" in the event of a botched landing. All of these things were not only avoidable, they were predicted well before shuttle construction started. What upsets me now is the feigned suprise NASA exhibits at the outcome of all these poor decisions.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
OK. This one's really short. I swear. ;) (I gotta go out and do some things, so there's incentive).
I think we are falling into the same trap that far too many people fall into on things like this. There were problems in the past, caused by a variety of things (management, inexperience, just plain accidents) and so on. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes that have been made, and pointing blame here and there and saying "You fucked up! So did you! So did you!" and so on, which is really a waste of time, isn't it rather time to keep going since that's what we need to do instead of allowing a lull to start that could go on forever - BUT - at the same time, figuring out what we've learned definitely doesn't work, what does, and what can work with a little refinement -- and then applying those lessons?
Dwelling on the past is a good thing because you learn from it (one scene in The Lion King comes to mind in which it's pointed out that past events can and do and should influence the present and future), but discarding the lessons learned from the past is also bad (in the same scene the alternative, running from the past, is rightly described as a bad idea).
I think in the end looking ahead, with optimism that the bad faults will be corrected through hard experience, is what I'd rather do, and what I'd rather we all did.
I seem to be catching flak (not in this debate, don't worry) as being an "apologist", but what people don't realize when they make accusations like that is that extreme negativism is as bad as extreme optimism. I am really neither and I think I have a realistic view of all this, and I take offense at being painted with the big scarlet A.
Isn't refusing to listen to someone else's standng up and saying "Hey wait a minute" what caused the mess in the first place?
i am a soviet space shuttle