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Shuttle Delayed Due to Cloudy Skies
PunkOfLinux writes "The shuttle won't be coming down until Tuesday, due to a decision by NASA that the weather was not good enough for re-entry. After the first two attempts, at around 4:45 and 6:25 this morning, NASA called off today's landing."
I woke up at 4 in the morning to watch this...
Well, let's just hope nothing goes wrong with this.
I really wanted to see it land...
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I hear they don't mind you landing in bad weather north of the border.
I hope they get home safe. When I read about the ISS positioning itself for the first time in two years thanks to the gyros repaired/replaced by Discovery, I realised how amazing this mission was. Not just a prove that shuttles can fly again. MISSE experiment, supplies to ISS, repair works, a new platform. What an achievement! Kudos to all involved. Good luck coming home.
It's certainly better to be safe than sorry. And NASA is certainly going to be extra careful on this, the first launch after the accident, but I wonder if they would have landed in these conditions before?
Ignore Alien Orders
And then you'll keep hearing about how it safely returned/blew up in mid-air. So, either way, it's gonna go on for a long time.
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But nature is one of the last things man has yet to conquer and is still heavily vulnerable to.. now to invent the weather control devices they described in Star Trek...
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
Are they being ultra-careful with this, or is this just normal-careful? I imagine that it's the second, but this mission has been weird so far. One of the hazards of being ultra-careful with the weather would be that you reject all the okay opportunities to land and have to take the worst at the end. Or land in Texas.
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TFA: The cloud cover, although within NASA's safety limits for landing, was enough to make mission controllers uncomfortable about attempting a Monday touchdown in Florida. They must be really scared. Whole mission long they are scared to land, scared to do this and that because of the previous accident. Get over it! Space is dangerous and if you are scared, don't go there, there are enough chinese/russians/europeans to go there without that fear.
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Do they haul out the experiments and try and get some work done, or do they surf space porn for the next few hours while they wait? It's a mystery to me.
Right now the astronauts are sitting in the shuttle, wondering when it's going to land. NASA has probably given them some B.S. story about 'technical difficultys' and passing out free headphones so the passengers can watch the crummy in flight movie.
Hopefully, some of those astronauts will make a fuss and get their next ticket for free, or, at the very least NASA will upgrade them to 1st class when (and if) they chose to fly NASA again.
The Internet is generally stupid
Most would likely agree that this mission has been more 'eventful' than many in the past. And I'm sure most would agree that the general public (if they care at all) are getting more and more of a feeling that the shuttle 'just isn't doing it for me anymore'.
:)
And that may be exactly the point.
Now, granted, NASA wants a safe mission. But several of these problems may have simply been overlooked in the past because space exploration is inherently dangerous anyway, so some risks are accepable.
There is actual politcal value in a mission that seems plagued with problems. I'm getting the general feeling from the media that it's almost all NASA can do to get this thing up in the air one more time.
If enough people get the same feeling, NASA could seem very justifiable to request mroe money for a shuttle replacement. And maybe that's the real goal of this mission.
that's my conspiracy theory for the day
According to TFA, the amount of cloud cover is within safety limits, but is making controllers nervous. Also according to TFA, the weather forecast for tomorrow is the same. Just how long can the shuttle stay up there before they need to use the alternate site in California?
...the media is going to be all hyped up about how the 'daring' astronauts 'managed' to land despite the 'problem' with the heatshield...
Don't get me wrong, I do think the astronauts are pretty brave, but I also refuse to believe that NASA would let them land if they thought it was remoptly possible that the shuttle would burn up on reentry this time around. The whole freaking mission has been hyped up - now move on and build the CEV please. The shuttle is just too expensive to maintain.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
A bit of not perfect weather and the shuttle can not launch or touch down, nothing new here.
/ 08/0411205&tid=216&tid=126 which can catch an object the size of the space shuttle. They already have the speed about right (shuttle lands with about 270MPH(??))
Ofcourse they are more nervous, if they have a disaster, it will be the shuttles last flight, and with no new crew launch vehicle ready, the chance that NASA will loose a big part of its funding is very realistic, because why would they need so much money if they can not bring people and equipment to the spacestation anyway (That is the political question, not mine!!).
Anyway: We can ask the Japanese to build a huge hand http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
And ofcourse, TV images of a shuttle in the clouds, do not work good. NASA has to show the shuttle landing without the clouds so people can see it works OK again.
And now for the sarcasm version:
And ofcourse, TV images of a shuttle exploding in or above the clouds are totally useless. The networks need a clear view of the sky to be able to get the topratings which only a disaster can give them.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
When we see headlines like this, we'll know mankind has grasped true control of the weather.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Of course, they'd be most comfortable with a daylight landing with clear visibility even though the ship is fully equipped for landing in IMC.
I'd wager that they'll be landing in California this time.
NASA did some testing with a P3 Orion to study the effect.
C 87-0035-001.html
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/P-3/HTML/E
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They're just waiting for their shipment of lemon-scented napkins.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
this morning, NASA called off today's landing. are they flying it in a holding pattern over the airport?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Truly hope the landing goes through safely tomorrow. In a broader context, need to take a fresh look at the space program. One of the best things I've read on this subject was yesterday. More here: http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/08/on_the_shuttle_.htm l
There are some jobs that are very dangerous.
Can man make a shuttle that is perfect, that will never have a mishap? Does anyone know the statistsics, of how many launches and how many crashes? I am just guessing, but I would think NASA has an over 90% success rate. If that was my college physics class, I would be jumping up and down with joy. It is not like these astronauts took "physics for poets". They studied their topics in great detail, and they know it.
Getting back to my analogy. If the old air force test fighter pilot program had a failure rate over 50%, and NASA is under 10% failure (just a guess), then perhaps what is needed is a new understanding. Congress did not shut down the test pilot program because of accidents, it was considered too important. What is NASA? Eye candy? Do they want to put on a show, where the first injury causes a shut down? Or do they want to explore space, learn, and understand there will be terrible accidents along the way.
There is a great quote NASA should try and understand better. Life is the master teacher. Unfortunatly, it gives the tests first, and the lessons second.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Please remain seated as we fly above this local weather. We will be delayed unfortunately due to this turbulent weather.
-Certified TechnoWeinie
I know the people at Edwards AFB are hoping for a divert to their location.
I was stationed at Edwards when STS-111 landed there after several days of bad weather in Florida.
We piled into the shop truck and drove up to the ridge that overlooks the runway and Rodgers dry lake. We parked at an optical tracking station, which was up and running. The camera operator gave us a bearing to the northwest, towards Santa Barbara, to watch for the shuttle.
We knew it was inbound when the camera began tracking. It was just a speck, but within seconds it was overhead and the double sonic boom was impressive even by Edwards' standards, where sonic booms are an almost daily occurance.
It passed overhead and turned once, landing flawlessly on runway 22. From first sighting to touchdown was only fifteen to twenty seconds.
Later that day, after pre-flighting a jet, we drove out to the taxiway to get a closer look at Endeavour.
We almost made it before Security Forces chased us down and told us to get the heck out of there. In retrospect, we were lucky we didn't spend an hour or two face down on the concrete.
What?
Can anyone point me to a link that describes what the astronauts do with this extra day in orbit? Considering the expense of getting them there, I find it hard to believe that they just sit around for this extra day picking their nose and farting, but it would seem like all of the experiments would have already been stowed.
Can they make use of this extra day?
On a related note, I'm well aware that the astronauts have plenty of air+power+water+food for this extra day, but how long could they actually stay in orbit before one of those things ran out? Just curious; mostly to know how conservatively these things are planned.
--
$tar -xvf
Time to start sending our engineers to Russia to learn a thing or two about resilent design.
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SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Our tanks have targetting systems that can see through smoke and lock onto targets miles away, our troops have glasses that can see at night, and I can go down to the local sporting goods store and buy a laser rangefinder that will accurately measure distances out to a mile or so with a margin of error of an inch or less ... but a SPACESHIP can't land because of a few clouds?
The cynic in me agrees: This is a publicity stunt. There's no reason to keep the shuttle up there except that clear skies make better photo-ops.
Here's this weeks timeline in advance:
Monday August 8th 2005: A cloud is in the sky, NASA decides to postpone landing
Tuesday August 9th 2005: A slight breeze is detected, landing will be pushed back to Wednesday.
Wednesday August 10th 2005: Wind Chill Factor sited as cause for continued delay
Thursday August 11th 2005: A small flock of birds is spotted near the runway, landing cancelled due to safety and environmental protection concerns..
Friday August 12th 2005: Barometric Pressure Non-Optimal, landing postponed.
Saturday August 13th 2005: Humidity levels cause concern, after some deliberation it is announced that Mission Control will again delay the landing to "play it safe".
Sunday August 14th 2005: Another cloud is spotted, landing delayed.
Let's just hope they manage to get perfect weather conditions so they can land the damn thing sometime soon.
And Apache helicopter gunships that can't fire missiles without damaging their tail rotor.
The Moon People keep holding up "If you lived here, you'd be home now" signs every time the shuttle swings by.
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I used to have this as my sig:
"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing" - Flight Sim Pilot
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
If you were going to be in an unpowered descent through a vertical distance of around 250 miles (not to mention the horizontal distance), you'd be a little concerned, too.
Here in nearby Daytona Beach, we've been having near-daily thunderstorms. The clouds caused the abort of the landing because, once you do your deorbit burn, Houston can't say "Oh, wait, it's raining now, better turn around and go back into orbit."
I hope those chaps have enough petrol to stay up there another day.
I know you were joking, but it surprised me to learn that they use Outlook for email services onboard. Watching NASA TV, I lost track of the number of times Capcom instructed the crew to reboot one of their machines in order to fix sync problems with Outlook.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
ISS needed laptops because of problems with their own laptops. The shuttle-crew figured: "to hell with those thinkpads, glad to get rid of'em" and donated them.
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... and we all know how useless an helicopter that can't fly in cloud can be in britain, don't we ?
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Apaches are perfectly able to fly in clouds. The British pilots just keep planting them in the ground. Hardly the fault of the helicopter.
And about the tail rotor: it can't fire its gun without wearing the rifling in its barrel. OH NOES!! THE HORROR!!1!eleven!!
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Apparently the gap fillers are for takeoff, I believe to keep the tiles from ramming one another and cracking. I thought the same thing at first, but apparently they are not needed for landing or they'd just fix them and that'd be that.
So this whole Shuttle flight was meant to check that the Shuttle could eventually land ? Kind of "let's launch a few billion dollars into space and see if it comes back", that's very interesting science, IMO
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The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
too soon!
Let's see:
* I ended up leaving late, because my car was having problems.
* I finally got to where I was going, and my Dad made me look all over the car, to make sure it was still working correctly.
* When I found a problem, he made me fix it.
* When I went inside, my Mom made me take out the garbage.
* On the way back home, traffic was so bad, it prevented me from getting home at a reasonable time.
I'm like an trip in space away from being an astronaut! I think I'm fully trained now.
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I expect dopey headlines from the traditional media, but Slashdot should do better. Announcing "Shuttle Delayed Due to Cloudy Skies" is like saying "Airliner Crash Due to Ticket Sales." The headline incorrectly gives the impression that the weather problem is not significant. Cloudy skies are not the issue -- the shuttle lands with cloudy skies all the time. The issue is unstable weather with low ceilings (as low as 500 feet). This is a much more serious condition, as any pilot can confirm. For the shuttle these are marginal conditions. They require conducting the landing under instrument flight rules, with the possibiity of losing visibility just before touchdown. At the shuttle's high speeds, this is much more serious than for commercial aviation. Attributing the delay to timidity, a publicity stunt, or wanting better photographic conditions is just stupid.
And then again, cowardice is not the presence of fear. Everybody feels afraid, at least everybody should. Fear makes us careful and prudent. Bravery is about overcoming fear, not getting rid of it. It's OK to be afraid, we just have to overcome that fear when we feel it's worth it.
Let's rename the shuttle to something more coherent with its delays.
:)
"Shuttle Vista."
Welcome to sunny Florida! T-storms every afternoon 3:30 - 4:00. And don't forget the hurricanes.
Yeah, there's a good place to build a spaceport.
Or maybe they should learn to cope with the local conditions.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Most would likely agree that this mission has been more 'eventful' than many in the past. "
No. Anyone who has studied the space program will tell you that every single mission is eventful. The difference is that this flight has had more attention. The astronauts on STS-114 can't break wind without getting mentioned on a news report or weblog. Hell, look at Slashdot here, we've had more coverage for this space flight then I think we've had for any other single event, ever.
Why? Because the last shuttle ended in disaster, and everyone wants to be first to report on this one. Everybody's watching. If this flight goes off without a hitch and STS resumes flight again, the next one will get moderate coverage, the next after minor, and then people will move on to the next big thing.
The same thing happened with Apollo. The Apollo 11 landing broadcast had the biggest audiance of all-time. When Apollo 13 exploded, most people didn't even know we had a mission up there.
Senstationalism gets attention. A larger share of attention means the media can sell more advertisements. Like water and electricity, money follows the path of least resistance.
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Exactly! Not publicity photo-ops, but rather imaging of the shuttle as it comes in. If something were to actually go wrong it's imperative for forensic analysis to be able to see it, be it from the ground or from chase planes.
The exact same reasoning is used for launches.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
I mean, if any email client is going to have sync problems, it'd be one in space. At least it mostly works. If I was Microsoft, I'd stick that on my packaging somewhere. "Works 90% of the time, even in space!"
Here's a link to the NASA fact sheet on landing the space shuttle, for those interested in factual type of info: http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/release/1992/1- 92.htm
a ndingSS-2005.pdf
There is also a updated secure PDF of this article here:
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/pdf/L
One thing that I learned reading through this is that the shuttle can be brought down via computer system. Some folks on Slashdot (and many other websites) have stated that the landing gear must be activated by persons onboard the shuttle, via some sort of mechanical device. That is not true according to this information from NASA. The quote below is found under Landing Aids about 2/3 way down the html page. The PDF is actually a very good read, with charts and graphics, for those into this stuff.
Landing Aids
An array of visual aids as well as sophisticated guidance equipment at the Shuttle Landing Facility help to guide the orbiter to a safe landing.
The Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) system on the ground provides range and bearing measurements to the orbiter when it is at an altitude of up to 145,000 feet. More precise guidance signals on slant range, azimuth and elevation come from the Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System (MSBLS) when the orbiter gets closer - up to 18,000 to 20,000 feet. Both TACAN and MSBLS are automatic systems that update the orbiter's onboard navigation systems.
The MSBLS also provides an autoland capability that can electronically acquire and guide the space plane to a completely "hands off" landing. So far, Shuttle mission commanders have taken control of the orbiter for all final approach and landing maneuvers during subsonic flight, usually about 22 miles from the touchdown point.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
your local radio station reporting, "School is cancelled today due to a unconfirmed sighting of a single snowflake falling somewhere in the state."
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Also humidity. It came up WRT the tanks and icing. However, the tanks, AFAIK, have to drop into water... it's a decent place to launch from for that reason.
Since the orbiter was to approach on the south->north leg of the orbit rather than the north->south leg, It was to pass over south america and cuba on its way to kennedy. You would've needed a very powerful telescope (with magical horizon adjuster) to see any part of the landing from texas.
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They don't want another disaster on their hands and it seems like they take every single precaution. I suppose they're trying to get the % chance of disaster down to 1 in 200 instead of 1 in 100
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
Florida was chosen for many beneficial reasons.
1. Its better to be further south to use the earths rotation to give you a 900 MPH+ boost.
2. Launches are to the east (NE for the ISS) in order to carry out the first item. And to place the Spacecraft over the ocean for the SRBs to drop. Or other sections in an emergency.
3. Texas (far south) could be used to carry out 1 and 2 using the Gulf. However that could put overseas landing sites out of reach when needed the most. Also a launch to the ISS heads more towards the NE. If the Orbiter needs to separate early in an emergency that leaves a filled ET and and possibly firing SRBs to come down on land in the southeastern US.
4. Using a southern location especially Florida gives easy access to the Gulf or Atlantic if they need to ditch the Orbiter perhaps after a failed approach. Also for instances when the astronauts bail out they will survive much longer in the 80-85 degree water rather than the cold waters in the north atlantic.
5. Landing at the same place you launch is a big cost benefit instead wasting money on the work needed to fly the orbiter back to florida.
All of these benefits are what locations such as florida provide. Also its not like they can't use Edwards or White Sands if needed anyway. As far as the subject line is concerned... those pretty puffy clouds are not good to have on final in a flying brick with no way to go around. One missed approach is a lot of money lost for sure.
Too bad the choppers in question are Chinooks.
This seems rather akin to British subs.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
You can take all the precautions that are humanly possible and still a terrorist bird slips through the screen and boinks the fuel tank on the nose scattering who knows how much foam onto the shuttle. Now where are my spare shorts? http://www.local6.com/technology/4772658/detail.ht ml
i heard this may be a mutiny in developement. they dont want to take the chance of dying bringing the shuttle back might have, so theyre stonewalling until they do the rescue mission theyve talked about if the poo hits the oscillator.
So the shuttle cant land on a cloudy day, but my 727 will try to land at O'Hare airport in a torrent of rain and windshear. Is this simply lack of design in the Shuttle, or does it reflect unsafe flying conditions?
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Yeah, well, same principle! See, look: Chinooks are perfectly able to fly in clouds. Better now?
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Much, thank you. ;-)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
There was some word on the news before the shuttle launch that even Amberley Air Force Base (near Brisbane) and Darwin Airport could be used in Australia for emergency landings.
While I think that would be pretty cool because I could drive out to see it if it were at Amberley, but imagine how much of a pain it would be to move a shuttle back to the US after it landed in Australia.
How would they do it? Would they put it on a ship or would a shuttle be too heavy? Anybody know?
...why they move the landing from Florida, due to cloud coverage, to California, where they land before sunrise? It seems to me that landing in the dark isn't all that better than landing in some clouds...
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