Slashdot Mirror
Panel Challenges NASA Over Shuttle Safety
Uttini writes "NASA skipped some shuttle safety improvements as it tried to meet unrealistic launch dates for the first flight since the Columbia tragedy, some members of an oversight panel said in a scathing critique. Poor leadership also made shuttle Discovery's return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be."
What if that one chunk hadn't fallen off right in view of the camera?
The return-to-flight mission would have been declared an outstanding success. Regular launches would have resumed. We would be back on track again.
Now we have to wait another seven months or more because little pieces of crap still keep falling off the fuel tank.
This is so completely pathetic.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Cutting NASA funding? No, it's been increasing -- if slowly.
Graph on budget
It is true, however, that priorities have been shifting away from the shuttle program.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
"he is willing to oust as many as 50 senior managers in a housecleaning rivaling the purge after the 1986 Challenger explosion."
Pretty harsh...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
See this article: http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia/columbiastory 2N1124AFTERSHUT.htm
It says exactly that. I haven't heard any more recently though.
Just look at the Russian Soyuz, which hasn't had a fatality since 1971.
And the Soyuz program has had about 60 manned launches compared to a little more than 100 shuttle launches. The shuttle has been lost twice, and Soyuz once. Sounds like about the same safety record to me. (which is completely igoring the fact that Soyuz has been redesigned a couple times during that period, so we have even less data on it).
AccountKiller
Yes, it can. The only reason the shuttle doesn't fly itself now are the humans that ride it. Seems they want to fly it themselves.
So what the hell have they been doing for the last 2 1/2 years? They're still using the non-freon based foam for environmental reasons even though they have an EPA exclusion to use freon. They should have just gone back to the old foam formula and been back up to flight status in 6 to 12 months. As it is they essentially did nothing to improve the problem in 2 1/2 years because for some reason I can't fathom they won't go back the formula they know works, but instead slap on a bunch of other remediation fixes that didn't work.
Seriously someone should loose their job over this, someone high up that should have known to go back to the old formula which they've know since 1999 worked better.
Am I missing something? It would seem like a no brainer to go back to the freon formula. Especially since they fleet is on the fast track to be retired anyway -- then no more freon anyway.
Letter To Iran
I'm not criticizing the overall message (except that I think the proper response is a complete replacement), but I do have a couple comments:
or, in an unfortunate, but no longer life-threatening event, crash
It'd still be life-threatening to people on the ground. Not much, and not any more than a manned entry, but there would be a tiny risk.
I can't recall a SINGLE EVENT where a capsule has burned up and people have died in reentry
The Soviets had a capsule decompression on reentry. Not burning up, but the three cosmonauts did die.
Mike Griffin summed this up pretty well in his congressional testimony before he became administrator. Back then he only really supported Shuttle and ISS if Congress would give NASA buckets of money to do it and fast track CEV, and unless they redirect all the money being squandered on Iraq, its unlikely NASA will get buckets of money to do both. Maybe now that he is administrator he has to be more diplomatic and support the Shuttle and ISS more.
"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
L1 is a point between two massive bodies orbiting around a common center of mass. There is one between the Earth and the Sun. There is also one between the Earth and the Moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=freon+s huttle+foam+nasa&btnG=Search+News
From the first site returned (and similar to several others)9 .htm
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAD0
If I'm misinformed, I'm not alone. Regardless of which exactly which formulas were used on which flights, we know that there are better formulas and we choose not to use them despite knowing how critical this is to a safe mission. Your facts have the stench of butt-covering and obviscation trying to deflect from the core fact that freon based foams should have been used when it was known they had suppior characteristics.
Letter To Iran
"I'd think private industry probably has a better system of checks&balances than most government agencies these days."
Oh, really?
Let's take a look at the methodology used by the FAA AND the aircraft industry to weigh the need for new safety systems.
A commercial aircraft crashes. The FAA and the aircraft manufacturer determine that a new safety device will be required that costs $100 Million USD in R&D, $5 Million USD per commercial aircraft installed, and $1 Million USD per aircraft for lifecycle maintenence -- for a total cost of (WAG) $2,000 Million USD. But the statisticians determine that the odds of the very same accident occuring again are 1 in 1x10^6, while the industry-wide accepted liability is figured at $2.5 Million USD per life lost. The break-even point for justifying the expense of the new safety device requires odds of 5 in 1x10^6, so the device never gets installed.
The commercial interests have weighed the cost (better safety) versus benefit (reduced liability exposure) and determined that this particular new safety device, which would save lives, really is not needed after all. Manned travel into space is a risky business, as it essentially puts the human body into a completely hostile environment with safety reliant upon 5 million components from 10,000 vendors who won their contracts by being the lowest bidders. That being said - I would still rather risk a flight on the STS (shuttle) to the ISS than on a commercial aircraft cross-country.