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NASA Plans Three More Shuttle Flights This Year
Lonesome Squash writes "The BBC are reporting that a new fuel tank is due to arrive on Wednesday that fixes the well-known problems with insulation loss. According to the article, administrators are hopeful that they will be able to "squeeze in three launches" this year. I guess they've lowered the bar enough that even the Shuttle program can slither over it. I can only be grateful that I'm not the poor chump who has to write their press releases."
NASA Plans To Push Back Three More Shuttle Flights This Year To Next Year
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They only have 3 to spare:
i ters/orbiters.html
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orb
I think I have a better chance of meeting my goals than NASA has of reaching theirs. LOL!!!
It's still an impressive technology, re-useability has a great appeal,
but what has the cost per launch got to now, and how does it compare
with more conventional rocket launches?
I think they could at least do 4! *Cries and crawls into a corner*.
The shuttle was past it's use by date before it even got off the ground. And the only reason to still be using it...is that there is no other choice. Seriously, I was told I'd be driving around 'Jetsons Style' by now! Yet here we are still stuck using this craptastic old dinosaur, to carry out rooooly important projects...like testing the effect of zero G on spiders. Yeah. Like spiders are ever going to be able to fund their own space program. Still, I suppose this keeps a bunch of sad old nerds in work, so there is something to be said for NASA.
...you get to write trolls for slashdot, you must be proud.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
If somebody said "you can be one of the 1/100000000 portion of the human race that gets to go into space, but there's a 1/25 chance you may explode in a ball of fire", who here wouldn't be all over that?
That's pretty good odds in my book. If any of you whiners have a seat you want to give up, there'll be no shortage of takers.
I hope one is on the 4th of July so I can save money of fireworks this year.
...the Russians are planning on making a sequel to "Armageddon" in which a cowboy-hat-wearing stereotypical American astronaut says in broken Russian...
"Welcome aboard sopheeesticated American shuttle!"
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
IMHO the death of the seven Columbia astronauts should not be ridiculed.
. stm
In memory of the lost seven astronauts, forever:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2716369
AFAIK there is no technology in NASA's posession that can do the same that Shuttle can. And watching video of how they're been building ISS during one of Shuttle missions is amazing. This is a poorly opinionated article, not worthy Slashdot front page.
Well I'm certainly glad that you don't write NASA's press releases or half of the other initial comments I have seen on this board. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Space exploration has been dangerous for half a century, but has been rewarding for the advancement of science and technology. Neither fact is going to change in the next half century.
While you might not support manned space flight, and thanks for letting us know, many other people out their do support the programs. We would like to respectfully hear your opinions on which direction the agency should go, not just sarcastic remarks.
The men and women who have lost their lives have families (fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters) , and think just a little harder about that before you crack a joke about dead astronauts... Would you like someone making a joke about your dead relatives?
I can only be grateful that I'm not the poor chump who has to write their press releases. You only need be grateful to your lack of writing skills and lack of experince.
Well, after the Air Force looked at the earth circling expended main tank (from the last mission) through their very immense ground based telescopes, they were able to ascertain that sixteen chunks of the exterior insulation fell off. Lock-Mart has determined that severe application of super glue would solve the trick. Tactical raids of local Wal-Marts gathered the needed supplies and off they were. No need to worry now. The main tank is totally encapsulated in super glue.
What good has the United States "International" Space Station done?
Not that we shouldn't have one, but it should actually do more than just tele-conference with fourth-grade classrooms and give photo-ops to the president once a year.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I am headed to the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center tomorrow for an exclusive look behind scenes to their operations. I'll post if I hear/find out anything exciting.
On the other hand, the Russians just do their thing with little or no media attention. With their way of doing things, they have achieved a lot with so little. NASA just "mis-used" US$ 2.9 billion allocated last year according to some sources yet among the fruits of this investment will be the constant worry whether things will go right! Think about that for a second.
Do not be surprised when the Russians do something as they have always done over the last decade. No wonder they are still the most viable vehicle to the ISS now.
The hassel is having to write two versions, just like election night.
"Perfect Launch," or the more common, "Shuttle blows up on launch again."
Drug addicts don't contibute massively to the technological development of mankind. They do not risk their lives on the altar of human knowledge.
Drug addicts risk the welfare of their family and of other druggies (since they encourage drug dealing). Whether this is acceptable depends on the drug, but we're talking about the bad stuff.
Astronauts don't just do it for themselves. They accept a necessary risk (if society is to advance and survive). The comparison is impossible. Druggies are just stupidly ignoring the risk or happy with instant gratification.
NASA launched so much new technology, it's sad that a program that brought so much is consistently underfunded. Imagine the possibilities in innovation if adequate resources and minds were still placed behind the program. The "Jetson's" car would have been a reality by now. Instead you now see private investors pushing the innovation in space exploration, such as paypal founder.
MSN Developers channel9.com
Plastics, Alloys and Resins have all enjoyed technical leapfrogging due to the American Space Program. Not to mention Medical and Earth Sciences.
Do you mean 'Not Another Stupid Acronym' ?
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
We should put Burt Rutan in charge of NASA.
No telling what he could do with a multi Billion dollar budget after putting a man into space twice with a multi million dollar budget.
Exploration always results in new and unexpected advances in science. We explored all the land, were working hard on the oceans, and as soon as we can we should explore as far as we can reach from our planet.
I applaud NASA for doing their best with their limited budget, a reusable ship based on technology that has been successful in the past is exactly what they should be doing. They have a bad track record, they need to do a few safe missions to gain public support.
Its just too bad for them (although I couldnt be happier) that the private companies are going to steal the show.
More like time warp fun. Welcome to the 1980's.
Those last two comments were pretty fucking shitty. Normally I don't comment on things like this, but that's completely unnecessary.
And I'm not going to be humble. You're a tool. Socially confined within the bounds of your own petty belief-structures. They are dead, what do they care if we crack jokes at their expense? And if their family reads it ... tough shit. Life is full of nasty suprises and mean people. Hurting feelings isn't on the top of my list of things I really care about.
Get over yourself.
I respect astronauts for what they do, regardless of if they are currently alive. But I could care less what other people say about them. Especially an obvious "biting satire" style comment meant to provoke attention to the real point: people have a good chacne of dying that try to explore space. It's no different than people who first started sailing boats across the ocean.
If you can't handle a joke, you're just small minded. Who put you in charge of censoring jokes about dead people? Christ.
Would you rather have live broadcasts from Rome and/or Mecca?
Ever heard of the word INSPIRATION? Or, HOPE?
That's what the ISS will give to the brighter side of the world population.
Of course , only those with some historical perspective and
understanding and feeling for the whole man kinds development really get it..
Could you be a bit more specific? Or is velcro the only thing you can think of?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
NASA to Cut Back Scientific Missions Because of Budget:
"ome of the most notable missions on NASA's scientific agenda would be postponed indefinitely or canceled under the agency's new budget, despite its administrator's vow to Congress six months ago that not "one thin dime" would be taken from space science to pay for President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars."
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make install -not war
The Astronauts know the risks of getting shot into space. Reducing that risk has been NASA's job since their inception. Why shouldn't we keep launching missions? I applaud NASA's efforts to fix things up and the Astronauts bravery in the face of adversity. I mean come on, they're only shooting people into space. :')
Ok, This may have already been said, but i dont have time to sift through all the comments... But why is it that the British Brodcasting Company is covring America's space program before any American news company covers it??
Mmmm, I dunno. Don't you think they learned something from designing and running the SSME for twenty-odd years? Or something about good heat-shield design by landing the orbiter 100 times successfully and once unsuccessfully?
In science and engineering, even a failed experiment is progress. If nothing else you learn what not to do next time, but far more often the data you collect when things don't go the way you expect them to is highly useful for the next try. It may be that the Shuttle is not the right way to go, is a dead end and all that. But as a scientist I find it completely unbelievable that the experience of building and flying it will not prove enormously valuable in designing its successor.
This is rocket science, after all. It's to be expected that we'll fail again and again, until we succeed. But that doesn't mean we're throwing darts randomly at the target. Every time we miss, we learn something. That's just the way science and engineering works. Most times you figure out the right way to do something by what may seem to outsiders as the hilariously boneheaded process of doing it every possible wrong way first, then trying what's left.
Top-down, Aristotelian science, where we begin with basic principles of how the Universe works, and then deduce cleverly all our practical technology, so that all our machines work perfectly the first time we start them up, has been nothing but a complete failure since the time of the Romans. We have found that the only science successful in the long term is empirical, bottom-up. When you want a new machine, you build it and try it. When it breaks or does something unexpected, you study it, figure out why, and try again. You deduce fundamental principles from the outcome of your experiments, not the other way around.
Hence all new technology begins by failing, over and over again. Only with time does it work, and do we develop beautiful theories to explain why it works. Seems crazy, yes, but history shows this is the only reliable way to build new technology. Cultures that emphasize empiricism and "just try it" and tolerate failure are technologically innovative. Cultures that emphasize conformity to accepted "truths" and discourage taking risks stagnate technologically.
The real problem with NASA, I submit, is that they fail too rarely, or rather, are allowed to fail too rarely. Exploring space with bold new technology is dangerous by definition. If astronauts are not dying in space accidents fairly routinely, it means no real progress is being made. You might as well expect to fight a war without any soldiers dying, or learn to play championship tennis without ever losing a match.
I guess they've lowered the bar enough that even the Shuttle program can slither over it. I can only be grateful that I'm not the poor chump who has to write their press releases.
... please leave the editorializing for the community. When reading an article summary, I don't give a crap about what some person named Lonesome Squash thinks of it. Trolling abstracts do not promote healthy debate, but rather, make a mockery of the community as a whole.
dear editors
"The BBC are reporting..."
WTF is up with this trend? Sure a business is made up of multiple people but when it has a collective label you use the singular "is" instead of the plural "are." You wouldn't say "My family are going on vacation" would you?
That's all well and good, but I really want to know when. I'm going to be in Florida for a wedding this year and I'd like to see a launch (hopefully one that doesn't explode) before the shuttles get decommisioned. I checked NASA's site and I only see one shuttle launch in the schedule:
e .html
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/schedul
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I am not sure what the deal with the abstract is... usually the trolling is left to the community, have trolls been hired to serve as ./editors now ?
Leave the silly comments to the public, and be professional enough not to troll yout own space program! Sure it sucks, with al the probes being cut to fly (and keep flying) a rehash of 70's technology but that's for us to say, not the editor.
As a side note, simple, rough Russian technology lost its last cosmonauts in the early 70s. In the last THIRTY-FIVE years, Russia has flown longer missions, and lost exactly zero cosmonauts. In the same timeframe, the cutting-edge 70s technology Nasa is so fond of costed the lives of 14 astronauts. Sure the shuttle is a damn cool machine, but it should have been replaced *long* ago.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
In the past, we've had explorers sailing off for possible one-way trips, running out of food, dealing with canibal tribes, disease, etc.
In the past, we had wars fought up close and personal with knives, axes, swords, etc, not by remote control.
Many thousands of people died exploring this world in the last couple of hundred years. Now a couple die in a shuttle, going into SPACE and it's suddenly not worth it any more?
I'm quite sure the astronauts, and everyone else involved in the space program knows that there is risk involved. However the potential gains *for humanity as a whole* out there are, when you look at it surely worth the lives of hundreds of astronauts, if they're willing to put themselves on the line...
Are we turning into a bunch of sissies?
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Some carzy people think the Shuttle is like software-- it's not ready until it's ready. Not when the scheduler guys think it will be ready. Not when the prez would like to talk to the astronauts during a speech. It's ready when several thousand tiny itsy bitsy teensy tiny little things are all working just right. And nobody can predict when that will be. Sounds like NASA still doesn't get it.
Seriously though, I thought you needed some special licenses to put on a fireworks display. Aren't they vulnerable to criminal charges if they light up another firecracker like that over the Texas sky? What about damage from falling debris?
I learned yesterday that my cousin is suicidally depressed. He's so intent on killing himself that he's gone and become an astronaut.
An Uncomfortable Truth
Sheesh ...
I'm just wondering if the only way we're ever going to achieve practical space travel is to put it in the hands of the private side. Not necessarily corporate hands but private industry. It's sort of like if DARPA was still trying to run the internet. It's outgrown their mission. Perhaps space travel has outgrown NASA.
NASA has the same problems any big government agency has. They feel they have a right to exist instead of earning that right. They're top heavy, really top heavy and most times they the problem is dictating the solution. They're also too prone to political pressure because of their need for legislative funding. We could make really safe space widget but the company that makes them now is in Congressman X's district and he's on the apporpriations panel. So they keep using the unsafe widget because of politics.
I'm just not sure the NASA model works anymore. Perhaps it's time to rethink the way we manage the space industry.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The two biggest constraints for timing the next shuttle launches are
(1) it must be launched in mid-daylight so the large array of cameras can capture every angle of launch and
(2) it has to go into a highly inclined orbit to catch up with the space station.
Both these only allow three two week launch windows for 2006. The constraints will be relaxed a little if the next two launches are 99.9% successful, else they will continue.
enough with the jokes already. things get counterfactual once the lowbrow sarcasm kicks in.
everybody should know this part. the US government has an agency called NASA that operates the shuttle. NASA does some scientific experiments of its own but not all shuttle experiments belong to NASA.
on this truck called a space shuttle, go various experiments... designed by the European space agencies, NASA itself, a university science department, or even high school students... not all the people that fly on the shuttle are NASA people.
so it would not necessarily be correct to say that the "US government" is interested in the effects of zero G on spiders. it may be a university or some other school, agency, etc.
it is also not necessarily true that these experiments are "halfassed" or a waste of money. that experiment may be a building block for another discovery. who knows what significance it may have?
folks, that is the difference between science and technology.
raw science just asks questions, whether you think they are important or not. technology gives you your video games and keeps you occupied.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You know, if we had kept going after the moon landings, it is quite possible Slashdot.org could be running out of a data center on Mars right now. Take MIR for example, remember how much of a hard-on NASA had for getting rid of it. Well it is gone now and what do we have in its place? A piece of junk just as bad as MIR, probably worse. The shuttle program has always been an expensive sham and whenever private enterprise shows up with a ship or a alternative program, NASA promptly shuts it down, claiming space as its own personal property. NASA needs to be dismantled and in the short term, its operations place under the control of the Air Force until civilian organizations can be brought up to speed. The shuttle program is a symptom of the disease called NASA.
The next shuttle flight will be the second test flight following the Columbia accident investigation. As was stated by the agency (and forgotten by many) TWO shuttle test flights would be scheduled to deal with the problems brought to light by the Columbia accident. The first test flight was a successful mission, but shed light (and some foam) on the problems that had not been completely solved yet. NASA has taken further action to correct the problem and will be flying the second test flight as early as May this year. After the test flights are complete decisions can be finalized such as how to proceed with the completion of ISS and whether a HST servicing mission via shuttle is in the cards. So while NASA is talking about mission target dates, don't expect anything to be scheduled until after the second test flight.
And what is up with the front page summary? I thought the purpose of the summary was to give insight to the news item, not insult the subject of the article. As far as I can tell, thats what posting comments is for.
An entire new fuel tank just to keep the insulation from falling off?! Two words NASA: Saran Wrap!
Hmmmm... Is there any way a whole article and responses can be classified as "Flamebait"?
I don't think there's one worthwhile response here, including mine.
To all the slashdot trolls: In the interest of being politically correct, I will attempt to appreciate your reluctance to accept the humility of comparing your opinions to real world facts and events before asserting your expertise via your keyboard and hitting the submit button, but I still think you're stupid.
Griffin and the shuttle program manager have both been very emphatic that further launches will not happen if they don't believe the work done since the last launch has appreciably reduced the risks, which are already low. "They only have 3 to spare" is irrelevant in asking whether or not to launch unless you don't have a good idea what is going to happen.
Just for kicks, I'll flog the dead horse one more time and look briefly at the numbers. The shuttle has flown 114 (?) times and had two catastrophic failrues. The first was thoroughly addressed in the 1980's and there are no indications that it is any longer a problem (assuming politics don't get in the way). The second has been looked into extensively. Two specific sources of large pieces of foam loss have been identified in two flights and eliminated. A gazillion other smaller improvements have been made, too. Now 15 final flights are planned. Even before the latest improvements are taken into consideration, statistics favor a safe conclusion of the shuttle program. Now we have the choice of letting them rust in their hangars, or launching, re-evaluating, and getting the remaining projected use out of them if it's safe.
Funny how no-one ever did a pole for what users think the actual launch rate is going to be. Personally predict there will be no more than 1 launch every year for the next 20 years. There are going to be too many minor glitches to fix in time with NASA's kind of pyramid organisation.
or do other Viz readers out ther find that the words "squeeze out three more launches this year" more appropriate? I mean by this that the project's (to put it politely) a white elephant. One lesson that has to be learnt from the Shuttle is: make sure you have solid plans for a new generation of vehicles. Actually, scrub that: the lesson is, make sure you don't need a next generation. We should have learned that from the Russian experience, at least!
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Moderation -1
100% Redundant
I quote from a completely different story, to which I linked, and that's "Redundant". That kind of stupid TrollMod can't understand NASA, budgets, or Iraq, either.
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make install -not war
1)When the tanks were still being painted white, were the impact incidents on the orbiter less than or greater than before. Reason being I've noticed when I have painted Urethane paints thats the primer is porus to allow the paint to properly bind to the surface, is it possible that water is doing the same thing and compromising the insulation materials' grip on the surface of the tank?
2)I see from the article that the sheilding is one of the things they are addressing. When I looked at the photos of the foam ramp it looked really square I would have thought a any sheilding of the pipes outside of the tank be shaped like an extended upside down teardrop with rounded edges to minimise turbulane and be more aerodynamic. Are these the types of modifications that are proposed?
Throughout the development of the orbiter it makes you wonder, since something as fundamental as engineers safety concerns were dismissed in both cases of losing an orbiter, if the engineers have ever got to recommend and carried out refinements to the design of the external tank.
One of the most striking statements from the CAIB document was that 'Management turned a memory of failure into one of success', when refering to the sheer number of impact incidents that occured to the orbiter in the past being refered to as 'in family' thus never been a problem before. In addition the Orbiter being declared as an 'operational vehicle' instead of 'in development' seems to me like an organisational excuse, surely there is a middle ground that recognises the reality of operating the Orbiters.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.