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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."
A couple things are wrong with that statement.
;) ) costs will be back similar to how they were before.
1) Shuttle launch costs are rather tough to calculate. The problem is that you don't dispose of your vehicle after launch; it's not a raw "cost to produce a new vehicle" issue. Costs are estimated by looking at the shuttle program's budget and dividing by the average number of launches per year.
The shuttle budget hasn't increased much, although it has increased. It will be up next year, then start to go down. Launches are way down during the repair time, so you could say that they're very much higher right now. However, as launches pick back up (cross fingers, yes
2) The Saturn V was not a cheap vehicle, even per kg. Cheaper than the shuttle, yes, but that doesn't say much
3) Mass produce a rocket that can take 88,000 kg to LEO? Sure, just 5x NASA's budget....
Mass production generally targets midsized launches. Small rockets are inefficient. Heavy lift boosters don't have the market for mass production. Heck, there's not even really a market for midsized mass production, but the hope is that if costs drop, a market will appear.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
No, the last Soyuz capsule related deaths were in 2002.
Unmanned Soyuz craft keep failing (and Soyuz has killed a *lot* of ground crew). It's been luck that the manned missions have been the ones that didn't blow up. The manned craft have had many very close calls as well - nearly rolling off a cliff, breaking through a frozen lake, etc.
Overall, Soyuz and Shuttle have similar crew safety levels. Non-crew death totals, shuttle has a far better record. Soyuz is much cheaper.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
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.
That's actually rather an oversimplification --- the word 'Soyuz' actually refers to a whole family of spacecraft.
Firstly, there's the spacecraft themselves, the bits that actually get into orbit; these are all manned. The ones currently used as ferries to the space station is the Soyuz-TMA.
Secondly, there's the launch vehicles. There are loads of these. Manned flights typically launch on the Soyuz-FG. The accident you were talking about was a satellite launch atop the Soyuz-U launch vehicle. The last and only failure of a Soyuz-FG was in 1983, over twenty years ago, and was a launchpad fire where all the astronauts got out alive --- manned vehicles, of course, are built to much tighter tolerances than unmanned vehicles.