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."

Comments

Who are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Is that really a good idea?

[Rei]

There was an editorial on SpaceDaily recently which presented an interesting perspective: that Griffin is trying to kill the shuttle program. Griffin was on the record as explaining that the cause is due to a fundamental problem with side-mount craft on tanks with cryogenic fuels: the tank's size changes as the temperature changes, causing tiny cracks that allow gas to get inside. The gas liquifies, then reexpands in the upper atmosphere and blows off foam.

Yet, they're still launching, without a fix. The obvious result is that we're going to see foam fall off. They've been removing it from the worst locations, yes, and making changes to try and make it stick around better. But it's still going to shed. Meanwhile, groups that previously supported or were neutral to the shuttle program will still be steaming over watching their favorite robotic programs slashed to pay for the shuttle in the last budget.

Then Griffin can go back to congress and say, "look, we did our best, and it can't be fixed for a reasonable amount of money. We can't afford it, so unless you can get us the money, the shuttle needs to be retired sooner rather than later." Then the issue of either backing out of ISS, paying other countries to launch our modules, or adapting a US heavy lift vehicle to launch them must be confronted.

I'm not sure that this is really Griffin's motivation or not, but it's an interesting theory.