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Space Shuttle Launch Delayed Until July
DarkNemesis618 writes "NASA decided on Tuesday to delay the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery until July, squashing all hopes that it would launch in May. The external fuel tank is again the culprit, but this time it's not the foam. One of the four fuel sensors in the fuel tank that control when the space shuttle's main engines cut off was discovered to be faulty. This delay does however, give NASA the time it needs to decide what to do about the small crack found on the robotic arm. Over a week ago, a worker bumped the arm leaving a small crack in it. The arm is key to this next mission as the cameras and lasers used to inspect the shuttle for damage are mounted on the robotic arm. All things aside, NASA engineers are saying that the next possible launch date will be July 1st."
As much as some moan about the concept, turning space into a tourist attraction may be the only way we're ever really going to get off this rock. It's pretty apparent that NASA isn't going to be doing much more than sending out probes. Not to say that probes aren't needed but we need to be a bit more mobile. Life is not a spectators sport.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Is the shuttle program just forgotten about (due to war, bird flu, etc) and the workers just making work to look busy? We ALL know that the shuttle program is going to be scrapped; the Soyuz capsules were purchased because of it! Literally BILLIONS of dollars are being poured down the drain (no, fixing an old shuttle is not new science). The only thing I can see this being used for is to train new scientists.
--sig fault--
They should launch it on July 4th. Then we either have a successful launch to celebrate, or, worse-case, we have an impressive fireworks display.
They must be revamping the copyprotection.
The ______ Agenda
I never quite saw the point of the shuttle(compared to its predecessors) in the first place. I mean, why is it so important to land like an airplane when it still needs to take off on a giant rocket. I applaud NASA on the new designs to get back to technology that actually was reliable. On a side note, why don't they just install heisenberg compensators in the ISS and make everything easy.
Galileo just announced the launch delay of Giove-B for good reasons: Giove-A is considered a success and Giove-B will be more useful later this year (september launch instead of spring). I like to call this "preemtive management": plan the second satellite now in case we need it and delay it if we don't , instead of, oops - we would need another satellite since the first one has failed.
All that said, I hope such preemptive management could be used for NASA's projects. The circumstances are quite different (you know, the budget cuts...), but it's never bad to have a Plan B.
Animoog.org
"Over a week ago, a worker bumped the arm leaving a small crack in it. The arm is key to this next mission as the cameras and lasers used to inspect the shuttle for damage are mounted on the robotic arm."
JB Weld
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Choosing July 4th as the launch date. NASA's recent record has given me an old "Schoolhouse Rock" earworm:
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"There's gonna be fireworks...on the 4th of July. .
Scrap the shuttle already. It's better at killing astronauts than doing manned science in space.
That's got to be one Hell of a bump! I mean, what's that thing made of? Is it a Chihuly?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
the point was being able to recover stuff and return it to earth in a non-crispy fashion. there was a lot of stuff that went up in the cargo bay and came back in the cargo bay that would have had a really tough time on a parachute landing.
it also occurs to me that i have a really funny picture somewhere of a probe that was supposed to decelerate via parachutes and the photo is of it halfway into the dirt in the desert. 'cause the chute was mis-implemented.
eric
It takes a lot of energy to get into space, unfortunatly the engery that gets the shuttle into space is running out so governments are spending much more money on fighting over the last scraps of it.
Cute, but not quite. By far the biggest cost for the Space Shuttle is the standing army of around 10,000 people that's paid to work on the Shuttle, regardless of how often it's actually flying. The cost of the rocket fuel itself is less than one percent of the total launch cost.
With the 100's of billions America is devoting to freeing Iraq its pretty obvious what is more important.
The fuel may be a small account for the total cost, but the US is more focused on trying to secure oil, then explore space.
My point was until there is an immediate reason to be there for the good of the US, the govenrment isn't going to want to put any more money then is needed.
I think we should scrap the Shuttle now. The US should pay the Russians to keep the ISS on life support until we can replace the shuttle. We should also use reusable boosters to launch the rest of the ISS components. NASA should stop throwing good money after bad. We may want to scale back the ISS and do what research we can with it until we replace it too.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Like a lot of stuff designed at NASA
The robotic arm wasn't designed by NASA... it is Canadian (the so-called "Canada Arm")
Quite true. I've heard it said before that if you can make fuel be a sizable percentage of your orbital rocketry program's operating costs, you're doing something right. ;)
By a scallop's forelocks!
But the shuttle uses hydrogen and oxygen to get into space. That's what's in the orange foam-clad tank.
The SRB's (the little white ones) use aluminium and ammonium perchlorate.
No oil there.
For manuevering the shuttle burns hydrazine and oxygen (there was a big fuss when Columbia crashed as hydrazine is pretty toxic)
Not gasoline, not even kerosene. Why is fighting over oil affecting then again?
Talk to an astronaut, and they all understand the risks of manned space flight. It wouldn't stop them for a second, though.
How many people died discovering the new world? How many died in WWII defending western democracy?
Somebody is going to put men on mars and the moon. Maybe it'll be China or Japan instead of the USA. Maybe it'll be Russia. If we are unwilling to accept the risk, then we will not share in the reward.
..don't panic
If anyone is wondering what that sensor is, it's a sensor meant to sense when the gas tank is empty so the engines can be shut off. The space shuttle engines can't be run until the tank is empty because they might be damaged, or the turbopump might fly apart spraying pieces of hot metal around. It can easily cause a complete failure and death of the crew.
These sensors have been unreliable since the beginning of the program. Notice that the article said there were four sensors? They are redundant, because the unreliability is well known. Even mission rules call a sensor failure critical, and they can't fly if they all aren't working. The mission last year was delayed because one of these sensors wasn't working, so they had to check it out. It started working again - mysteriously.
This is a PRIME example of what's wrong with NASA's manned spaceflight safety. Instead of fixing a sensor design that is known to be problematic, they just put 4 in and let redundancy kick in. But since they all have to be working for the shuttle to launch, they can still endure costly delays when one is dead. And then, when a sensor is flakey such as in the last mission, they're not sufficiently alarmed when the thing starts working again. They reason that since they have 4 sensors anyway, it shouldn't be a problem if one is flakey. That's conveniently bending the mission rules, and if you're going to do that you may not have rules to begin with. Why not just change the rules all the time to require 3 working and reliable sensors, because that's what was effectively done. This is *exactly* the kind of thing that got Challenger destroyed, because although the mission rules said that you do not launch when temperatures were too low, they had gotten away with it before. Why shouldn't they get away with again? As Richard Feynman noted, you cannot fool Mother Nature.
It's not a new problem. They've had about 25 years to try to come up with a new fuel cutoff sensor design, but they haven't done it. The shuttle should be grounded until this problem is fixed permanently.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
These turkeys should get out of space and leave it to the pros. We would say they should outsource it to China, but given the standard of living ratings, Norway should be the one. Norways has oil, money, and brain power, things neither u.s. or China has.
So July 1st is the FIRST opportunity to launch, but may not necessarily be THE day that it does launch