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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."
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.
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?
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!