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."

Comments

This is news?

[east coast]

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.

Re:This is news?

[__aaclcg7560]

A Fourth of July launch with George Bush and American flags all over the last place? No problem. Unless the shuttle goes boom in a real bad way. That might put an end to the manned space program and going back to Moon and Mars. Don't want a repeat of the Challenger disaster, where that shuttle launch was supposed coincide with President Reagan's State of The Union address and a phone call to the first teacher in space. NASA would be launching space probes if that was to happen again.

Re:This is news?

[brother bloat]

Without proper funding, the space program can't do a heck of a lot. Right now, even the international space station has barely enough funding for maintenence, let along cutting-edge research.

Maybe commercial space flight will do something to jump-start space exploration once more.

Re:This is news?

[east coast]

I mean, star trek is cool and everything, but until we're close to being able to teraform other planets, it's not going to be terribly useful to send people to live in space.

Please, don't insult me with your Star Trek comments.

There are TONS of resources out there for the taking, resources that would make expensive technology inexpensive.

the problem is preventing us from turning earth into a rock. How about we focus on that instead of being in such a hurry to leave it.

Are you only capable of doing one thing in your life? I'm all for making things better here but don't act like we have to choose between the two.

Re:This is news?

[kimvette]

By that logic, why did you ever leave Mommy and Daddy to go out on your own (or have you yet)? This is intended to be funny and drive across the point, BTW, and not an attack.

Why go to a bar, or to a movie? It's not even remotely useful to do either since they do not provide a living.

Ever go skiing? Why go up a mountain just to take a huge risk balancing on narrow pieces of fibreglass while sliding down the side of a mountain at 60-90mph, when at any moment you might just fall and end up crashing into a tree and dying?

Why bother doing ANYTHING?

It's human nature. Why not explore? I would LOVE to see the gas giants up close - especially Jupiter and Saturn. I would love visit the Horsehead nebulae up close. I would love to visit the vicinity of a black hole just to find out whether it is actually visible or not. I would love to visit a brown dwarf to see just what happens while a star "dies."

Wouldn't it be fascinating? For no other reason than to SEE it. In person. Wonder in amazment at the universe.

We're human. We explore. We have curiousity. Of COURSE we want to get off this "rock" - does there have to be any reason other than "it's out there, and I have never been there." - to paraphrase from The Truman Show - "Because I never have! That's why people go places, isn't it?"

Does there HAVE to be a tangible result?

of course, I'd love to see an end to political strife, starvation, etc. first before spending money on space exploration, but again, it's all human nature and it's human nature to bicker and those issues will never be solved, so why not spend money on exploration?

Re:This is news?

[slashdot_commentator]

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.

You should be careful about presuming the underlying conditions will remain to give you a sustainable result. You have to realize your worldview is based on a life experience in the US, which has experienced a vast amount of economic wealth since the 1950's, and has been pissing it away ever since. Its like living off your credit card, presuming you'll eventually get a higher paying job to pay off the debts. The world doesn't work like that, and that experience is almost a chapter in history.

There is no future higher paying job (unless you're in the health care industry). The US has abandoned its industrial base, the industries it had an economic advantage in, and is so f*cking up its high tech industries and education, it will not even have that as a growth industry. You have a brain that can find a cure for AIDS or the next technological marvel? Fine, you have a future. Everyone else will be a form of wage slave or white collar con-man.

NASA & the Apollo space programs existed for two reasons. 1) The US was so ridiculously rich, it wanted to piss away tax dollars to aerospace companies. 2) The US was in a military competition and wanted to divert dollars to military-industrial complex without calling it weapons. There may be a new boom in space exploration, but it won't be led by the US. It will be too financially broken from its non-critical military adventurism. And if the gov't is bankrupt, be sure there will not be lots of new millionaires to take up the space exploration spending slack.

Already, only one third of our US budget is deemed "discretionary" spending. That means if we nuked every social welfare program, education subsidy, stopped all subsidized construction, opened our border to illegals and terrorists, allowed interstate crime to go unchecked, disbanded the military, we would only be able to reduce the total tax burden by a third. The IRS would still have to collect taxes for everything that doesn't enhance our lives, which is interest on treasury debt, and financial obligations, like federal pensions and social security. This is what's called maxing out your credit card; now live like a debt slave. Sure, the US can declare bankruptcy, its called hyperinflation. The rest of the world we owe money to will not take kindly to that. It will be a world wide depression (recession, if the rest of the world is lucky), and we will experience starvation and loss of material wealth (like housing, cars, entertainment devices). No more highspeed Internet or Slashdot, you won't be able to afford it.

Right now, the Treasury secretary is begging the Congress to raise the debt ceiling, i.e. borrow more money that its currently allowed to by law. If the Congress does not, the gov't will experience chapter 11-like bankruptcy situation; we won't have enough cash to pay currently due bills. Of course, the Congress could choose to just shutdown gov't programs and make the US live within its means. No, we're going to hit the credit card harder this year. You see this crisis on the TV or papers? Nope, stay clueless and happy, mushroom.

It's pretty apparent that NASA isn't going to be doing much more than sending out probes.

It may not even be able to do that. Bush cronies, for years, has been looking for ways to loot NASA's science budget (which barely cracks a few billion). But if they kill all space probe exploration, there will be quite a stink. (They're not killing manned programs, because it already helps their buds, like DeLay.) So, what does Bush do? He announces a NEW program to put man back on the moon and to Mars. Forget the fact the US does not have that kind of discretionary spending, like it did in the 1960's. Of course it costs more than probes. So, we take money away from exploring asteroids and Plu

Re:This is news?

[Rei]

There's a more fundamental bit of logic one must apply. Believe me, I know what you're talking about: few here *wouldn't* like to be able to go into space. Even seeing others do it is a rush at times. But lets back up for a moment. Payload launch costs are 7,000$/kg, and that's if you go Russian (unless you get a special deal, which is known to happen). Manned launch costs are even more pricey than just paying to ship your mass up. Only the rich can afford that, plain and simple. And there's only one thing that can change this state of affairs: money. Lots and lots and lots of money invested in tech, tech, launch subsidies (to help build a self-sustaining industry), and more tech.

If we blow our space budgets flying people around the cosmos with current launch prices, that's all we're doing: blowing our budgets. Better to put the money into tech research (and stick to cheapo robotic probes to satisfy our exploration needs for now) than to have a few select humans darting about space on economically unsustainable joyrides.

Launch pushed back?

[cgenman]

They must be revamping the copyprotection.

A modest suggestion

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

"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

Re:A modest suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, crap, one shouldn't feed the trolls. I sin. I'm no supporter of the shuttle orbiters, but this one has to be answered.

Mods- if you have any sense at all, make the parent +1 DUMBASS, then make this post +1 Troll pickler. Let folks read it and judge for themselvs. Yes, I'm going to unload on the fucker. And I'm going to say FUCK! Repeatedly! I might even misspeel. My nomex briefs are on...

I wonder what they mean by "bump"?

Lets start out with an article from a real space news site: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0603/08shuttle/

Go read that, or at least the first sentance. Then think about it for a bit. I quote:

The shuttle Discovery's robot arm is undergoing ultrasound inspections after a weekend mishap in which a moveable access bucket bumped into the arm during work to clean up broken glass.

As in the dipshits at KSC were working to clean up broken glass from a busted heat lamp, and rammed the fucker with a movable man holding bucket. I'll bet that would even put a nice sized ding in your beat to hell dumbass driver's Ford pinto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto/. Probably not a quarter million dollar ding, though. And they wouldn't likely need to spend a quarter mill worth of analysis to figure out what if anything to do to fix your pinto. Hell, I'd offer to fix your ride by gluing old bubble gum onto the side of your shitbucket with stale ass chaff- for free.

That arm is a piece of shit if you ask me. Like a lot of stuff designed at NASA (some is very good don't get me wrong) it's designed to work within insanely too small a tolerence.

Stick to something besides pretending to intelligently critique space hardware design.

See, an item like the arm doesn't just need to be precise (as you muttle on about), but also a few other things that go along with space flight hardware:

+ Strong (its a flying crane and can handle 65,000 pounds on orbit.)
+ Clean. As in contiminate free so that it doesn't fuck up things that fly inside the shuttle.
+ Lightweight. As in every pound that the arm packs up is an pound of cargo you can't fly (at ~$12k to $30K per pound).
+ TVAC compatible. As in it lives in space. Insane heat, vacum, cold... Nasty stuff. Also, cant outgass or warp in space.
+ Shirtsleeve compatible. As in lives inside the VAB and landing sites and everywhere the shuttle goes on earth.
+ Highly instrumented.
+ Accurate. (look that one up, it is different than precise)
+ Gentle. (can't damage the hardware while schlepping it around)
+ Reliable as all hell(as in who thefuck fixes it if it breaks on orbit)
+ Able to carry the OBSS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Boom_Sensor_S ystem/
+ Documented to all bloody hell. As in the QA bastards can probably tell you what mine hauled up the metal in the wire that runs down the arm next to the bump, what miner brought it up, on what shift, using which truck, and so on and so on... For every component, again for every subassembly, again for every next level assembly. Oh, and the entire build, test, rework, and flight history of everything associated with the SRMS. Go look up heritage, in the space flight context.

The world is not a static place and the unexpected can happen, don't design a frigging billion dollar robotic arm that breaks if you touch it. I can't even count how many times those arms have broken.

Really? You must be mistaking the SRMS with that pinto that you drive!

Do you want to try and tell the world how many times the SRMS has broken on orbit?

disclaimers: Yes, homer, I do work in the aerospace business. No, I don't work for the fine cannucks that build the SRMS. Yes, I think that

Re:Its Energy

[FleaPlus]

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.

Water is running out?! OMG!!?!?

[NekoXP]

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?

Most things worthwhile are also risky

[xtal]

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.