Shuttle To Fly Without Safety Revisions

HaloZero writes "In the face of safety concerns, NASA has decided to proceed with launching the Space Shuttle Discovery in July without changes to the external fuel tank. The article states that even though Discovery's last launch shed a huge 1-pound chunk of potentially devastating foam, they're willing to wait to change the spec on the disposable tank. The changes would modify the Ice/Frost Ramp assemblies, which prevent a buildup of ice on fuel lines and cables (as a side effect, they also have a tendency to dislodge large chunks of insulation)."

Comments

Go Back to the Old Foam?

[eldavojohn]

When the shuttle disaster occurred in 2003, I took the time to research what went wrong. And, in fact, a lot of people were saying things like "that's what you get when you try to fly something 20 years old." Just because it's 20 years old (or more) doesn't make it obsolete.

What's even more interesting is the blatant fact that the old foam is actually more safe than the new foam that failed. That's right, the foam that failed was a new EPA regulation applied to NASA. From that article:

But instead of returning the much safer, politically incorrect, Freon-based foam for Discovery's launch, the space agency tinkered with the application process, changing "the way the foam was applied to reduce the size and number of air pockets," according to Newsday.

Indeed, even their exemption was denied.

Here's a crazy idea, allow the few launches to use old foam as it's apparently safer. NASA should be given time to fix and test the new foam so that more Columbia disasters don't occur.

Why does the shuttle need safety revisions when models that worked for years failed when environmental revisions were applied to them? Do we have a list of "safety revisions" or is it just: 1. Change external fuel tank foam covering to be safer.? We've got an environmentally unfriendly freon based solution. Let's use it to continue our space program and get off our asses to find a better one!

I know there are "love the whales" slashdotters out there so I'm just warning any environmental freak that I'm going to ignore their replies to this.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the shuttle need safety revisions when models that worked for years failed when environmental revisions were applied to them?

I have the same argument with my cars. My older cars from the 1970s didn't have nearly as many problems as newer cars do with their advanced computer systems and emission control systems. Sure, they polluted the air, but they were simple to work on and were highly reliable.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[A non-mouse Cow Herd]

You are incorrect. Please read the CAIB report (see chapter 3, part two here http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/PDFS/VOL1/PART01 .PDF). The foam that destroyed Columbia was the old foam. The 'new foam' was only used on machine sprayed areas, while hand formed areas used the old foam.

Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.

F3.27 Foam loss occurred on more than 80 percent of the 79 missions for which imagery was available to confirm or rule out foam loss. F3.28 Thirty percent of all missions lacked sufficient imagery to determine if foam had been lost.

The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Richthofen80]

I'll bite...

My older cars from the 1970s didn't have nearly as many problems as newer cars do with their advanced computer systems and emission control systems.

This sounds like old-wives-tale-ism. New cars require less maintenence and are much safer. A 1980 Chevrolet Caprice required annual tune ups and took up more space / weighed more than today's Toyota Corolla, which needs a tune up every 100,000 miles.

The difference is computer controlled cars that are smaller, lighter and more efficient don't affect the safety of the occupants, versus using an 'environmentally friendly' solution to the foam application DID affect the safety of the shuttle occupants.

How good was it to the environment to have those astronauts perish? do you think that the Shuttle breaking up was better for the environment? I think what the parent poster is saying is, There is a time and a place to apply standards. On a supercomplex system like the shuttle, an exemption probably would have made sense.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[jrmcferren]

I have a better Idea, what if NASA put the foam on the inside of the tank, or had it layered. If it was inside or put in as wall, insulation, wall; it would then not be able to fly off as it is inside the tank.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Suzuran]

This isn't so much due to modernization or computerization, but due to the fact that the auto manufacturers nowadays try to design in a certain "allowable" percentage of failures, so as to cause the car to require work, which generates income for them. (Unless you go to an independent mechanic, which is why they're trying to get legislation to keep independent shops from working on your car.)

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[m50d]

I know there are "love the whales" slashdotters out there so I'm just warning any environmental freak that I'm going to ignore their replies to this.

So you're an asshole who likes to call people names and doesn't want even the minor conscience pang that would come from having a serious, well-reasoned reply explaining what you're doing? Figures

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[jhylkema]

What's even more interesting is the blatant fact that the old foam is actually more safe than the new foam that failed. That's right, the foam that failed was a new EPA regulation applied to NASA [newsmax.com]. From that article:

        But instead of returning the much safer, politically incorrect, Freon-based foam for Discovery's launch, the space agency tinkered with the application process, changing "the way the foam was applied to reduce the size and number of air pockets," according to Newsday.

You're quoting Newsmax as an authoritative source?!? Why not the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News, they're just about as authoritative. Are you aware that Newsmax, along with WorldNetDaily, CyberCast News Service (formerly Conservative News Service), and freerepublic.com are playgrounds where far-right conspiracy whackos trade theories? Friend, these are people who would abolish the EPA if they had their way! Small wonder why they spin this story as "EPA kills astronauts."

When their exemption was denied, the National Astronaut Scattering Administration had the option of not launching. But, just like with Challenger and Columbia, they're going to launch it anyway, safety be damned.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Anonymous Coward]

ahahaa shut up fattie

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[m50d]

I am in awe of your towering wit

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[ScrewMaster]

National Astronaut Scattering Administration

Priceless. Not particularly politically correct, but priceless nevertheless.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Jafafa Hots]

Thanks for providing accurate info. Infortunately, in the case of the parent he won;t listen. He's heard what newsmax told him to think, and that's that. He even AID so - said he would not read any replies. He flat out admits he's not letting facts get in the way of his opinions.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Waffle Iron]

Here's a crazy idea, allow the few launches to use old foam as it's apparently safer.

I've got a better idea: Forget the damned foam. Put the Shuttles on flatbed trucks and tow them straight to the Smithsonian. Then pledge to never design or fly another rocket where chunks of loose ice are perched high above critical components.

It'll save the US taxpayers countless billions, and we'll finally get this 35-year episode of kludges, budget overruns and broken promises behind us.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Jafafa Hots]

as others have said, that would be much more difficult, but more importantly, it would increase the weight immensely. Remember the first two flights, where the tank was white and not orange? That was because they painted them. The stopped painting the foam because the paint alone weighed THOUSANDS of pounds.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Alioth]

Ah, the 'they don't make cars like they used to' fallacy.

I've owned older cars. They need a lot of TLC to keep running reliably - my old Mini needed new points/condenser every 6 months (with the oil change), frequent spark plug/HT cable replacements, and I had to have the cylinder head off twice in the time I owned it. Although it was a fun car to drive (and had lots of character), it needed a LOT of maintenance to have any hope of reliability. There was actually a very noticable performance difference after each 6 monthly maintenance - those old cars really did deteriorate that fast. It also suffered from rust.

My next car was a 1984 Sierra. Not much in the way of computer control, but unlike the Mini, I *never ever* had ignition problems with it, and only broke down a couple of times (the clutch cables were very bad and had a tendency to suddenly go). I had much fewer reliability problems with the Sierra. I still had them though. It could be hard starting on a cold damp morning, and would run a bit rough until it was warmed up (automatic chokes were never a good idea). It also rusted.

My current car, a 1995 Audi A4, just runs consistently, day in, day out. It always starts easily whether it's hot or cold, damp or dry. It is galvanized, so despite living on a small windswept island with a very salty atmosphere, it doesn't rust. After I've cleaned it, it looks just as good as the day it came out of the factory - the paint is so much better on it than older cars (most 1970s cars, when 11 years old would be unreliable, faded and rusty). It also drives just as well today as when it came from the factory - it still performs like the book says it should. It never needs tune-ups like carburetted cars like the Sierra or Mini did because the computer keeps it tuned all the time.

Sure, older cars are much easier to work on - but the point is, I don't have to work on my Audi like I had to work on my Sierra (or even more so, the Mini). And my Audi doesn't rust.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Then pledge to never design or fly another rocket where chunks of loose ice are perched high above critical components.

Well gee, Dr. Von Braun, you do realize how liquid fueled rockets work right? Or do you propose abandoning liquid fuel rockets for solid fuel rockets? Or perhaps you are just ignorant.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Waffle Iron]

Or do you propose abandoning liquid fuel rockets for solid fuel rockets?

No, dimwit. I'm just proposing that they don't strap the friggin payload onto the side of a 200-foot popsicle. Mounting it on top will do the trick. That does seem to be the lesson that they've learned from the shuttle program, and the shuttle replacement will do it that way. I'm just saying that they should kibosh the shuttle now and wait for the replacement. It's not like NASA is doing anything vital with manned missions right now.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Killshot]

I'm generally pretty supportive of environmental concerns..

But it seems really silly to be worried about what chemicals are used to make foam when you are burning a massive amount of fuel to get into orbit.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, fucktard, the re-entry vehicle could sit on top of the tanks that pick up the ice during launch? y'know, the way the russians with their immensely better safety record do?

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll mod of parent is unfair. It is Insightful and Informational.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[p51d007]

Oh yeah, like the New York Times, CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC are more reliable sources of news.....LOL....They are just as "far left" as the others are "far right". It depends on your point of view. You're quoting Newsmax as an authoritative source?!? Why not the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News, they're just about as authoritative. Are you aware that Newsmax, along with WorldNetDaily, CyberCast News Service (formerly Conservative News Service), and freerepublic.com are playgrounds where far-right conspiracy whackos trade theories?

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Farmer Tim]

The British automotive industry has a real knack for designing aquaphobic cars; the electricals would flood after a heavy dew, and just showing them a photo of the ocean would make them rust.

That doesn't make all older cars similarly flawed. Some engineers actually designed cars to be driven, not just to be looked at (though Morris' weren't even designed that well).

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Nyeerrmm]

If only we could get rid of it. They've got those pesky international obligations to finish the ISS in the way. Those modules (some russian ones, maybe some european ones, I know theres a Japanese module), had been designed specifically for the shuttle payload bay and we are simply unable to launch them in any other vehicle. I'm not sure on all the details on that, maybe the new shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle would be capable, but I think if it were the shuttle would be cut now.

If most NASA engineers had their way, and certainly most students who are likely to be going to NASA our their contractors (I'm a Aerospace Engineering students), would prefer to scrap the shuttle now, accelerate the CEV, and keep more JPL projects on the table. Particularly since the ISS doesnt seem too useful, even if its finished. It's in a bad orbit for support of other missions (too high an inclination, in order to accomodate the high latitude of Baikonur), and it remains to be seen if its a valid scientific platform, since right now they only have enough people on board to keep it running.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[darthdavid]

Here's the thing, you're a fucking idiot... CNN,ABC,CBS and NBC certainly aren't free of bias, but to say they are to fox as ultraviolet is to infrared is completely fallacious. If they were they'd be out there falsifying stories about how George Bush can only orgasm if he kills a puppy or some shit. Seriously. All the people on the right wing wacko sites get chubbies for death because they can always find a way to blame it on the "eVuHUL LIEberals1oneshiftelventyoneoneshift1!!" You never see crap like that on CNN or ABC or any of those other networks. Certainly they'll criticize bush, but they're also often critical of liberals, and they will often praise bush. Beyond that, their criticisms usually make sense and factually check out when verified through independent sources. Which your little "EPA's FAULT, NUKE THE WHALES, BURN LEADED GAS, PISS ON SOME BABY SEALS!!!" argument has failed to do. Maybe you should consider suicide now and do the world a favor. Remember, it's up the highway, not across the street.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Alioth]

But my Sierra was made in Germany. I also owned a 1986 Dodge Ram when I lived in the United States - it also suffered from the same kind of reliability problems as the Sierra (hard cold+damp starting/needing frequent tune-ups). It also rusted, but because it was made out of an awful lot more metal, it would take longer to rust through. Most 1970s cars were junkers by the time they were 10 years old; most mid 90s cars are still perfectly good and ran like they did when they came out of the factory.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[wjcofkc]

exemption probably would have made sense."

Now if only your post made sense. There is a hell of a difference between a 1980 Caprice and the Space Shuttle. I mean, do they even still make brand new external fuel tanks and solid rocket boosers for a 1980 Caprice?

"There is a time and a place to apply standards. "

Yes, such as when they are needed to keep things from exploding with people in them.

Re:Go Back to the Old Foam?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they made up a story about George Bush cheating his way through the national guard, complete with (poorly) forged documents? Would they be "ultraviolet" then? Hmm?

Ass.

Proposal

[LiquidCoooled]

I think Nasa should coat the entire shuttle and tanks with materials cold enough to not freeze during take off and with a hard enough shell to survive the heat of re-entry.

Yes folks, I believe we should coat the tanks and shuttle body with politicians and lawyers.

Before you deride my concept as mere rambling, consider that they are now running the show anyway so we might as well make them useful.

I did a quick survey amongst the remaining engineers and technical folks at Nasa and they all consider my proposal double plus good.

Re:Proposal

[hownowbrowncow]

Wouldn't their incessant blabber drive the astronauts Nuts? A filibuster in space? Will the galactic federation council charge us with polluting space, if some of them politicians and lawyers break off during flight and drift into space? Gosh, the prime directive! We can't possibly risk them landing on a planet with intelligent life!

Re:Proposal

[LiquidCoooled]

In space, noone can hear them scream ;)

Re:Proposal

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it extremely amusing that you post a comment regarding cooling/heating, and your username is LiquidCooled.

Re:Proposal

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I was going to reference how similar that would be to the Reavers in firefly, but then I remembered the reavers used humans.

Ralph Nader is suing to stop this

[Anonymous Coward]

He wants warning labels installed and also wants to fuel efficiency upped before liftoff. That or a recall.

Murderers!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really think they are unethical bureaucratic scum.

Holy crap! Space travel is dangerous?

[Trespass]

This is a surprise to me and everyone here.

Re:Holy crap! Space travel is dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mother uses uses a spermicidal foam and it is very dangerous travelling into your mother's space. You could get the clap, or even worse, she might try to tongue kiss you.

Re:Holy crap! Space travel is dangerous?

[Trespass]

oh okay

Adopting the credo of Mexican bus companies

[iminplaya]

"Mejor muerto que tarde"

Re:Adopting the credo of Mexican bus companies

[Chabil Ha']

For those with no foreign language skills: Better dead, than late.

just wait

[mapkinase]

Couple of more years of the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran (they did not start yet?) and there will be no more safety problems with Shuttle, because they will be launching Soyuzes from Cape Canaveral. there

If it ain't broken:

[ElitistWhiner]

Don't fix it.

Anyone else?
Notice US Congress isn't functioning?
Pentagon isn't working properly?
NASA is one-off'g provent killer technology?

Flying without some of the safety changes

[flooey]

The summary is possibly a little misleading. Several safety changes have been made to the foam so far, but there are further changes they'd like to make. It's not like they're flying without any changes whatsoever. That's not to say that I completely agree with the decision, but it's an important point.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[iamlucky13]

Correct. Foam pieces falling from the area in question (the ice ramp) have been observed to be too small to cause major concern, based on their calculations and testing, or will safely clear the orbiter (I forget which). They had been considering replacing the foam in this area with heaters. There has to be some sort of protection or else ice might build up. Ice hitting something at 500 mph is a lot worse than foam. I assume the combination of not wanting to add another active system (which can fail) and needing extra power supplied while sitting on the pad were contributors to this decision.

After the loss of Columbia, NASA removed a foam ramp from the tripod area that holds the external tank in place. This is where the piece that caused the damage came from. In Discovery's last flight (and I believe in some older launch videos), foam was also observed to come off the proturbence air load (PAL) ramp, which is another aerodynamic feature. This was also eliminated. Additionally, NASA is going to be flying a gentler flight profile on remaining missions (listed as "Low Q"). They lose a little bit of load capacity doing this, but the acceleration is lower and their speed is slower in the denser levels of the atmosphere.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Frequency Domain]

ice hitting something at 500 mph is a lot worse than foam.

You'd think that ice would be more dangerous than foam, but you'd be wrong. I had the pleasure of chatting last December with one of the astronauts who was doing the accident review. According to her the danger is more from relative velocity differences than from mass, since kinetic energy goes up quadratically with velocity and only linearly with mass. The problem with the foam is that it has such a low density that it decelerates very rapidly from aerodynamic drag after breaking loose. Ice, because of its much greater density, retains it's velocity and hits surfaces below at a much lower relative velocity. Given a choice between being hit by a chunk of ice at a few tens of mph, and a chunk of foam with the a tenth of the mass at hundreds of mph, you're better off with the ice.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[kryten_nl]

Did you just fall for the:

What's heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?

joke?

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[JonathanBoyd]

Actually, he may have a good point. Ice, being denser than foam, will have less surface area for the same mass. Less surface area means less drag, which means it slows down less in the air when it comes loose. Slowing down less means that its velocity relative to the speeding shuttle will be less, so it could well do less damage.

For similar reasons, if you drop a point of nails and a pound of feathers, the nails will hit the ground first. It's all about drag, not weight.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Frequency Domain]

No, but it looks like you missed the term relative velocity. If the shuttle is going 500 mph and you simultaneously release a pound of feathers and a pound of lead, which one will be travelling at a speed closer to that of the shuttle half a second later when it hits the wing edge? Hint - you're still in the atmosphere.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[stevesliva]

They're also going to be flying with changes that will allow them to detect if there was damage during launch that will cause another Columbia disaster. And if there is, there will be a campout up in the space station for awhile.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[iamlucky13]

That is pretty much correct. However, the higher density of ice also raises some problems. It is much harder and it the force is transferred to the shuttle over a smaller area. NASA is reasonably comfortable ignoring smaller pieces of foam because they are pulverized without causing damage if they contact the orbiter. The smaller area of contact means less skin area resisting the impact and the hardness of the ice raises the chances, for a given KE, of damaging the skin or the brittle thermal tiles. Now I don't know if the astronaut you interviewed specifically discussed ice or just relative velocity of foam chunks vs mass, and I won't claim to know more about the issue than her, but I suspect ice can easily attain enough speed difference to cause damage, so neither ice nor significant shedding can be ignored.

One other problem with ice is the added weight.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Frequency Domain]

She specifically talked about foam vs. ice. She said that going into it, they all assumed that ice would be the greater threat because of hardness and mass, but after running lots of simulations (it was a simulation conference where I met her) they discovered that foam's propensity to rapidly decelerate made it a much greater threat in terms of KE once the shuttle picked up speed but was still in the atmosphere.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[kryten_nl]

Since you're obviously up for a discussion:

1) Your Post (YP)#15229188:
Given a choice between being hit by a chunk of ice at a few tens of mph, and a chunk of foam with the a tenth of the mass at hundreds of mph, you're better off with the ice.
Let's say the velocity of the ice is 10mph, its mass is M and the velocity of the foam is 1000 mph with mass 0.1*M. The KE of ice is then 0.5*M*100 (units are left as an exercise for the reader), the KE of the foam is then 0.5*0.1*M*1000000. Then we can conclude..... absolutely nothing because KE isn't the absolute answer to collision dynamics. There is also the very significant factor of energy absorbed by the deformation of the projectile and the area of effect on the body that was hit. In essence, we could debate this quite extensively here, but without some nice FEM models we're not going to get an answer very soon.

2) YP#15229329
No, but it looks like you missed the term relative velocity
I didn't, because the parent to your post didn't mention it. In fact, I believe 'iamlucky13' mentioned an absolute velocity of 500 mph.

3) No post in particular.
It's a trade-off, allways has been allways will. You need the foam, because you don't want very large chunks of ice AND you (really) don't want to heat up the liquid propellant stored in the tank. Foam vs ice is therefore something which should be studied very closely. The only concrete valuable thing your astronaut friend mentioned, is that you can't just keep adding foam to let the ice problem go away.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[typidemon]

Did you just fall for the:

What's heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?

joke?

Did you just fail physics?

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Anonymous Coward]

foam's propensity to rapidly decelerate made it a much greater threat in terms of KE

What mumbo-jumbo is this? A substance that loses velocity rapidly is preferable to one that doesnt (noting the greater contribution of velocity to kinetic energy than mass) when you want to minimise impact damage.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[furorimpius]

we only care about velocity relative to the shuttle.

foam and shuttle start with same velocity up. relative velocity of foam from shuttle is zero. so, the more the foam decelerates due to air, the _greater_ its velocity relative to the shuttle. ice decelerates less and thus has a lower relative velocity, even though it has a higher absolute velocity.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[rufty_tufty]

"Did you just fall for the:
What's heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers? "

Depends on if one of them is in orbit...

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Anonymous Coward]

One other problem with ice is the added weight.

And this is the real issue with the tank. The issue of ice falling off is very real and a problem, but imagine this scenario instead:
    -The liquid hydrogen/oxygen tanks take almost 3 hours to fill and balance. At approx -423 degrees and -183 degrees, respectively, and the significant humidity at the cape year round the potential to coat an unprotected tank with ice as much as a foot thick is very real
    -Because the ratio is 3:1 H2 to O2, and the tanks are aligned vertically (and spherically due to the pressures and temperatures), there are large areas that would suffer no ice buildup. This would create a situation worse that uniform ice build up: uneven buildup that would be unpredictable and impossible to trim during the first hundred feet when the speed of the rocket is not fast enough to allow the control surfaces any effective response.
    -During flight imagine that a 20x10x.5 ft sheet of ice breaks away due to vibration before the shuttle breaks the sound barrier. At this low speed (714mpg isn't that slow but compare that with the 17,500mph orbit velocity), a chunk of the shuttle (the ice) instantly disrupts the in flight trim (since this could weigh in excess of a ton) and could cause an inescapable tumble. However, there would be enough inertia that an emergency recovery could be possible
    -imagine the same scenario above, but at super-sonic speeds. No recovery is possible if the shuttle's cross section to the wind passes outside the protective slipstream of the sound barrier. Outside this nice delta shape, the sound and air turbulance would rip the shuttle to pieces.
    -Now the biggest problem in ALL earth-to-inner space travel is mass (not really weight as weight actually reduces with every inch skyward). Consider the reason for the external tanks is to get the shuttle's big a$$ off the ground due to the main engines and the need for a heavy lift capacity for satellites. An ice coating on the entire 140ft tank could force up to several tons of weight on the ground that will be jettisoned 3 minutes after launch.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[TomRC]

Nonsense.

Assume chunks of equal area peal off the shuttle, so that the drag forces are equal (actually, as the foam slows down faster, drag force on it decreases a bit faster).

drag.force = mass * drag.acceleration. So if the mass of the ice is 1/10th as much as the foam, a.foam = 10a.ice.

The kinetic energy gained by falling some distance is mass*distance*acceleration. So with 10x the mass and 1/10th the acceleration and the same distance fallen, ice and foam should end up with almost the same kinetic energy.

The only difference upon impact should be how much area the energy gets transferred into - and that means that ice, being denser, could potentially do more damage.

My guess is that the real answer is that ice is more brittle than foam, will seldom peal off in large intact chunks, and if it does then when it hits it will tend to shatter more easily, so that less energy is transferred to the area of impact.

Re:Flying without some of the safety changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I don't think that's the real answer, since if it was true, don't you think they would have been flying without foam for a long time now? I know you all think that all the engineers at NASA are incompetent idiots, but come on ....

Back to the future

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaders / Space

Back to the future
Apr 12th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Don’t race China to the moon, especially if you have been there already

IMAGE (NASA)

JUST before China’s president, Hu Jintao, visits the United States, a new front has opened up in the growing rivalry between today’s superpower and tomorrow’s aspiring one. Not content with bashing China over trade, jobs and its military build-up, several Republican congressmen are worried that the Chinese may try to get to the moon before America does. In apparent seriousness, they fear that America is caught up in a new space race—and that it is losing.

The facts, as laid out last week to a congressional hearing for NASA (itself a lunar veteran), are that China has put two manned vehicles into orbit, is planning a third by 2008, and would like a space laboratory. The politicians were alarmed by China’s scheme to visit the moon in 2017—and they want America to spend up to $5 billion to get there first.

The Americans are certainly right to keep a close eye on what China is up to in space—especially when it comes to military programmes. But the idea that there is a new space race to get to the moon is ludicrous—and not just because Neil Armstrong won that competition in 1969. Look at the details: the Chinese, it turns out, are sending the moon a robot, not a taikonaut. And why on earth (or in heaven) would America want to send people back to the moon anyway?

The reason—and this will come as no surprise to aficionados of China bashing—is a powerful domestic lobby. Racing a Chinese robot to the Sea of Tranquility might be batty, but it is a neat way to milk additional funds for NASA from the American public. You might wonder how Tom DeLay, the ousted majority leader, could warn his colleagues with a straight face that “the advanced state of the Chinese space programme represents a 21st century Sputnik moment.” But his logic becomes much clearer when you realise that NASA is a big employer in his Texas district.

Over the years, America’s politicians have injected the country’s space programme with so much spin, politics and greed that it is now bloated beyond belief. The price of launching a single American shuttle would run the entire Chinese space programme for a year, paying for the work of all its 200,000 scientists and engineers.

Strong arm
More than money is at stake, however. The idea of a space race with a huge communist country dredges up memories of the 1960s—which is precisely why it appeals to some conservatives in Congress. But even in those difficult times, Jack Kennedy had started to think that co-operation with the Soviet Union in civilian space programmes might be a better idea. China should be encouraged to participate in the International Space Station. If the mission to the moon is supposed to be multinational, then the Chinese should be involved in that, too. When governments compete for glory in space, the winners are the contractors and the losers are the taxpayers.

The irony is that the fuss in Congress comes at a time when the real race in space has moved to the private sector. At present, four companies have said they will build sub-orbital vehicles for space tourism. Elon Musk, who made his fortune with PayPal, an online payments system, is trying to shake up the satellite-launching business (and perhaps also the orbital-transport business) with his cheap—but not-quite-working—rocket, Falcon 1. Those are the kind of space races that benefit us all. Long may they continue.
 
::: yfnET

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[2.7182]

I dont' think you should start throwing around statements like that lightly. The bottom line is that the astronauts are volunteers , and they fully know the risks involved (i.e. that ~ 2/150 shuttles get destroyed.) They have a military mentality and are willing to risk their lives for a very special opportunity which they have worked for years to achieve. They assume that the engineers are working their hardest, which they probably are.

That's not the half of it!

[dietrollemdefender]

I know there are "love the whales" slashdotters out there...

I just can't stand all that smoke that the shuttle produces! Can't they use smokeless fuel?!? An the fact that they're using salmon to fuel those things! Yes its true! They use LOX to power it! See, they take Salmons and cream cheese to send the shuttle into space! It burns up soooooo many Salmon, that one day, they'll be extinct!

Re:That's not the half of it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It burns up soooooo many Salmon, that one day, they'll be extinct!

*shrugs*

Gotta nuke somethin'.

Re:That's not the half of it!

[ZiakII]

Gotta nuke somethin'.

Step 1: Buy Nukes
Step 2: Nuke Whales
Step 3: ??????
Step 4: Profit!

1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[bLanark]

There's no way that those old things were more reliable than a modern car. Back then, every driver was an amatuer mechanic, 'cos they broke down so often. This is when breakdown/roadside rescue services really took off, as more people became drivers without the tinkering instinct.

What those cars had was that they were ***easy to fix*** - easy to diagnose, easy to get the parts out and in, easy to obtain the parts, in fact. These days, the simple diagnostic tests do not work or cannot be performed, and as a result, you can't fix your own car. But cars today break down far less than they did back then, at least that's my recollection of it.

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[Drac8]

I disagree. I have a '83 chevy shortbox, It has 190,000KM on it (not many) and other then changing plugs, airfilter etc(which you would have to do to any vehicle 23 years old) it has NEVER been to the garage. Compare this to our new shiney '05 dodge Grand Caravan which has been to the garge three times in its 10k, under a year lifespan. Once for a "engine warning light", once for a airbag problem, and just recently because the alternator quit working properly.

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Cars today are made of the cheapest materials. Even the most expensive cars have plastic bumpers that break off from the stupidest "crash." That said, they are also much more complex in how much electronic stuff they have. Electronics are incredibly sensitive to absolutely everything... how much damage they take from the car's vibration, accumulation of dust, and of course, the killer: HUMIDITY. Humidity destroys electronic components over time.

I see 25 year old cars running happily down the road without a problem more often than I see 10 or 5 year old cars that are falling to pieces. Pop the hood on a 1950's car. Whatcha got? An engine, a radiator, a transmission, maybe an alternator and ... uhm ... yeah. That's it. That's a buttload of stuff that can get damaged, isn't it. Not to mention a hard metal body that is insanely hard to dent, let alone crush. Compare that to today's cars: Engine, transmission, radaitor, alternator, Air conditioning, TCS, ABS, "daytime running lights" (the most retarded thing ever), power locks, power windows, alarms, and the list goes on. And the body? Ha! You could probably TOTAL an Aerio with a good punch.

Yes, cars have gotten more comfortable and arguably safer, but they are made shittier and shittier every day. All in efforts to save money and to make cars lighter and lighter as gas prices increase. Jesus Christ have you ever been inside a Suzuki Aerio? Everything feels like it's about to break when you touch it. Ford's power windows get jammed easily three too five years down the road. Even the most expensive BMW's have insane amounts of problems with electronic devices only months from purchase.

The most bullshit part is... prices stay the same. We get more features and less reliability. Where's the sense in that? We've lowered our standards so much it's sickening...

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[iminplaya]

Compare this to our new shiney '05 dodge Grand Caravan...

You're comparing a Chevy to a Dodge!?

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[Killshot]

I have a 1997 dodge and a 1979 volvo

The volvo certainly has more problems (probably due to age) but it is so damn easy to fix. You open the hood and there is just an engine and all the basic mechanical parts required to run an engine in there.

My dodge has so much crap crammed under the hood that even changing a belt or an oil filter requires me to remove other parts just to reach it.

It would be nice if advances in auto technology could make the whole process of generating power to move a car simple instead of more complicated.

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[Drac8]

Good point =)

Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one!

[Banner]

Wow, you weren't around then, were you?

I had a 1973 dodge dart with a slant 6. Except for regular maintenance (plugs, rotor, cap, oil) that car never broke down, never stranded me, drove me about 100,00 miles, and then I sold it to another college student. And I had bought it -used- with 80,000 miles already on it!

The 1965 mustang I bought in the 80's with the -original engine- still in it with over 150,000 miles on it ran great for the 4 years I had it, (I was restoring it), when I sold it I had not done anything to the engine, and it still ran strong, another car I put probably 40,000 miles on.

Cars don't break down any less now than they did then. They're just a lot more expenisive to fix now, and there are a lot more things to break.

Stating the OBVIOUS

[flobberchops]

but why is the FOAM on the OUTSIDE when it can be on the INSIDE in a cavity then no more problems with falling foam?

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[A non-mouse Cow Herd]

Sucking foam into your turbo pumps is just as bad, for starters. Never mind how the foam actually behaves when it is in contact with -423F LH2. Or the risks of having it in direct contact with LO2...

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[flobberchops]

Keyword is CAVITY, a "PROTECTED" layer. It seems they took the "CHEAP" way out and now they are paying the hard way. NASA sufferes the same problem MIcrosoft has, too "MANAGERS".

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[iamlucky13]

Two definite factors I can think of are (1) - it's more difficult to apply and to inspect and (2) - The structural volume of the tank would have to be larger, increasing the overall weight.

Two possible factors (I don't know enough about this, but I suspect they would cause problems) are (3) - The foam is porous. If fuel seeped into the foam, it would significantly reduce the insulating value of the foam allowing the fuel to heat up and boil off or ice to form on the outside of the tank as well as reduce the amount of fuel that could be used. (4) - The foam may react with the fuel, causing the enginges to burn inefficiently or even allowing the foam to explode in the liquid oxygen tank (similar to what happened on Apollo 13).

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Alias777]

WHY are you CAPITALIZING words that AREN'T even PRONOUNCED and are very MINUTE points but they are still in all CAPS.

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Anonymous Coward]

Please be MORE respectful when ADDRESSING Zippy the Pinhead

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Anonymous Coward]

it is obvious -- the foam is the material that doesn't burn from the heat of reentry. the metal or other material it's glued to would just melt and burn away, leaving the foam with nothing holding it in place.

that's basically what happened last time

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Breakfast Pants]

It emphasizes NASA's problem: "too managers."

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Kihaji]

Except that to make said cavity, you need to add more material to the tank, making it heavier, and causing the need for more fuel, which will cause the need for the design of a larger tank, which will need to be tested, which will take years. This isn's like insulating your house. Leave the rocket science to the rocket scientists.

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[KarmaMB84]

The foam is on the fuel tank, not the shuttle. The shuttle is covered in tiles. Damage was sustained on some of these tiles when some foam came off the tank during liftoff.

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[iminplaya]

Leave the rocket science to the rocket scientists.

That's what we need to tell the NASA managers.

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"but why is the FOAM on the OUTSIDE when it can be on the INSIDE in a cavity then no more problems with falling foam?"

You'd think Captain Kirk would know more about space travel.

Re:Stating the OBVIOUS

[Rei]

That is exactly it. Most people have no clue of how extreme the margins that get us into space are. The shuttle's ET, for example, weighs just the tiniest fraction of the mass of fuel and oxidizer that it carries. This is standard, and essentially required. You simply don't have the option to add on weight wherever you want it. Even letting ice collect on the ET would be a problem; not only will it shed, but it's also more weight.

An interesting aside, for those who care: I ran into an interesting tech recently which I hadn't heard of before, that will greatly benefit from the research into cryogenics insulation that has been done for the shuttle ET problems: cryogenic solid and hybrid boosters.

Basically, solids and hybrids tend to have poor performance. Liquids are more complex, but get better performance, most notably when they use cryogenic propellants. The concept is to use solid, cryogenic boosters so that you can use the same high performance fuels, but with even greater density, in a simpler rocket. I kind of like it ;)

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[eingram]

Off topic I know, but it would've been impressive if you could've gotten the user ID number 818284. :)

I have an easy solution...

[jo7hs2]

Spray the external fuel tank with a thick coat of EZ-Cheez. The incredibly high fat content should insulate the tank nicely, and any debris will just leaving cheeZ-ee marks on the side of the shuttle That way, it will really look like it has been around geeks. Some soda stains might help.

Numbers Game

[zippthorne]

Ok, but how many cars from the 1970s were around in the 1970s?

now, how many shuttles have we ever had?

A teaspoonfull of salt will not kill you, but if you eat an entire cylinder of morton's, you're gonna have some health problems.

Re:Numbers Game

[freakmn]

Ok, but how many cars from the 1970s were around in the 1970s?

Umm, all of them?

Apr.29:Prostitute Schedule @ MBOT in San Francisco

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Las Vegas, San Francisco offers prostitution as a tourist attraction. If you want to buy some prostitution services (i.e., hand job, blow job, or full sexual intercourse), you need to merely walk through the doors of the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater (MBOT), located at 895 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, California.

Check out the prostitute schedule for April 29, 2006 at the MBOT.

The prostitute schedule is updated daily.

Unlike Las Vegas, San Francisco does not regulate prostitution. So, the MBOT heartily welcomes everyone -- including HIV-positive customers.

Why?

[madcow_bg]

Why?

Re:Why?

[MoonBuggy]

The beginning of the username is the first five digits of the mathematical constant 'e'. 818284 is the next six digits.

Here's an idea

[Opportunist]

Have the guy responsible for shuttle safety fly with 'em. I hold any bets that those shuttles will be safer than driving through downtown NY rush hour... bad example.

But I guess you get the idea.

Re:Here's an idea

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Have the guy responsible for shuttle safety fly with 'em. I hold any bets that those shuttles will be safer than driving through downtown NY rush hour

Or indeed get a politician to ride in one.

Rich.

Re:Here's an idea

[s20451]

Seems they're only too happy to oblige. 1 2 3

Re:Here's an idea

[blueflash2o]

John Glen doesn't count he was an astronaut first then became a politition

Re:Here's an idea

[solitas]

Or indeed get a politician to ride in one.

So, then, would a blowup be a good thing, or a bad thing?

Re:Here's an idea

[Peyna]

He flew before and after becoming a politican.

Re:Here's an idea

[Opportunist]

As much as everyoe would root to have a blowup, I'd cosider it a bad idea. Remember, politicians are notorious for putting their fingers on anything without having a clue what they're doing.

Just like little kids...

Re:Here's an idea

[darkmeridian]

The engineers and the astronauts work hand-in-hand. I doubt that the engineers will be anything less than absolutely miserable if anything happened to the vehicle and crew. That said, the astronauts willingly assume the risk so as to further scientific progress. The engineers won't let them down if they can help it.

the shuttle supposedly did kill a salmon

[r00t]

As the shuttle was landing, it startled one of the many eagles that live at the space center. The eagle dropped a salmon on the runway. The shuttle ran over the salmon.

You might argue the salmon was probably dead from the eagle or the impact, but...

I don't know about salmon, but there actually are lots of bald eagles at the space center. They build whopping huge big-ass fortress-like nests in the trees.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[MoonBuggy]

I would like to second that comment - as someone who genuinely intends to become an astronaut I can tell you now that I would happily risk going up in a current model shuttle rather than waiting years for safety revisions that may not happen. I'd choose to risk my life to for the chance to fulfill the greatest dream in my life in a heartbeat. The fact is, if NASA are to be called irresponsible for this launch (which I do not believe they are, but hypothetically speaking) it should be on financial grounds; shuttles are not cheap or easy to replace, if they lose another then it could severly dent their public image having a few more deaths on the cards (despite the fact that, as stated, there are people like me happy to take that risk) making it even more difficult to get equipment or authorisation for further manned missions.

The older cars did not have as many problems.

[r00t]

A tune up was not a problem. It was just normal care, which you could do yourself. Grab some standard (non-metric) tools and swap out the points, etc.

Sure, a modern care won't need that. When the modern car starts to fail though, you need to go to the dealer. Only the dealer has all the secret electronic codes needed to deal with the car.

Re:The older cars did not have as many problems.

[Bohemoth2]

not somuch the codes. the specialty tools and the familiarity of part location is what most of us don't have. Not to mention time. Changing a spark plug for instance is easy, moving all that shit out of your way to get to the spark plug, is not.

Re:The older cars did not have as many problems.

[smash]

REAL WORLD EXAMPLE:

I have a Nissan 180sx, will full electronic ignition, fuel injection, etc.

It currently has 120,000km on it, and I have done all the servicing since 60,000km myself.

It has never servicing other than a clutch replacement, oil changes and a spark plug change or two (iridium plugs, supposedly good for 50,000km).

So, i can take all that money that I would have spent on "tuning" (say, 12x$200AU), and buy a damn replacement ECU *if* it screws up next week.

However, being a member of numerous car clubs, I have *never* heard of total ECU failure, and the few times I've seen sensor failures (on other older cars), they are *EASY* to diagnose (the ECU *tells* you) by reading the error codes.

Don't know the codes? Thats your problem, not a design fault of the car. Most of them are easy to obtain from the service manual.

"New cars are not servicable!" is a crock of shit spouted by ignorant people who just refuse to expand their knowledge.

smash.

Re:The older cars did not have as many problems.

[smash]

"never required servicing" not "never servicing" obviously.

*sigh*... i did even preview once too....

AS to modern cars being hard to get to stuff - depends on the car.

300ZX TT - pain in the ass, major major pain in the ass (but shit, what do you expect with 2 turbos and all the associated plumbing packed into that little engine bay). 350Z is pretty intimidating too.

180sx, skyline, many other cars - easy as.

smash.

Newsmax and Heartland Institute? Give me a break.

[Jafafa Hots]

There's no chance that rabidly right-wing Newsmax and rightwing heartland would have ulterior motives in trying to blame something on environmental regulations. No, not a chance.

Look, if you really want to link to someone with credibility, link to the Karl Rove Institute for Social Justice or something.

At least we're consistent!

[Anonymous Coward]

We send troops to fight in Iraq without body armor, so it's only fitting we send the astronauts up on something we know isn't as safe as it could be.

/. as FOX

[deadsquid]

Is it just me, or do /. summaries seem to be taking a page from FOX News more often than not these days?

Environment and space exploration don't mix well

[dinther]

I can't believe people actually make an issue of some freon foam on the space shuttle and dare to take unnesseary risks by changing the foam. Although the XPrize tried to suggest that space is safe and open for tourists, I don't believe that.

Amazing that after 40 years we still struggle to get people in orbit safely. Yes Nasa is stupid and all that but I believe that the problems associated with space travel are not that easy to solve.

Why whine about some foam while the rocket engines put piles of pollutants in the atmosphere anyway. So what! We are still taking wobbly babysteps into space and can do without the environmental baggage at this point. Besides whats one shuttle flight compared to millions of cars and dumb fat consumers buring up energy faster than they can lay their hands on it.

Of course the whole thing changes when we all have a space shuttle in our back yard.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[ironring2006]

They assume that the engineers are working their hardest, which they probably are.

That's all fine and dandy, but if the engineers aren't being listened to, that's where the problem lies. The engineers are the ones that possess the most knowledge about the risks involved. If they are being overruled by upper managers then the astronauts are being put at additional risk that they shouldn't be subjected to. Nothing will ever be made 100% failproof, but there is a difference between sending astronauts up in space when the issue is fully known, and between some disaster happening as a result of some unforseen consequence.

Didn't anyone learn anything from the Challenger disaster? There was a known issue with the o-rings at low temperature that eventually failed. The engineer(s) at that time (particularly Robert Boisjoly) were vocal about there being more testing needed before they could be confident that a suitable safety factor was met at the launch conditions. The politcal pressure led to the go ahead being given. If the engineers aren't comfortable with launch, then everyone involved should seriously give it more thought.

managing risk is art and science

[deltacephei]

It's easy to armchair quarterback NASA at this point, but it's probably safe to assume that there is overwhelming pressure to make the right decision and that the decision to postpone further tweaking has not been made lightly. Fundamentally this is coming down to pressure to get on with the show and determine if this risk is a showstopper or not. They've decided that they can take the risk, and in all likelihood it is just one of many risks that have probably kept both engineers and managers in overdrive discussion for months.

The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up. For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic. So given an unreliable shuttle program depending heavily on Soyuz, the painful decision to stop station construction and maintenance needs to happen. This makes the July launch akin to a make or break demonstration. If there is a serious problem, or another disaster, then NASA really can't look Congress in the face and make an argument for the station. Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained. As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments.

Re:managing risk is art and science

[woolio]

As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments

I think you just summed up most government research...

Re:managing risk is art and science

[DerekLyons]

The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up.

Not really. Supply flights have been flying at exactly the same rate for years now.

The bottleneck is in station construction - except for the vaporware Russian ones, all the remaining hardware has to ride the Shuttle.

For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic.

It's not politics - it's the fact that the European cargo carrier is a couple of years behind schedule.

Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained.

There hasn't been much sci/tech results from the station - like all research facilities, not much research can be done with only the foundation poured. (Which is essentially the situation the ISS is in.)

Translation...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Better dead than late"

****

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Huh?!

[IlliniECE]

Houston, we are gone for lunch.... er, go for launch

Re:Huh?!

[IlliniECE]

This is simply not fair. I keep getting accused of trolling. It was a joke.. lunch, launch sound similar. I think the moderators are a bit slow.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[Citizen of Earth]

I'd bet there would be no shortage of volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[timeOday]

Isn't the shuttle program already teetering on the brink? I can't imagine they'd fly again if there were another accident.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[malraid]

there is a difference between sending astronauts up in space when the issue is fully known, and between some disaster happening as a result of some unforseen consequence

Yes, the issue is known. But the "fix" might be worse than the known issue. The only way to make sure that fix is "safer" is to test, and by that I mean lots of test. This particular foam has cause failures in a percentage that might be considered statistical noise.

There was a known issue with the o-rings at low temperature that eventually failed

I'm sure that there were, and probably still are, a lot more of known issues. None have failed in such great ways as the o-rings and the foam. Again, each failed only once. Believe me, it's easier to point out a critical issue when it fails, than before it fails. A lot of things can go wrong with the shuttle, only two of those have done so with the tragic lose of life. Space travel is dangerous. Riding a car is dangerous. People have died while riding a car, but you don't see everybody wearing five point seat belts and helmets like race car drivers. It's an issue of risk management. I'm sure that if they send a shuttle up with the potential of foam damage, the foam will work ok. It something happens (and I sure hope it won't) it will be something completly different.

Same old story at NASA...

[rmckeethen]

After reading these two articles, it's clear that *nothing* has changed at NASA since the Columbia disaster. The engineers still say, "We're a little worried about X," while NASA management says, "We've noted your concerns, but were going to push ahead and do it anyway." Great, just great. It's just so obvious now that NASA managers took the CAIB report to heart. Way to go guys.

According to the article, NASA's own safety chief doesn't want the next shuttle to fly without additional changes to the external tank foam. Apparently, the head of shuttle safety doesn't get a veto vote on when or if the shuttle goes up. Think about that. We lost seven astronauts in the Challenger accident because NASA managers refused to listen to the engineers, and we lost seven more again in Columbia for the same reasons. How long will it take, how many more astronauts must die before NASA's top management realizes that aeronautical engineering isn't some kind of political game?

Once upon a time, I believed in what NASA accomplished. The early team of pioneers at NASA clearly had 'the Right Stuff'. They pushed the envelope of national achievement and they expanded the boundaries of human endeavor. They did grand and amazing things, many of which quite literally changed the world. Nowadays, the early pioneers at NASA are gone, passed away or retired, and we're left with bureaucrats running a manned space program that looks more like a gigantic roulette wheel of risk than a program which achieves results. Nowadays, the best that NASA can say after a launch is, "Gee, we didn't kill anyone this time." But where are the tangible rewards for taking these risks? Why are we asking more men and women to put their lives on the line? What do we gain when an astronaut goes into orbit for the umpteenth time?

Over the past 25 years, the shuttle has proven to be a death trap for any astronaut brave enough or foolish enough to jump in the cockpit. It was a bad design from the beginning, a compromise engineered to gain dollars and support from military sources which later abandoned the program entirely. The space shuttle never lived up to any of the promises NASA managers made in the 1970s. It's killed 14 men and women since then. Space travel has become more expensive than it was in the Apollo days, it occurs less frequently then before and the shuttle breaks no new ground when it goes into space. Tying the future of manned spaceflight to a single piece of overly-complex hardware like the space shuttle was an obvious mistake. Since its inception, the space shuttle has probably done more to retard human progress in space than to advance the final frontier.

Considering all this, I have just three words -- fuck you NASA. Fuck you NASA, for turning American manned space travel into a deadly joke. Fuck you NASA, for playing politics with astronauts' lives. Fuck you NASA, for wasting billions of dollars building a spacecraft which lists, among its most notable accomplishments, the first American fatalities in space. Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars. Fuck you NASA, for turning over responsibility of space shuttle safety to a bunch of gutless managers more concerned about their careers and NASA PR than solid aeronautical engineering. Fuck you NASA, for creating a manned space agency that couldn't seemingly engineer itself out of a paper bag.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[blueflash2o]

i say if the people that own the shuttle (which is the politians) and the people in the shuttle (the austronauts) want to go then let them. I know that i would have go into a shuttle the day after columbia got destroyed. Just as long as it isn't a c name both those shuttles died. only 2 flights out of 114 flights were destroyed.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[mickwd]

Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars."

Grow up.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[Frozen Void]

You know who pushes the strings on the 'Space Race'.Hint:Its a higher authority then NASA.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[iamlucky13]

Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim. For us Americans, it's currently tied to the CEV, which utilizes the best of both the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs with the best of and the lessons learned from the Space Shuttle program. Not to mention the space shuttle program had nothing to do with manned settlements on the moon or Mars. I think NASA envisioned continuing to have enough budget to operate extensive low orbit missions, in addition to manned exploration missions when the shuttle was conceived, which then is a failure of Congress and less directly us voters to provide them with the money needed.

Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now). I also want to point out that this "obvious mistake" was copied almost directly by the Russians with their Buran shuttle, which flew perfectly but was abandoned because of their limited resources, not because of the drawbacks (which we are now more keenly aware of) of a mixed cargo/crew vehicle in a side stack configuration.

My final point is that you incorrectly posit that the safety chief wanted to veto launching without the changes. He would've preferred the changes, but will apparently accept their omission since the major concern (the PAL ramp) was addressed. The decision to move forward was also endorsed by Griffin, who is a very accomplished engineer himself (a very different background than Keefe's, the former administrator). This is the way engineering works (in fact, life in general). You will never eliminate all the risks, so you figure out which ones can be addressed reasonably with your resources and you keep going.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[rapidweather]

Hmmm...
Where is Werhner Von Braun when you need him?

I note this part from the link on Von Braun:
After the Apollo space program, von Braun felt that his vision for future spaceflight was different than NASAs, and he retired in June 1972.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[Frozen Void]

Translation:
  Conform to social norms and forget about your dreams.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[maxume]

It's arguable that the space program isn't deadly enough. I agree that killing astronauts in the process of giving them space badges isn't really a worthwhile situation, but more than a few people have died while exploring other historical frontiers.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[evilviper]

Space travel has become more expensive than it was in the Apollo days

That's not even remotely true. It's vastly cheaper now.

Besides that, your whole post seems extremely one-sided. You talk about billions of dollars "wasted" because they didn't set-up the colony on the moon and mars that you wanted. You completely ignore ALL accomplishments of NASA and the Space Shuttle in the past 30+ years, etc.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[quarkscat]

Absolutely right!

Of course, NASA management ALWAYS overrides concerns the engineers might express.
The problems with delamination of the foam insulation on the external fuel tank could
easily be corrected, merely by switching BACK to the originally used foam insulation.
The formula was changed in order to be "politically correct" when Congress mandated
a reduction in the use of CFC's in order to help protect the ozone layer. An exemption
for NASA's shuttle program could have been politically acceptable.

Somehow, I think that the release of some CFCs in the application of foam insulation
on the external fuel tank, as well as it burning off during re-entry, was far less hazardous
environmentally than a space shuttle burning up on re-entry. The loss of life, the millions
of dollars wasted in trying to "fix the fix", the early demise of the Hubble Space Telescope
(no further repair missions), and the threatened EOL of the International Space Station
need never happened.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[typidemon]

Have you considered the fact that people die of design faults in mundane technology we have built for thousands of years? Let's take cars for instance, cars break down, fall apart, catch on fire and sometimes expload becauase of design faults.

Every major human milestone is measured with how many lives lost it took to get there. How many people died exploring the world we live in? How many people died in the quest to fly?

At the end of the day people make mistakes that cause people to die and this fact isn't unique to space travel.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[kurt555gs]

Grow Up?

Are you kidding?

The shuttle is the main reason that we do not have a base on the moon, or are on our way to Mars.

It was simply an underhanded militarazation of space, and a huge waste of money.

We can't even build Saturn V's any more.

I say junk the thing, and then with a few hundred million more dollars, we might be where we were in 1969.

Oh, and whiule we are at it, trash the Hydrogen / LOX engines and go back to the more powerfull, safer Kero/LOX ones.

We would have rovers on Europa, and have mapped Mars by now.

The Shuttle program has sucked so much precious hard fought money from NASA science and exploration ......... it makes me mad.

The shuttle program needs to stop now, and we can simply pay the Russians to launch what ever we need till we get back on course.

Cheers

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

> > Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars."

> Grow up.

Fuck you.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[Jafafa Hots]

Wrong. Look elsewhere in this thread for links to the NASA report. The foam on the tank that tok down Columbia was teh OLD FOAM. You have been a victim of right-wing spin.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[BrokenHalo]

i say if the people that own the shuttle (which is the politians)

I think you're forgetting that it was all paid for by the US taxpayer. Of course, politicians forget that too, but that's what you pay them for... :-{

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[rmckeethen]

Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim.

Actually, I'm well aware of NASA's proposals for replacing the shuttle fleet, and I whole-heartedly support these proposals. Griffin seems to be putting the space agency in the right direction, and I have no serious dispute with his leadership. The main thrust of my argument - if you'll pardon the obvious pun - is that NASA continues to downplay safety concerns on the shuttle, a program that even Griffin admits was a bad idea in the first place. At the moment, the reward for returning the shuttle to active service, i.e. completing the ISS, just doesn't seem to justify the risks involved.

...the space shuttle program had nothing to do with manned settlements on the moon or Mars.

Sadly, you're absolutely correct. Back in the early 1970s, NASA officials sold Congress on the space shuttle concept by arguing that a reusable shuttle would reduce the costs and increase the frequency of manned space travel. With three decades of hindsight, I think it's reasonable to say that the shuttle program achieved neither of these goals.

In my mind, that was one of the biggest problems with the shuttle - it never looked like an appropriate follow-on to the success of Apollo. Instead of boldly going where no man had gone before, America adopted a beancounting approach to space travel with the shuttle, going where we'd already been dozens of times before, with the vain hope that it would be less expensive this time. The ISS has done nothing to change this. I'm afraid that I just don't care if we ever learn to teach ants how to sort tiny screws in space.

You and I may disagree on this point, but I believe that the future of manned spaceflight lies in reaching out towards the edges of the solar system, putting men and women on Mars and beyond. So this is why I'm still wondering what NASA has accomplished with the shuttle program that even comes close to the earlier Apollo program.

Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now).

See my point above. The Apollo program put men on the moon; no one doubts that NASA spectacularly accomplished its goals with Apollo. In comparison, the shuttle program failed to meet most of its stated goals, as the Wikipedia article you reference suggests. We received something infinitely valuable for the $135 billion 2005 dollars spent on Apollo. Despite the enormous risks, not a single astronaut died in space during the lunar program. Now contrast that with the space shuttle program. We received something less obvious and tangible with the space shuttle, and it has so far cost the lives of 14 astronauts. With the price of gas toping $3 a gallon in the U.S., let's use an oil analogy here: if we hit a gusher with Apollo, then the shuttle program has turned out to be a mostly dry well.

I also want to point out that this "obvious

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[Criton]

The retirment schedule does create more scheduling pressure as they need to complete ISS before 2010. As for the CEV it's a step in the worng direction and will not reduce costs and since the CLV uses an SRB it would not increase safety. Also it and would not be able to maintian ISS or perform earth and microgravity science. Also the design will be very out of date by the time it flies in 2012 to 2014 and would need yet another spacecraft to replace it. The private spacecraft like the t/space cxv or the planet space silver dart are far better designs then nasa's cev which is largely an inflexable dead end design.

Re:Same old story at NASA...

[iamlucky13]

I don't see why the design will be out of date. Very little will have changed at that point. The shuttle flew for 20 years, and ultimately its drawback was not an inability to keep up with technology (computer advances are irrelevant, NASA is able to handle them with reasonable effectiveness), but an unwise (in retrospect) architecture. Combining cargo and crew led to a high mass and high cost (although it was not entirely without advantages, since it added flexibility to do things like service the Hubble and carry spacehab modules). The side stack configuration led to the debris hazard. The winged landing increased the challenge of designing it to survive re-entry.

The cost will be lower. You don't have to launch 100,000+ pounds into orbit with the CEV every time you want to send a crew up. The first stage SRB is reusable. Development costs (see in my above post about the fixed per launch costs versus total costs on the shuttle) are reduced by using common components with the shuttle.

The safety comment is unsubstantiated. The SRB's suffered one failure in 114 launches (228 firings). The failure mode was identified, additional failsafes added, and the conditions leading up to the failure added to the big list of things not to do with this type of rocket. Furthermore, the CEV will sit above the SRB, not next to it where it takes the brunt of the force if something goes wrong. The CEV also will have a launch escape system that can very rapidly pull the capsule away from the rest of the rocket and parachute it to the ground, as opposed to hitting at several hundred miles per hour like Challenger did.

Ability to service the space station will be reduced, but not completely absent. Seperate crew and cargo launches are definitely possible to support the ISS. Microgravity science will, of course, take place on the ISS once reliable supply is re-established. That's what it was built for. The space shuttle only stayed up for 1-2 weeks at a time. The ISS offers a platform for really long-term science. The CEV, while not as versatile as the shuttle, offers the ability to be configured for lunar missions. I don't call that a dead end design.

It's also wrong to call the SpaceX dragon or the Silver Dart better vehicles than the CEV when not much is really known about either. I really admire SpaceX and think they deserve a big chunk of the COTS grant and stand a good chance of having a vehicle capable of serving the ISS in the next couple of years, but they have a long way to go. They haven't even orbited their first rocket yet. Obviously, it would be sheer folly for NASA to stick all their eggs in SpaceX's basket, when Elon is already almost 2 years behind his original schedule. I think the Silver Dart is even less of a bet. To the best of my knowledge, the current design is suborbital, and the Arrow rocket has only started engine testing in the last year, with almost no discussion of larger rockets to come.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd take that trip. It's funny seeing people worry so much about the lives of others and what they choose to devote them to. Exploration in the face of great danger is human nature. It's how we covered the face of the globe. It's what will scatter our species among the stars one day. When a crew is lost it is a shame that we lose their skills and their bravery, but they're all aware of the risks. I think people are more concerned about the appearance of weakness in public failure than really care about the lives of the crews.

Ask the Astronauts and Don't Get Confused by PR

[logicnazi]

It seems the only people who are really in a position to either complain or approve of these changes (morally) are the astronauts themselves. If they think the risk is worth the benefit of getting to fly earlier well who are we to say that they aren't making the right deciscion?

I mean given how many safe flights the shuttle has made without the foam causing a problem, and given the extra in fight safety measures (cameras and stuff) that have been implemented it isn't clear that the foam is the biggest risk the astronauts face. Flying into space is a very risky, unsafe buisness especially on old equitment like the space shuttle. It would be a shame if the publicity of the previous disastor meant that we spent tons of money fixing the foam problem when the total risk could have been reduced more for the same money/time by fixing other safety issues.

It is a general problem that things we have seen cause disastors seem more dangerous than those that have yet to cause any problems. However, we should not let that emotional effect get in the way of making the best safety choices. If the next shuttle blows up because we insisted on reducing the foam risk to 0 rather than doing a cost benefit analysis then the blood of the astronauts is on the hands of everyone who flipped out about the foam but wasn't going to care about other safety issues. On the other hand if fixing the foam really does decrease the risk the most per unit of money/time we than we bad better focus on that. However, as laymen the only thing we can do is trust the experts and second guessing them risks doing more harm than good.

Re:Ask the Astronauts and Don't Get Confused by PR

[DarkVader]

Actually, the astronauts ARE in that position. They are fully briefed on these issues, and they have the right to say "I won't fly in that".

Unfortunately, they are a very BAD choice of person to make the decision as to whether to fly at all, because they are typically very much risk-taking personalities, and many are likely to say "oh, so there's probably a 1 in 100 chance of a fiery death, but I get to go into space? Ok, let's do it!"

While that may be OK for an astronaut on a personal level, every accident throws YEARS of delay into the space program and wastes millions of dollars. We really can't afford another one right now.

And who knows, this decision to fly may be the right one - the foam DID fall away harmlessly, and this is really the first time we've had data on this particular area of the tank at all.

Re:Environment and space exploration don't mix wel

[blueflash2o]

quick question How long did it take people to travel from europe to the americas saftly?

Better Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Both accidents have happened when it was cold out outside. Instead of spending a lot of money on redesigning this and that, just don't launch the stupid things when it's cold outside!

Mike

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[Anonymous Coward]

People commit suicide every day. There is no shortage of people looking for someone to help them kill themselves. We could also use condemned criminals to pilot the Mars shuttle if there are moral objections to helping people commit suicide.

Misleading

[emerrill]

There was a repair in the same location (and shape) as the peice that fell off. Many engineers at NASA feel that as long as that foam is undamaged/repaired it will behave as it should. Obviously the safest thing to do is to remove the foam, but they must ensure that it will not affect the aerodynamics adversly. Its a trade off. They know how the PAL ramp behaves, and have good reason to think that it won't shed.

Shuttle Retirement in 2010

[mdmoery]

This latest thing just deepens my existing concern. 2010 is an ARTIFICIAL date set by the CAIB that NASA is treating like it came down from the mountain on stone. It takes X more shuttle flight to finish ISS plus one to fix Hubble one more time. As things stand with this mindset, X has to be achieved by the middle of 2010. A safety delay must not push it into 2011. No schedule pressure? Ha!! This artificial deadline INCREASES schedule pressure. So the next shuttle disaster is caused by schedule pressure in turn caused by one recommendation made by the board investigating the last one??

Sanity Check

[J05H]

That is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that America, The Good Ol' USofA, does not have manned access to space. We have a system that is broken beyond usefulness, that is bringing the rest of our government space program down. The astronauts being volunteers has little to do with our strategic requirements. We can't get up there even if we want to.

We need to have a frank national discussion. If we are going to stop being spacefaring, stop. If we are going to develop cislunar space and beyond, we need to start with reliable (ie. commercial) flights to LEO for human beings. There is a new aerospace industry growing out there, and doing quite well, see Space Adventures recent PR. NASA may have to leverage these new businesses to survive. Does America need a "Space Shuttle" or be able to purchase tickets to LEO? Capabilities are more important than hardware.

The current price for a six-month stay in space via Russia, including Soyuz up and down: $44million. That and the mythical "Tito" of $20million are commercially available. That is the going rate, and American aerospace is going to need to be able to match it for the market to expand.

Josh

Excellent Decision

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like a car race. If there's no chance for disaster, it's "ho-hum". Now I'm intrigued.

officially not too early

[Aristocrat George]

I smell a Challenger. Oh dont get pissed.. the rule is you can joke about it 20 years later.. its been 20 years and like 3 months.

Ah, delicious freon.

[Gli7ch]

"No, I can't sweat. Simmons' stupid sweat glands don't even work right."

"What? They were working when I gave them to you."

"Please, I'm not moist in any of the usual places. If you want 'em back so bad, take 'em."

"I can't. Sarge said that sweat makes my cyborg parts rusty, so, I'm cooled by freon now."

"Ah, delicious freon."

slashdot exaggerating again

[heroine]

The fuel tank is flying without the PAL ramp. The decision was not to continue removing sections other than the PAL ramp. They have to do as little as possible and test each change in a real flight to know what works.

Appeasement

[Anonymous Coward]

'take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat'

Salmon??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there are any salmon in florida, except in the fish market, flown in on ice. The eagles are there, but I would believe a mango snapper or a real small tarpon or something like that before a salmon with this tale.

Hold on there a darned minute

[ktappe]

First of all, the shuttle is not a "a death trap for any astronaut brave enough or foolish enough to jump in the cockpit". Only a small percentage of those who climbed in the cockpit have died. I'm sure your response will be that none should die, but that is a belief borne of complete fantasy. Which brings me to:

Second, where did you and so many others get the hooked on the delusion that space travel is or can be made completely safe? Or that astronauts/cosmonauts expect it to be completely safe? None who climb into the shuttle or a Soyuz capsule are under the delusion that they are climbing into the car for a jaunt down to the corner store. Getting up and moving at 17,500 miles per hour is dangerous, pure and simple, and for you to call any machine a "death trap" for tackling this hugely complex task is to ignore reality.

Can the shuttle be safer? Yes. Can the shuttle be made safer with the tiny budget NASA is being given and the critical ISS supply timeline and the "we must be absolutely 100% safe" political attitude being imposed? I propose that it cannot be. And if it cannot be, I concur with the others who have pointed out that we have to get this vehicle flying again so that we can "get back on the horse" and continue with the progress of our society into space.

And yes, I would fly on the shuttle today. No, it's not 100% safe. It can't be. Yes, I could well die. But I would still fly on it. And you can damn well rest assured those flying on it know they could die too and are adult enough to have made that choice consciously and willingly. It is not up to you to think you know better than they who have been training for decades for their missions.

-Kurt

Re:Hold on there a darned minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly ... To all those people complaining why we don't have Mars colonies yet: The first Vikings sailed to North America 1000 years ago, yet it would take several centuries until the passage was safe enough to make colonies economically viable. And they were sailing with 5 meters per second through bad weather, not with 8000 meters per second through searing hot plasma :-)

the Chevy Celebrity

[r00t]

Heh.

In the neither-new-nor-old category we have the Chevy Celebrity. From the top, you could just barely see the oil filter. You couldn't touch it. From the bottom, you could just barely touch the oil filter. You couldn't see it. An oil filter wrench could just barely go on, even in theory. From the bottom, you'd have no leverage to move the wrench. (in any case, it'd only rotate a few degrees before hitting an obstruction) You could pull on the wrench from above if you attached a cord to the handle, but of course you couldn't attach such a handle from above and you couldn't reposition the wrench from above.

What, are you supposed to lift out the whole engine to do this? Maybe go through the interior of the car somehow? Perhaps you need a trained boa constricter?

paint it black!! DUH!!

[cheekyboy]

Paint the foam black, it gets warmer faster in the suns shine

Also have some giant IR radiators spot lights to warm it up any way.

use some genetic bio paint that doesnt freeze

the codes

[r00t]

I don't know where you've been but...

NEWS FLASH: all but the most basic codes are proprietary

The public codes are just generic ones mandated by law.

In related news:

Saturn has/had a cute little trick involving the oil light. The reset procedure was proprietary. You could have anybody change your oil, but only the dealer could reset the indicator.

old wrench geezer calls you on the FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff and nonsense. I had two vehicles from the very early sixties (a 62 falcon with a small six, and a valiant with the slant six) that were very reliable, both got around 25 MPG on the highway, both could haul six adults plus a ton of luggage and gear, and were a dream to work on compared to todays cars, and neither ever really needed much other than the occassional shock replacement or fan belt action, etc, said shocks being of the very cheap and easy to take off and put on kind, not requiring a strut spring compressor or anything weird like that. I still have a mid 70s van with a v-8 that finally lost time due to chain stretch at over 300,000 miles, no major repairs whatsoever, and that van got beat on soundly as a work truck. I am planning on just putting another full rebuild engine in it as long as I have to tear it down that far, like what the heck, 300 thou is cool.

Older cars were fine, and extremely easy to diagnose and repair compared to todays cost as much as houses used to cost "transportation".

New cars SUCK BAD when they break, and they do, and if you don't believe it, go to any brand local dealership and look at the service bays. full up aren't they? Right off the bat joe home mechanic might need a 50-100 buck analyser to *maybe* find out what is wrong with them. And then the fun with parts ensues, *very expensive parts*, that being electronic, they usually won't let you bring them back, so you are stuck if you guessed wrong. And wiring??? Excuse me, I want a car, not a baby nuclear reactor combined with a local substation.

    I doubt my entire toolbox cost that much back then when I had those cars, and I could do every job on a car except push off parts inside a transmission that might have needed a hydraulic press with that box. Every-single-job-necessary for normal repairs to complete engine rebuilds, it was just loads easier and took a lot less tools.

We never needed all that pollution add on crap, we NEEDED to change to cleaner burning fuels a long time ago and ditch the petroleum stuff for like ethanol or methanol. Then you really don't need most of the modern computerised controls nonsense. I'll take a carb rebuild kit for 12$ and some new points for 2$, over changing out a set of injectors, new regulator, new ignition modules, etc, etc any day. Cheaper/faster/just as good or better. There are some aspects to modern cars I like, but given the gestalt of them, I would purchase an older car that was manufactured "new" today in a heartbeat over most any new design. Heck, you probably could whip out sub 10,000$ brand new cars if you didn't need all the add on crap and could live without power assist computer controlled everything. It's just not necessary.

My biggest beef is WHAT HAPPENED to vent windows?? Man I miss them.

Re:old wrench geezer calls you on the FUD

[pnewhook]

I honestly cannot understand why anyone would want to do their own maintenance, on a modern car anyway.

I own a Mazda Tribute with 120K Km and have opened the hood maybe twice, and that was to put windshield fluid in it. I take it back to the dealer on schedule (works out to average $70 per visit, two visits per year) and they take care of everything.

If I tried to do it myself. with the cost of tools and a pessimistic $50/h that I value my time at, it would cost me more to do it myself. I'd much rather be doing something more valuable with my spare time.

Re:Murderers!! - Hold on

[kimvette]

I have an idea, a really novel one. No, really! Why can't they. . . no, wait, uh, let me think. Oh, I know! Apply the coating they used to use back when the tank was painted white, since that coating allowed for safer shedding of the condensation!

Sure, payload would be decreased by a few thousand pounds because of the mass of the paint, but at least the existing tank design was safer when painted with the coating it was originally designed and flown with.

Olig. redneck

[thealsir]

Well erm can't fix it, fly 'er up agaiiiin

Statistically, they had many more

[Foerstner]

...at least according to the organizations (Including manufacturers themselves) who chart these things. The industry has achieved gradual but consistent drops in unscheduled repairs for the last couple of decades. Tune-up and oil change intervals excluded.

The reason, IMHO, is computers. Not the ones in the engine compartment, but the ones in the dealership that record all the warranty repairs. Manufacturers today have a much shorter turnaround to address defects. The Japanese will iron out the bugs in a new design within months; even the Americans can usually do it within the first model year. And on the production line, computers have completely or partially automated machining, welding, and finishing.

I'm not sure to what degree its done in automobile manufacturing, but in most manufacturing industries, CAD modeling has eliminated a lot of the last-minute "Stop the line, the whatsit doesn't have enough clearance!" mistakes.

The result is a much more consistent product. Your 2006 Impala is, statistically anyway, much more likely to get you to work tomorrow than your grandad's was in 1966. It may be much more expensive, and more challenging to work on, but it's nowhere near as problematic.

Ok, here's the deal:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you lose another shuttle (+7 crew members) within the next 5 years, you are fucking done. D-U-N, done. You can take all your X-33, and Mars probes, and space elevators, and space stations, and Jupiter manned-missions and cram it all up your god damn ass. Because that's how much good it's going to do you (up your ass), if you lose another shuttle.

However, if you drop every god damn thing in your entire arsenal, not excepting the GPS, weather, and comm satellites, and just put all of your fucking MBA fucks to work lobbying for a new shuttle, then it is highly probable that you will get it done. That is, a new shuttle system.

It's called risk. And right now, you are willing to risk crew member lives, rather than risk your fucking budget. What you don't seem to understand is that you are risking your fucking budget, your entire fucking future, as well as your crew members.

Whereas, you could just be risking your budget. And in fact, if you took the risk and did a good job with the new shuttle system, you'd find more sons of bitches in Congress looking to increase your budget.

Why?

Because it's NEW! That's how fucking New York works. Instant gratification. Attention Deficit Disorder. Just have a bunch of flashy lights on the son of a bitch, and they'll eat that shit right up. Put a camera in the cockpit so as to catch the re-entry plasma flare, and you'll find that politicians are hanging their peckers out for you (I'm not exactly sure why, but to my understanding, if a politician hangs his pecker out for you, it's a sign of admiration).

So, to recapp:

1. Fucking ditch the Space Shuttle.

2. Build a new one where you don't drop the entire fucking external fuel-tank into the Indian Ocean as a "consumable".

3. ???

4. Look at the politicans hanging their peckers out (specifically, Ted Kennedy).

5. PROFIT!!

Re:Environment and space exploration don't mix wel

[Rei]

Amazing that after 40 years we still struggle to get people in orbit safely.

Amazing that we can get out of this deep gravity well at all with 300-450 ISP fuels.

You're a troll

[StarKruzr]

But I think it's important to point out that in hundreds of ways the STS has been obsolete since at least the mid-90s. The computer systems aboard it are ancient, we can manufacture WAY better and truly reusable materials (the Shuttle has to be essentially taken apart and rebuilt between every launch), we understand much more about the dynamics of flying in space and the transition between space and atmosphere... in short, we can build a MUCH BETTER vehicle now than we could then, and vastly reduce the cost of access to space.

Here's an even crazier thought. Sell the Shuttles to whoever wants them (stripping off any classified technology, obviously) and divert the entire Shuttle operating budget into the development of the next-gen vehicle.

I'd Simply Like to Point Out...

[dthx1138]

... That many of you are assholes. I'm sure your physical science course at Ithaca Community College gives you the necessary qualifications to fix the entire shuttle program with a two sentence /. post.

Give us engineers some fucking credit please.

Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out...

[NateTech]

Which disaster would you like credit for?

Every disaster-fated structure or system anyone's ever seen fail, was built by an Engineer.

Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out...

[iamlucky13]

Bravo...I've wanted to say that basically ever since I started reading slashdot.

Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out...

[dthx1138]

I do not care enough about changing your mind to dive into a war over this, but I'd like to point out that the first shuttle disaster, the failure of Challenger's SRB O-rings, was chiefly caused by administrative problems with Thiokol. Namely, that they ignored one engineer's warnings about there being a possible problem. Oh, isn't that always the case.

Other examples of this theme would be the cargo hatch on the DC-10 and of course, the Columbia disaster

Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out...

[NateTech]

Good points, really. If I could mod you up, I would.

Hmmm...Slashdot and cars do not mix?

[boxfetish]

Very strange side topic.

I have been a slashdotter for around 8 years (I do have an ID in the 500,000s), and this is the first time in all that time that I have seen relatively insightful posts modded as "troll" or "overrated".

As an automobile fan, who owns a '51 Merc, a '73 Nova, an '87 Buick Grand National, and a '03 Suburu WRX...

YOU ARE ALL CAR IGNORANT!!

Cars of today cannot be compared to cars of 10, 30, or 50 years ago.

I have learned what I needed to know for each of my vehicles, and I find that all of my cars go years between "repairs", but, then, I have taken the time to learn how to take care of all of them.

Sometimes, I take the time to work on them myself, and sometimes a mechanic works on them. I find none of these autos to be more reliable than the others.

Leaving foam design to those rocket scientists

[Latent Heat]

Yes, we should leave the design of foam insulation of an LH2/LOX tank to the rocket scientists.

The Saturn was a modular family of rocket stages and various rocket engines coming from those German ex-pat rocket scientists in Huntsville, Alabama. Their first rocket, the Redstone, was in some regards a hot-rodded V-2 in terms of its capabilities, and then they had a Jupiter rocket (not to be confused with the Redstone-derived Jupiter C) that used an engine from the Atlas, developed by an entirely different group. The Saturn I was a crash project to best the Russians in having a heavy-lift rocket, and it had a core tank from the Jupiter design surrounded by outside tanks that were Redstone-derived, and the whole works was powered by 8 uprated Rocketdyne engines of the sort from Navajo/Atlas/Thor/Jupiter. This hacked-together 8-engined multi-tanked first-stage booster was jokingly called "Cluster's Last Stand", but it worked without any launch failures.

The gov'mint paid Rocketdyne to develop the F1 engine -- 1.5 million pounds of thrust per engine -- as a parallel path to "beat the Russians to something" because its development was initiated long before there was a firm Moon program or even a rocket for the F1 to boost. There was a certain "if you will build it, they will come" approach, but the F1 was the modular building block for a variety of Nova super booster designs for "putting a man on the Moon." The F1 could just as well power an Advanced Saturn, Saturn being the work of those Alabama Germans, and while Nova was meant for a direct flight up and back to the Moon and Saturn was intended for a two-flight Earth orbit rendezvous scheme, the eventual Apollo used a lower-mass higher-risk lunar orbit rendezvous, but they had so many F1 engines on the Saturn V that it was larger than some of the earlier Nova concepts.

As to the Saturn V, that project was parceled out in every direction -- each stage was contracted out to a different aerospace company -- the first stage, S-IC was Boeing, the second stage, S-II was North American (later Rockwell, the Shuttle contractor), and the S-IVB third stage was Douglas. Those names kind of told a story of a modular design that went through a number of iterations -- the S-IC suggests the 3rd interation of the first stage while S-IVB suggested the second iteration of what was supposed to be a fourth stage but ended up as the third stage of the Saturn V and the second stage (with minor mods) of the Saturn IB.

The S-II, the Rockwell stage of course, had the foam outside the tank. The S-IVB, however, had the foam inside the tank.

The funny thing is that people say the Shuttle was underfunded from Day 1, but in the years from the mid 50's when Atlas got greenlighted to the early 70's, when Apollo last visited the Moon, compared with the years in the 70's when the Shuttle was initiated to today, the manned space program has probably gotten a comparable amount of money but spread over more years with never the crash-program aspect to Apollot. There is talk of Shuttle-derived stick-launchers and super boosters, but it is all talk, and the ability to make Lego-block rockets a reality seems to be gone.

Yes lets use our present congress.

[Criton]

Yes Lets put Our back stabbing congress men and women over the shuttle's wings to protect the RCC from foam. After trying stuff like this http://news.com.com/Congress+may+consider+mandator y+ISP+snooping/2100-1028_3-6066608.html?tag=nefd.t op They have it comming.

Falcon 1

[jafac]

The Falcon 1 addresses a related problem with a novel approach.

The related problem was the rapid boil-off of LOX in the tropical heat. So they covered the LOX section of the booster with a thermal blanket, designed to fall away at launch with cables. Apparently, the blanket did get hung-up on the ill-fated first launch. But perhaps thi principle would be okay for the Shuttle. There's no reason the Shuttle needs to drag all that foam up into space. The only need for the foam was to protect against ice formed by condensation on the cryogenic tank, while the Shuttle sat on the pad between fueling time and launch time. The post-fueling-pre-launch checks weren't intended to take as long originally, so they didn't count on ice build up. So now they band-aid the problem with the foam, which brings problems of it's own.

But a detachable thermal blanket might be just the ticket. As an added bonus, you get to remove the insulation at launch time, which reduces overall weight you need to drag with you up into space. Yeah, there are complications with the blanket possibly not detaching or getting hung up, but I bet those complications are less challenging to overcome than all the fluid-dynamics handwringing they're doing now over random chunks of foam.

It's not the same foam that they used to use.

[CamoCoatJoe]

They had to change the formula in order to comply with new environmental regulations. (No CFCs.)

Report from NASA (PDF)
Google's HTML version