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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)."
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.
liqbase
"Mejor muerto que tarde"
What?
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.
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.
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!
Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.
The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.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.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
Off topic I know, but it would've been impressive if you could've gotten the user ID number 818284. :)
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...
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".
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).
WHY are you CAPITALIZING words that AREN'T even PRONOUNCED and are very MINUTE points but they are still in all CAPS.
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.
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
oh okay
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.)
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
I am trolling
Why?
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.
It emphasizes NASA's problem: "too managers."
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
I am in awe of your towering wit
I am trolling
Look, if you really want to link to someone with credibility, link to the Karl Rove Institute for Social Justice or something.
This space available.
National Astronaut Scattering Administration
Priceless. Not particularly politically correct, but priceless nevertheless.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
This space available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This space available.
I'd bet there would be no shortage of volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars.
Isn't the shuttle program already teetering on the brink? I can't imagine they'd fly again if there were another accident.
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.
please excuse my apathy
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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.
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.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
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.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
quick question How long did it take people to travel from europe to the americas saftly?
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.
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.
Leave the rocket science to the rocket scientists.
That's what we need to tell the NASA managers.
What?
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.
Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars."
Grow up.
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??
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
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
It's like a car race. If there's no chance for disaster, it's "ho-hum". Now I'm intrigued.
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?
You know who pushes the strings on the 'Space Race'.Hint:Its a higher authority then NASA.
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.
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.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Translation:
Conform to social norms and forget about your dreams.
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.
"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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
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
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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 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
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
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).
Blank until
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.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Well erm can't fix it, fly 'er up agaiiiin
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
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.
Grow Up?
......... it makes me mad.
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
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
* Carthago Delenda Est *
...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.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
> > Fuck you NASA, for destroying my dreams of manned lunar settlements and a trip to Mars."
> Grow up.
Fuck you.
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
"TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
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.
"TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
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.
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.
+++ATH0
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.
This space available.
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... :-{
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.
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.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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.
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
... 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.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
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.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
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.
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.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
Report from NASA (PDF)
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