NASA Clears Shuttle Fuel Tank for Flight

Screamer49 writes "CNN is reporting that NASA approved a major design change in the space shuttle's fuel tank on Wednesday, clearing the last major hurdle before shuttle flights can resume as early as July 1." It's nice to have a more functional space program again, isn't it?

Comments

You tell me.

[A nonymous Coward]

It's nice to have a more functional space program again, isn't it?

I don't know. Do you? Is it more functional yet?

You tell me, as soon as you know, and not a moment sooner.

Re:You tell me.

[kfg]

Ah well, you've been modded troll right off the bat, but my very first reaction to the blurb was:

Yeah, now it's "more functional," but if it blows up that will turn into "pressured into reducing safeguards to appear more functional."

Only time will tell.

KFG

Re:You tell me.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is with these CSS changes, now the fucken comments link from the main articles is on the right hand side! CUNTS!

Re:You tell me.

[SEWilco]

It's more functional when the Shuttle tank clears the launch tower.

Re:You tell me.

[LiquidCoooled]

Its to keep you on your toes.
Subscribers are enjoying a completely static size 15 font with all elements fitting nicely and an optional neural interface ;)

Back in reality, "read more..." is back in its proper place, as is the comment score, however the font is still too small and the indent amount is too small.

No matter though because both of these can be cured with a bit of hand bolted css :)

Private industry seems slow

[CRCulver]

After all the buzz about X-Prize contestants and brave space entrepreneurs, it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness. Why hasn't the private industry boomed?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[HotBlackDessiato]

It's not private industry's fault....there's just a slight shortage of Burt Rutans in the world currently.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

Because the winner of the X-Prize just took the money and then went on speaking tours. If Rutan had actually started offering black sky flights after he won the X-Prize we'd see some motivation by others to offer similar flights. Instead, everything is trying to come up with their own stunt to best Spaceship-One.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[RsG]

Because private industry is motivated by short term profit, and the benefits of a space program are all long term (or non-profitable - "pure" science like astronomy is of no commercial value).

Let's say you want to build a solar power plant in space, or a mining operation on the moon or in the belt, or an orbital facility for producing materials that require vacuum and/or free fall. The startup costs are immense, and it'll be decades before you see a profit. Why invest the money in it now when you could put it somewhere else that'll turn a profit sooner and more reliably? That's how the free market works after all, money takes the path of least resistance, and that's why private industry fairs poorly at anything long term. Government agencies can be short sighted too, but they aren't required to make a profit, and so while they are often ineffecient, they can do things no industry has the patience for.

Half the benefit to space travel is to the whole of mankind; a chance to spread beyond our home world, and a pathway to greater understanding about the universe. These things aren't appealing to the private sector. The other reasons for going to space - valuable resources such as those in the belt, abundant solar energy, technological offshoots that come from developing better craft, etc - those aren't easy enough to turn a quick buck on.

When space technology progresses to the point where low earth orbit is easily accessable, then and only then will the private sector step up and start seriously considering offworld activities such as the ones mentioned above. Remember that it was government agencies, not the private sector, that made satelites possible, and yet now that putting satelites in orbit is easy you have plenty of commercial applications springing up. The public sector paved the way for satelites, and the communications companies took advantage of that when it became cheap enough. And even the X-prize craft were following what had already been done by NASA, they were just finding new ways of doing it.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[kfg]

Why hasn't the private industry boomed?

Because it loses money?

KFG

Re:Private industry seems slow

[kfg]

Because the winner of the X-Prize just took the money and then went on speaking tours.

Because his program needs the money?

I've been trying to put together a RAAM team. This will require what for me is a lot of money. To form the team and compete successfully I need to be home training, forming and training my crew, putting together the gear, planning strategy and tactics, etc.

To get the money I need to be away from home, giving talks, courting sponsors, making public appearances for the benefit of my sponsors, etc.

If you know how I can get 14 day weeks while everyone else remains on the common 7 day system, I'm all ears.

Or you could just send me a really big check.

Let's say I pull all of this off, actually win the race (not really possible as a rookie) and collect the prize money. That will mean I've made. . .about negative $20k.

Collecting prize money typically offsets some of the losses. It doesn't actually return a profit. "Profit" comes from. . .

Going out on the speaking tours, courting sponsors, etc., to stump up more money for the next race.

Or you could just send me a really big check.

Post one to Burt while you're at it. He needs one.

KFG

Re:Private industry seems slow

[jonwil]

Isnt that what Branson is doing with Virgin Galactic, offering that kind of flight?
And using technology he got from Scaled Composites too (IIRC)

Re:Private industry seems slow

[colenski]

What you say is very true, however, you have to contrast this with the vagracies of political will and pandering to voters in districts that make components for the US space program. This is why the Shuttle, the ISS, and NASA in general is such a frigging mess. Say what you will about the "independence" of NASA's program in getting buckets of money and given license to pursue pure science, there's something to be said about free market economics in terms of getting shit done.

'Cause they do.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

Here's a really novel idea about how Rutan could make money: offer black sky flights on Spaceship One. According to the Virgin Galactic web page they go for about US$200,000 each. At that price you'd expect Rutan would have started flights two weeks after he won the X-Prize. What'd he do instead? He put Spaceship One in the Smithsonian. WTF? The old Spaceship One FAQ (prior to the X-Prize win) has this to say:


How much will it cost to get a ride into space?
Rides will not be offered in SpaceShipOne. The price of a ride will have to take in consideration the cost of certification and establishing an airliner-like operation. One goal of this research program is to see how low it might be without the burden of regulatory costs. At program completion we will have good data for operational costs and may publish them.


Establishing an airliner? WTF? Seriously dude, require your passenger to aquire a pilot's license, do the minimum required number of flight hours and designate them as a co-pilot. Then get them to sign a waiver as long as you're arm and you'll still have enough rich jerks with $200k each lining up to keep you flying two flights a day, every day, for the next five years.

Speaking of five years, when will Virgin Galatic be offering flights? Who the hell knows. Their web site says:

By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic - the most exciting development in the story of modern space history - is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.


Surely they don't mean US$200k, so how long will it take to go from that to an "affordable" price? 5 years? Can't be, that would mean they have already started flights. 3 years? Sweet, so they'll start flying next year? Don't count on it.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[RsG]

Oh, I'm not denying NASA's political woes and faults. Nor am I denying that in some cases private industry gets things done effeciently. But the conditions that the private sector needs in order to operate are fairly limiting.

In the future, assuming we don't die out or go back to the dark ages, I have no doubt that there will be private exploitation of offworld resources. There will come a time in the next few decades where building factories in orbit to take advantage of abundant energy, vacuum and free-fall will be profitable, and where space based power plants are a reality. In the long run the belt and the moon will be open for commercial mining.

But in the meantime the costs are too high, so the only private enterprise in space is the satelite business. To expand beyond that requires cheap reusable lauch vehicles, or a space elevator, plus a thousand other minor technical problems that must be solved to make space accessible. And to really get the most out of a private space program we'd probably need other related advancements in fields like robotics. These advances won't come from the private sector, because the time it would take for an investment to pay off is measured in decades, and investors aren't that patient.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[monoqlith]

You have a lot of very good points, but the fact remains that the market is exceptionally good at producing advances simply because it is dynamic in a way that federal agencies are not and will never be. Technological advances become exponential - one innovation by one competitor will spawn a slew of innovations elsewhere. So while private companies are motivated by profit in the short term, just by their nature they produce incremental advancers towards long term goals. Moreover, there are other industries where private companies compete where the cost of entry and overhead are *huge* - the airline industry for instance, where purchasing and maintaining a fleet of aircraft costs *billions*, yet the government still makes it (sometimes) attractive to compete in the industry, and there are plenty of airlines. If the government provided the same incentives to compete in space industry, I think we'd have seen a lot more progress by now. NASA is a dangling relic of the Cold War - it needs to be down-sized to just the components where there is no conceivable private interest to accomplish the same goals, as you say pure science research, etc. If the shuttle program were canceled and the technology spun off to private corporations, I think we could see a lot more advances in the immediate goal of making space travel affordable and just as commonplace as airline travel. NOt to mention, it would really help our deficit.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[kfg]

Establishing an airliner? WTF? Seriously dude, require your passenger to aquire a pilot's license, do the minimum required number of flight hours and designate them as a co-pilot.

With that strategy they should have people all ready to fly next week, eh?

Perhaps the people running the private space programs know something about the legalities and economics of running a private space program that you don't?

Here's something for you to try that might teach you about some of the problems involved:

Start an America's Cup racing team. Try financing it, after the race, by giving people rides on the boat. That will require you to have a commercial captain's license, but maybe you can get around that by requiring that all of your paying passengers have commericial mates licenses and, officially at least, sign them on as crew. When someone offers you five grand to give a talk and introduce you to some potential sponsors tell 'em to go to hell. You don't have time for that, you have a business to run.

Good luck.

KFG

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Telvin_3d]

Yeah, well, the same people who can afford to blow $200,000 dollars on a 30 minute vacation can, by extension, afford REALLY good lawyers. Or, rather, whoever inherits their money after they die in a fiery ball can afford really good lawyers. Faced with someone with enough money, even winning the lawsuit would be almost as expensive as winning it, 10 meter long waiver or not. Frankly, I am amazed than anyone is willing to even make a go at this as a business. Virgin has a chance simply because they have the cash to survive a few court appearances, but any smaller company? not a hope.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[RsG]

Airlines are a bad point of comparison. They're generally seen as profitable (and by and large they have been, though many have hit trouble more recently), they use existing, well understood technology, and they replaced much older methods of long range travel that predated them.

Space travel isn't profitable yet. People aren't going from point A to point B and crossing outer space in the process - to profit from space, you must go from the ground to orbit, and bring something back that's worth the trip. Space is mostly empty, and gravity is a strong barrier to entry.

Space travel technology isn't both cheap an reliable yet. Cheap rockets make the satelite business possible, but reliable, reusable craft capable of attaining orbit with a signifigant payload are incredibly expensive (the X-prize craft didn't meet those qualifications, though they were cheap and reusable). Airplanes existed for years before the formation of airlines, and jet propulsion existed for a long time before jetliners were brought into widespread service. It was largely factors like military R&D that made modern airlines possible - jets were weapons before they were anything else.

Lastly, we were traveling from Europe to North America (to give two examples) for centuries before planes were invented. The pathway was already there, and already profitable and useful. Airlines slowly but surely superceded ships as the means to travel long distances. Centuries from now we might have an equivalent in space - if we start with ion drives and later develop fusion propulsion, that would be similar - but right now we're at the stage where intercontinental travel was in the medieval period.

The private sector needs an incentive to go to space. All they have now is the satelite business. Why should they feel the need to go any further than that? There isn't anything to be had up there yet, at least not at the prices they're willing to pay. A billion dollar airliner fleet isn't that expensive if it makes 100 billion in airfare after all. What incentive is there to drop a few billion dollars on space craft when it will take another decade of R&D before they can turn a profit?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Bitsy Boffin]

At that price you'd expect Rutan would have started flights two weeks after he won the X-Prize. What'd he do instead? He put Spaceship One in the Smithsonian. WTF?

A test pilot made 2 sub orbital space flights in it, that doesn't in any way mean that it's a good idea to make a 3rd. SS1 would not have been suitable for offering paid flights, simply, it wasn't safe to do so.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Mad Marlin]

If I had $200,000+ to blow I might actually consider blowing it on a spaceflight, and sign a crazy wild waiver (the ones that say in 24pt font at the top, "IF YOU ACTUALLY SIGN THIS THEN YOU ARE CRAZY"), and get a pilot's license, etc. I wouldn't blow that on a boat, much less a boatride, even if it did win some stupid race. It is going into space that people would pay for, not SpaceShipOne(TM) in specific. Even if each flight cost $5,000,000, there are people who would pay $7,500,000 for it, which means profit.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[BiggerIsBetter]

So...

I think that means the goverments need to create ways of processing high-value or otherwise impossible to produce goods (or information) in space, from materials available in space. If industry can see a proven way to make money from it, you couldn't stop them finding a way to get there.

I guess some "killer app" or process that needs weightlessness or vacuum (or both) to work... maybe some high temperature manufacturing process... oh, like producing titanium or osmium or tungsten or something... from an asteroid or moon mine... possibly using a process significantly cheaper than traditional methods ("free" energy fromthe sun, easy access to a vacuum source, etc).

1) Produce a small scale test processing plant for the ISS (another pod)
2) Produce a larger manufactuing plant in orbit
3) Locate a suitable source of ore
4) Figure out a way to mine it*
5) Send processed loads back to Earth
6) Profit!

*TBD

Or something like that. Govt could JV a demonstration pod for ISS.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[RsG]

Yeah, that sort of thing been proposed. There are actually dozens, if not hundreds, of useful commecial applications of space travel that would work if even low orbit were easily accessible.

Off the top of my head, there are materials that can be made easily in space like Aerogel, which is incredibly valuable here in earth. Google it or look it up in Wiki to see what I mean - this stuff has amazingly useful properties, and weighs next to nothing. Mass producing it would mostly be a matter of getting a facility into orbit at a reasonable cost.

There are abundant and accessable metal resources in the belt, due in no small part to the lack of differentiation in asteroids - heavy metals on earth mostly sunk into the core during the planet's formation, whereas in a floating rock the different materials are more evenly distributed. Getting at those materials would require either extensive automation or much better life support technology - the belt is slightly further away than Mars, and we haven't even gotten that far yet. We'd also need to be able to get heavy equiptment into orbit, and we'd need long range in-system propulsion, such as an ion drive. Putting a waystation in orbit around Mars, or on one of the Martian moons, would make this easier - call it a steeping stone.

If we don't want to go that far, the moon also makes a good choice, and it has oxygen already present as well. That solves the range problem, but adds another trip out of a gravity well going the other way. Another stepping stone possibility is the Lagrange points in between the earth and the moon. Additionally, if we are ever able to use He3-D fusion power, the moon is our nearest fuel source.

Apart from that, there's the prospect of putting solar plants and more conventional factories in orbit. Solar power in space suffers none of the drawbacks of solar power on the ground, and we can build the power plant as large as we like. If the lauch costs were low enough, we could easily move our polluting industries away from any and all ecosystems, perhaps using the belt for raw materials and shipping only finished products back to earth. The aforementioned Lagrange points in the earth-moon system would be a good place to put them. Given that those industries would never have to worry about the cost of complying with the EPA again, they might well volunteer for a chance to move away. A whole new type of outsourcing would begin :-P

All of these have the common problem of being too expensive yet, which means in practice that we need to go about the R&D in the meantime using tax dollars. In the long run, I suspect there will always be a NASA equivalent, if only for the pure science side of things, but it'll take a strong incentive and a cheaper launch vehicle to put private industry up there in numbers. Had we never done all the space research of the 60's and 70's, we wouldn't have the satelite industry of today.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[kfg]

I wouldn't blow that on a boat

Well, that's cool then, 'cause that won't even get you in line for a used one.

Tell ya what, since you're interested in space, not boats, why don't you take the direct approach and get in touch with Burt and arrange to run his passenger flights for him, at your expense, your profit. A lease agreement, just like with . . .an airline.

Piece of cake and lots of money to be made. You're just one signed passenger away from being a millionaire.

But you might well find that the very first step you have to take after inking the deal is to hold a press conference and then go on a speaking tour to stump up your startup money and find your first passenger. If you don't simply have a godzillion dollars from somewhere, that's . . .how . . .it's . . .done.

It doesn't matter whether it's boats, or bikes, or cars, or space ships. That's a McGuffin. It's a business; and one reliant on continuing cutting edge R&D at that. Go read a history of Henry Ford. It's exactly the same deal.

And Henry had to quit designing cars to run his car company.

Do you really want Burt Frickin' Rutan to have to quit designing just to play footsie with some rich twits?

I thought that was the initial complaint.

KFG

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

Then it's my opinion, and the opinion of many others, that Rutan had no right to claim a win for the X-Prize in that case. The purpose of the prize was to encourage the development of a vehicle that could be used for space tourism. Obviously that's not Rutan's fault, the X-Prize rules should have been more specific, but if Virgin Galactic starts making flights some time soon, everything will be forgiven.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[unixluv]

it seems like we're back to just complaining about NASA's ineffectiveness.

Most people don't understand NASA. NASA does what most other people think is impossible. I'm sorry if it takes a little longer.

And it takes longer because Congress decides how much money NASA gets, in large part, from year to year. Would you buy a new car or new house if you don't know if you can make the payments next year?

And lastly, many of NASA's projects go on for decades. NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14, the hypersonic X-43, which made the world speed record, and has a sucessful Mars program. Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[HotBlackDessiato]

NASA had a big involvement with the development of the F-22 Raptor, designed the variable-sweep wing on the F-14...Now how many private companies would be willing to take these projects on, when most people think it couldn't be done?

I have no idea of course, maybe the private companies which designed and built them. The nice nasa logo you see on their tails indicates they've been delivered for test. You're confusing a 'consultative, seting of specifications' role with the actually doing. Yes, the mars rover is the exception.

Nasa does create some good your tax dollars at work type public relations linkage though. It's had an effect.

ps. the variable-sweep homework was a real bitch with nothing to go on but looking over a f-111's shoulder.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[91degrees]

Because there's a limit to what you can do at 100km at suborbital speeds.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Anonymous Coward]

A company rep told me they set up atmosphere processors, even though it takes decades to establish a "shake-and-bake colony." Weyland Yutani isn't private industry?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Richard_at_work]

Actually didnt *two* pilots make *three* suborbital flights between them? Nitpicking maybe, but still....

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

to profit from space, you must go from the ground to orbit, and bring something back that's worth the trip.

That "something" is your passengers and their memory of their experience. Instead of air liner, think cruise liner.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Radak]

Establishing an airliner? WTF? Seriously dude, require your passenger to aquire a pilot's license, do the minimum required number of flight hours and designate them as a co-pilot.

Think about this. SpaceShipOne seats two. SpaceShipTwo (the passenger version) seats 11. If we assume the profit flying 11 is, say, $50,000 per person, then the cost to fly the thing is $1,500,000. You can't fly one person for a reasonable price. All the safety comments people have made aside, it's just not economical to fly a single passenger.

...you'll still have enough rich jerks with $200k each lining up to keep you flying...

What makes you think people who are interested in investing in the fledgeling space travel industry are automatically jerks?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

It may be *more* profitable to fly 11, but it certainly isn't unprofitable to fly 1. Unless you think it cost Rutan $200k per launch, which is just crazy.

As for the jerk comment, don't take my comment out of context. What I said was that even if you put a dozen barriers up and charged an obscene amount of money you'd still make a profit. For a passenger to make it through that kind of filter they would have to be unusually determined, and when people like that are put into regular, not challenging, situations, they typically behave like jerks.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[mermaldad]

Because it's not easy?

Re:Private industry seems slow

[SenseiLeNoir]

I am British, and i deeply admire NASA. Sure they have made a few cock-ups in the past, but they have also done some tremedous achievements, which they also tend to share with the world (Thanks to US federal rules, stating Federal Agencies cannot claim copyrights). And not just in space related things, take beowulf clustering, I believe that was originally developed in NASA.

I think NASA has contributed a lot of wealth that not many people are aware of, and this simply woudl not have happend had they been done in a privately owned company.

And yes, unlike my own country (UK) they have a successfull Mars program. Sure they may have had some setbacks, but at least their failure percentage is not 100% (beagle 2) likes ours is right now :(

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if the private industry "boomed" like NASA did we would have a lot more deal private astronauts.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Radak]

It may be *more* profitable to fly 11, but it certainly isn't unprofitable to fly 1. Unless you think it cost Rutan $200k per launch, which is just crazy.

You wanna bet? It takes an ungodly amount of fuel to fire a rocket engine that size for a few minutes, and fuel is not cheap. And that doesn't pay for R&D, staff, fuel for the mothership, insurance, etc. I would not be at all surprised to find that each of those SS1 launches cost in excess of $200k. Rutan didn't pay for it, of course... Paul Allen footed the R&D costs, and then Paul Allen and Richard Branson paid for the launch costs.

As for the jerk comment, don't take my comment out of context.

Fair enough. And you're right that there would be some people willing to pay nearly any amount of money for this opportunity. After all, look at what Tito and Shuttleworth paid for rides to the ISS. But what Rutan and Branson want to do is open up this field to the merely rich instead of just the obscenely rich, with an eye to later making it affordable to the simply well off. We'll never get to that point if we stop development as soon as we can give rides to the obscenely rich.

SpaceShipOne was a test vehicle and nothing more. It was not designed or built to make more than a few flights. It was designed to prove the technology works, to collect the X-Prize, and to encourage investment in further development of the technology for commercial use. It's achieved all of those goals magnificently, and I think therefore is just in sitting in the Smithsonian now instead of continuing to fly.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Chris_Jefferson]

You aren't allowed to sign a waiver saying "If you actually sign this then you are crazy", and if that ship blows up with you in it, you can bet the relatives are going to drag you through every court in the land trying to get money. You'd never get insurance against that kind of thing.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[NewKimAll]

Private industry could be slow for practices that we Americans need to desperately stop. Those practices are frivilous lawsuits and excessive greed. If ANYTHING goes wrong during one of these black sky flights, most likely the company will be sued. Waivers and contracts mean nothing in today's world. Even if you have them, you can still be sued.

If the cabin depressurized during the flight, would you sue (assuming you lived of course)?
If your back or neck hurt after a flight, would you sue?
If you are severly overweight or are in poor physical condition and they refuse to take you, would you sue?

The only thing you should be able to reasonably sue for would be gross negligence, which you would have to prove. But, we don't live in a world like that do we? No, we live in a world where we expect to get millions of dollars from anybody that dares to wrong us in any way.
--
Life is risky. We need to be brave in the face of adversity rather than crying like babies for "Mommy" when something bad happens in our lives.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[adam.dorsey]

and that is the saddest thing about the modern economy: the transition from "i think this is a good idea and will attract people, i'm opening a business" to "i think that i can survive at least a couple of lawsuits in this field, i'm going into business."

Re:Private industry seems slow

[tehcyder]

Because it loses money?

You are injecting a note of realism into this topic. I don't think that's allowed on Slashdot.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[WUPA]

How long did it take the Wright brothers to package and sell their idea?

Well after the first real flight (of their glider) at Kitty Hawk in 1902, then they start selling their idea 7 years later in 1909 to the US government. And still commercial flight didn't come around until about the 1930's?

So use that, but just add outer space...or take away the air, either way.

We won't see safe, public space flight for at least 15 years.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[morie]

...which means profit.

Where's the ????

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Cat_Byte]

I think the real point people are missing is what kind of ride Spaceship One had going into orbit. It wasn't exactly incident free with it spiraling for about a minute. They may have even been lucky that wasn't catastrophic.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, airlines as a whole have spent more of investor's money than they have generated throughout their lifetimes. They are a bad example, though I do see your point (if it were not for the stranglehold the unions have on them, they could easily have been profitable).

Re:Private industry seems slow

[TemporalBeing]

offer black sky flights on Spaceship One

Have you seen SS1? It's not possible to do what you are saying. The vessel was built for carrying only one person. From what I have come across (and I believe there are links in slash dot archives on this) they are looking at taking what they learned from SS1 and building SS2 with the capacity to hold 6 people (2 pilots and 4 passengers) or something like that.

Until they vessel can hold more than 1 person it is impossible to do as you say. And no company will for any cost or indemnification allow a pilot that is not one of their own (or certified by them) to fly their planes. If the person crashes, the company would be liable, and as others have stated, if the person could afford it then their estate would be rich enough to sue and take the company to court and essentially either put the out of business or lose large sums of money, likely leading to them going out of business.

Ever see "Hudsucker Proxy"? Think of the CEO deciding to get that license, fly the plane, and purposely crash it, but not telling anyone before hand, and then leaving it to the estate to pick up the pieces. The estate would quite quickly sue, and the company would lose unless the company had their own pilots flying. Why? Because the company did not take enough precautions to provide a satisfactory responsibility for safety.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[NeuroAcid]

Your going to have to do what any business would do in your situation, hire more people. If you need to be home planning, making, creating, and all that, then you need someone to be your voice and be out there doing all the things you don't have the time for. Hopefully you hire someone that makes you more then they are worth.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[iocat]

Actually to win the Xprize it needed to be able to carry two or three people. But teams were allowed to fly with one pilot and one (or two) human weight dummies.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Tweekster]

A lawsuit will quickly be either tossed, or found against the plaintiffs with a quick: "you expected space flight to be safe"

Re:Private industry seems slow

[susano_otter]

I think that the private companies who do contract work to NASA's specifications do so because they like being paid to do cutting-edge research, rather than having to raise the funding themselves.

Working for NASA, they can get a huge R&D budget for some new technological advance that may or may not pay off.

If it does pay off, the private companies take what they've learned from the NASA project and apply it to their own commericial endeavors.

And if it doesn't pay off, hey, at least it wasn't their shareholder's money being spent.

In this way, NASA promotes technological innovation in fields where there's not much profit motive to start with. And quite often, the results turn out to be profitable and beneficial after all.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[Rei]

That's a perfect analogy because, as we all know, Burt Rutan invented the rocket.

Hmm, wait, lets try that one again.

That's a perfect analogy because, as we all know, Burt Rutan invented the modern, high performance rocket.

Darn. Trying again...

That's a perfect analogy, because, as we all know, Burt Rutan invented a useful, orbital rocket.

Hmm, that's still long. How about this?

That's a perfect analogy, because, as we all know, Burt Rutan invented a low-cost sounding rocket.

Darn, by comparison to sounding rocket prices, still not right. This?

That's a perfect analogy, because, as we all know, Burt Rutan invented private, commercial rocketry.

Darn, again wrong. Well, at least we can say this:

That's a perfect analogy, because Burt Rutan invented "something".

Oh, and to correct your information: widespread, regularly scheduled, fixed-wing commercial flight didn't occur until the 1930s. The first commercial airline begain in 1914. The first commercial flight on a plane designed specifically for carrying passengers was in 1918s. In 1919, the first weekly flight service began (London->Amsterdam). By the late 1920s, they already had the concept of the flight attendant well established (although they were all men - "cabin boys", if I rememeber correctly). The Wright Brothers' first plane was really an unstable ground-effect-only contraption, not suitable for much beyond a demonstrator. They didn't have a roughly stable/reasonable range craft until 1905. Hundreds of competitors to the Wright Brothers sprung up almost immediately. The British military began their fixed-wing aircraft program early in the century; it wasn't made public until 1908.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[iamlucky13]

And it's my opinion that if people were really more interested in taking joyrides into space than criticizing businesses they have no experience in, they'd pay more attention to what's going on. SS1 was a technology demonstrator. That was the goal of the X-prize. From there it is still necessary for someone with the money and entreprenurial will (and a favorable market, which I'm not fully convinced exists) to take it from a demonstrator to a real product and accompanying service. Virgin Galactic has licensed the technology and is working with Scaled Composites to develop the larger commerical version. Had Ansari not offered up the X-prize and given Rutan and others a reason to invest the money and effort they did showing entreprenuers like Branson that it's possible, none of that might have taken place. Furthermore, the X-prize was awarded by the choice of the foundation, not claimed like a spoil of war, and it was done so with private money.

To go several layers up the discussion, yes the private industry is slow...slow compared to the original exaggerated promises made by people with plenty of money and rhetoric but little if any actual engineering experience.

Re:Private industry seems slow

[QuantumG]

I think the biggest lesson learned from the X-Prize is that it isn't all about the technical challenges. You also have to solve the legal challenges. Allowing challengers to carry ballast instead of paying passengers into space was a mistake. The X-Prize should have forced competitors to carry living, breathing, payying customers into space, then they would have had to content with and conquer the legal issues, not just the technical ones. And it would have ment that space rides were available immediately after the challenge was won, because who would be so silly to go to all that trouble to win the challenge and then not take money from the people lining up to fly.

Faith in NASA

[mikesd81]

My faith in NASA has deminished over the years. I'm only 25, but I can't recall any mission in the last 10 years (well a really public one any way) that didn't have some kind of hiccup. Even the Mars Rovers. But don't get me wrong. I hope this really works well and NASA is getting back on their feet and restoring their image. But when it launches and gets into orbit and there isn't any "Houston we have a problem....'s", then and only then I'll break out the bubbly.

Re:Faith in NASA

[grasshoppa]

Even the Mars Rovers

You're kidding me. Yes, there were a few issues, but those things are STILL going. They were designed for, what...a couple months of usage?

I'd call that a big win. You will notice this big win does not owe it's success in any way to the shuttles however.

Re:Faith in NASA

[mikesd81]

But it wasn't hitchless. I know that things will eventually happen with huge projects, especially in space. But the one rover stopped sending data. That's a big hitch.

Re:Faith in NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres always a bug with a mission because theres half a billion things that need to work perfectly at the same time in a launch for it to be successful. Every problem is a minor one, usually something that hasnt been considered before. Its a very hard science, and in most cases problems occur in extreme cases that haven't or can't be tested. Every minor detail to be checked also requires alot of money that NASA doesn't have

Re:Faith in NASA

[mattkime]

Lord knows the Apollo missions never had any problems....at least as long as Tom Hanks stays out of it.

Re:Faith in NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no doubt that the Mars rovers are doing a fabulous job. I suspect the engineers intentionally understated the design life to satisfy the bean counters. If the bean counters had known all along that the rovers would last this long (and incur that much more in operations costs), the program might have been canceled or scaled back.

Re:Faith in NASA

[RsG]

Nah, it's just a question of probability.

You build something that will almost certainly last 6 months. After 6 months, it will probably last another 8 months. After those 8 have passed, it might last another year if you're lucky. After that year is up, it's anybody's guess.

It's not like they built it to self destruct after it's projected mission time expired. They built it to not FAIL in it's mission time, and anthing beyond that is just fine and dandy.

I've seen electronics that were 50 years old (like old fashioned radios) that still worked. Is that because they were built to last 50 years? Nope. They were built to last maybe ten, and the ones I saw were the lucky few that still worked and hadn't been tossed. Nowdays the equivalents are built to last a year, and might last five if treated well - but the fact they still work after they're projected lifespan still holds.

Re:Faith in NASA

[QuantumG]

All the science that the Mars rovers have done could have been done by a human team in the first day of their expedition.

Re:Faith in NASA

[guet]

All the science that the Mars rovers have done could have been done by a human team in the first day of their expedition.

A human team which would have cost enough to send 30 missions like the rover ones to Mars?

Re:Faith in NASA

[QuantumG]

and would do 100 times as much science as 30 missions will ever do.

Re:Faith in NASA

[DerekLyons]

My faith in NASA has deminished over the years. I'm only 25, but I can't recall any mission in the last 10 years (well a really public one any way) that didn't have some kind of hiccup.

Welcome to the real world. I'm 45, I've spent 35 of those years following the space program closely - and I can't think of any missions, manned or no, without some form of hiccup. NASA isn't perfect, never has been, never will be - they are merely closer to that state than virtually anyone else.

Re:Faith in NASA

[SenseiLeNoir]

I respectfull disagree with the importance of the "hitches". As us Brits know, its hard enough sending single probe to Mars (Beagle 2)*. NASA sent two rovers SUCESSFULLY, and BOTH are operating far beyond what they were originally specified to.

NASA is full of smart and passionate engineers and scientists. They have great resolve to overcome setbacks, and keep on going. (Our own space program seems to be ditched because of one failure).

Please do not become like us British, complaining and makign a big deal about th few failures, detracting from the success that is done. Space exploration is a risky proposition, and NASA has shown how it can still be done, even with the great uncertainties. Hollywood aside, if there was a case where there was a huge asteroid heading towards the earth, I think NASA will come up with better ideas to solve it than all the Defense departments in the world.

(*) If recent evidence is true, in that Beagle "unluckily" landed in that small crater, we may have soem distinction of scoring the first ever interplanetary "Hole in one"

Re:Faith in NASA

[Manhigh]

They've exceeded their lifetime many times over! Its absolutely astounding that you'd call it a hitch that they have an expected end-of-life.

Are you still driving a 1984 Pinto in mint condition or something?

Re:Faith in NASA

[maxume]

They were designed to guarantee a couple of months usage. One way to do that is to design them to last for a really, really long time. The big surprise is that the solar panels are getting brushed off by the wind and they still have power.

The other funny thing about the gp post is that he thinks that humans do things without hiccups.

Re:Faith in NASA

[Reverberant]

I'm only 25, but I can't recall any mission in the last 10 years (well a really public one any way) that didn't have some kind of hiccup.

Ah, the follies of youth...

I think as you gain more experience, you'll find that all projects have hiccups. It's a matter of whatever your project design, teamwork, and/or management is strong (or competent) enough to overcome these hiccups..

As other posters have pointed out, although the Mars rover program had issues, overall the project was a success. If you're looking for perfection, you'll have to find some society made up of creatures incapable of making mistakes.

Re:Faith in NASA

[ericspinder]

If recent evidence is true, in that Beagle "unluckily" landed in that small crater, we may have soem distinction of scoring the first ever interplanetary "Hole in one"

Only if you were aiming for it, otherwise it was just the golf equilivant of hitting it into a pond.

Re:Faith in NASA

[tsobo]

But when it launches and gets into orbit and there isn't any "Houston we have a problem....'s", then and only then I'll break out the bubbly.

No wonder your parties are always such a drag.

Re:Faith in NASA

[WindBourne]

You should be hoping to hear more "Houston we have a problem....'s", NASA is suppose to be pushing to the edge. Instead, because of outcries about "hiccups" and deaths, they have taken the safe route. We are more than willing to invade another country and lose 3000 soldiers for oil, but we seem to take issue with losing 7 lives on a space trip.

Look, when NASA gets back into the groove, we will lose more lives. We will also have hiccups. Prepare for it. Just understand that NASA has to do what it takes to get back on course (re-design and move on).

Re:Faith in NASA

[mikesd81]

We are more than willing to invade another country and lose 3000 soldiers for oil, but we seem to take issue with losing 7 lives on a space trip.

So you are saying, then, it's okay to for the 3000 soldiers to die for their country?

Re:Faith in NASA

[WindBourne]

I am saying that our nation has no problem with losing 3000 soldiers, but has an issue with NASA losing a mission.

Plain and simple, the soldiers and the astronauts knew exactly what they were getting into. It is sad to lose them, but they volunteered. And in the case, of the astronauts, I would gladly trade for their seat on the shuttle or a moon or mars trip, even if it was say 51/49% chance (I want better than 50%).

Now, if you are wondering what is my belief WRT bush's invasion of iraq and the lose of lives, well, simply look at nearly all of my freaks; Out of 22, 20 are big supporters of W. (the other 2 were interesting, but had nothing to do with direct politics). That should explain it all.

Re:Faith in NASA

[susano_otter]

You should read the histories of the Apollo and Gemini projects.

There's never been a manned space flight that didn't have all kinds of problems, from minor glitches to major catastrophes.

There's always a fuse blowing, a cable not wired correctly, a setting reversed, etc.

Sometimes it's really minor stuff, like having a switch break and toggling it with the tip of a pen.

Sometimes it's a major catastrophe, like losing all your fuel, power, and life support consumables in a fuel tank explosion.

Sometimes it's something in between, like having your spacecraft struck by lightning--twice!--immediately after launch, shutting down all of your electronics until you can find the controls to reset all your systems.

Sometimes the entire spacecraft goes up in flames. Other times, the launch gets delayed a few hours.

But there's never been a mission that didn't have problems all along the way.

Once you realize this, and understand why, I guarantee NASA will once again rise in your esteem, higher than it ever was before.

Re:Faith in NASA

[grasshoppa]

All the science that the Mars rovers have done could have been done by a human team in the first day of their expedition.

Except that a team of humans is so absurdly expensive to send, if we were to even have the technical capabilities to do so, and increase catastrophic mission failure exponentially.

In short, what you suggest is idiotic at best. Which can only mean one thing: Mr President, please stop posting on slashdot.

Re:Faith in NASA

[iamlucky13]

Lest others smuggly convince themselves that NASA must then be a complete loser house, the above goes for probably almost every major project in every industry to the beginning of time. People have this (somewhat understandable) idea that a bunch of Japanese engineers wearing ties got together and drew a bunch of conceptual drawings, took them to the factory, started selling Toyota Corollas 6 months later, and by the end of the year had a reputation for making one of the most reliable cars on the rode. The actual case is that years of development go into every major redesign. While NASA gets one shot at building much of their stuff right, Toyota constantly improves their products year after year...and I believe they still average over 1 defect per vehicle coming off the assembly line. I'm positively amazed that younger companies like Kia are even able to break into the market at all, given the years of experience, prior design, and mistakes the older companies have to build on.

Re:Faith in NASA

[VendingMenace]

what science would that be?? Pray tell, what science do you propose? Seriously, tell me some things that need to be done on mars that a rover and some from-orbit-reconossance could not do?

I REALL am curious. For real. This is something that I have not thought too much about and would love to hear from someone like you who has obviously (judging from your statements) spent some time considering.

Thanks.

Re:Faith in NASA

[iamlucky13]

Woohoo! I knew I liked British people for a reason. Trans-Atlantic props for a great post, bro.

(*) FYI, Opportunity already beat you blokes by coming to rest inside Eagle Crater, which was only about 10 meters across and 1 or 2 deep. From 80 million miles away, baby!

Re:Faith in NASA

[QuantumG]

It's called geology, and if you actually ever speak to a geologist in your life, as them how well they can do their job with rovers and satelite photos.

Test-Induced or Testless Failure?

[retrosurf]

From comp.risks:

NASA managers decided on Thursday to skip a launch pad test of the shuttle
    Discovery's redesigned fuel tank because of the risk the test itself could
    damage the tank. The test would have entailed filling the shuttle's fuel
    tank with cryogenic propellants and testing its systems. The fuel tank has
    been the focus of NASA's shuttle safety upgrades since the 2003 Columbia
    accident. [Source: Irene Klotz, NASA to skip shuttle tank test ahead of
    July launch Reuters, 5 May 2006; PGN-ed]

Re:Test-Induced or Testless Failure?

[BkBen7]

Of course, if we don't test it, then it can't fail them right? *wink* *wink* * *nudge* *nudge*

Amazing that nasa hasn't been held more responsible for astronaut deaths.

Re:Test-Induced or Testless Failure?

[nude-fox]

so thats how we do we dont test things anymore? nasa guy # 1: hey this might go horribly wrong nasa guy # 2: yah but if the test fails it could go explode does nobody here fail to see the irony /flamesuit

Improvements

[Umbral Blot]

Is this just a safety thing or are there other improvements? Surely there must be, since it was so long ago that the original shuttle was designed? Ligher? Stronger? Better colors?

Re:Improvements

[R3d M3rcury]

"Better colors?"

Now that you mention it...

NASA's PR department has done extensive research over the last 3 quarters and discovered that their audience is strangely disproportionately skewed towards males. In an effort to interest young girls in NASA, the external tank will be repainted in "OMG! Ponies!" pink. There are also plans to take a pony up to ISS. :^)

Re:Improvements

[flooey]

Is this just a safety thing or are there other improvements? Surely there must be, since it was so long ago that the original shuttle was designed? Ligher? Stronger? Better colors?

Nope. Completely redesigning something like a shuttle fuel tank takes an incredibly long time, not to mention building new ones.

Re:Improvements

[JebusIsLord]

A giant, pink phalic symbol will certainly make the little girls blush, that's for sure.

Re:Improvements

[Stephen Samuel]

As Floey said:
Nope. Completely redesigning something like a shuttle fuel tank takes an incredibly long time, not to mention building new ones.

Or, to give you a better idea of just how much work would go into a full redesign, it took them almost a year to OK taking some foam off of the current design. Now, granted, if you were to do a full redesign, a lot of that work could be done in parallel for each modified/new section, but you're still talking lots and lots of engineer months here.

I didn't notice it being gone

[patio11]

It's nice to have a more functional space program again, isn't it?

I never noticed it wasn't active. I could probably think of a government program that is less relevant to my life than the Shuttle program but it would take me a while. Wake me when manned spaceflight accomplishes *anything* that can't be done better and cheaper either with robots or just on the ground (Tang is a wonderful drink*, but there's no reason to blast someone out of the atmosphere to drink it).

* Yes, I was probably the only person in the entire world who actually had a taste for Tang.

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a taste for it too. Try making it with boiling water sometime.

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[QuantumG]

You're certainly right about the shuttle program, it's a black hole, but let's not bag the whole concept of humans in space ok? If we were to send just one geologist to Mars he could do more science than any of the robots that have been sent their in the first hour of his arrival. That said, manned space flight shouldn't be about science. It should be about conquering and colonizing a new frontier.

Hopefully soon, commercial space flight will focus more on the exploitation of space resources than pure science and we'll really start to see the worth of manned space flight. Then maybe governments can get out of the business of creating launch vehicles and just fund the pure research to use commercially available launch vehicles.

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[mikesd81]

Don't get functional and active confused. Virgins are functional, not active. Viruses are active, not funtional. See part's 2 and 3 of this defintion (more 2 than 3).

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[mikesd81]

http://www.answers.com/functional&r=67 that link see 2 and 3

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[kfg]

* Yes, I was probably the only person in the entire world who actually had a taste for Tang.

I did. In about 1960.

KFG

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[MidnightBrewer]

Cheaper, yes, but better? The Mars rovers have taken three years to do something that the average person could do in a couple of days. Keeping people on staff to process that data and issue new instructions for that long isn't going to be exactly cheap, either.

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[Guppy06]

"I could probably think of a government program that is less relevant to my life than the Shuttle program but it would take me a while."

Other than deliver your mail and maintain some highways, what did the federal government do for you yesterday?

Heck, do you really feel the effect of, say, Homeland Security more than the space program?

Re:I didn't notice it being gone

[KeensMustard]

If we were to send just one geologist to Mars he could do more science than any of the robots that have been sent their in the first hour of his arrival.

In the first hour the geologist would not even get her surface suit on. Even when she gets her suit on, she can only venture out for a few hours at a time because the weather on mars is REALLY bad and humans would not survive a night outside. This gives the geologist a few square kilometres that can be covered regardless of how many times she ventures out - humans move at less than 4 km/h under their own power in a bulky surface suit. Oh and the suit would classify as a robot.

In contrast, Mars Global Surveyor (a robot) surveyed the ENTIRE SURFACE of mars in a matter of months - something humans did not achieve for thousands of years on earth. Until we sent robots into space.

Of course the human could cover more ground if we provide her with a vehicle (a locally controlled robot to carry her around). But since she would not be able to see scientifically significant formations or detail of rock when travelling at any speed, someone (something) would need to scout ahead to ensure that her destination was worthwhile. Perhaps we should send a robot to do the scouting...

That said, manned space flight shouldn't be about science.

It's good to see some admission that humans have no scientific reason to be in space.

It should be about conquering and colonizing a new frontier.

Conquering?? Colonisation? Colonies have to have a reason to be - they aren't a goal in their own right.

Hopefully soon, commercial space flight will focus more on the exploitation of space resources than pure science and we'll really start to see the worth of manned space flight.

What resources are there in space that we need? We need

- soil nutrient (none of that in space)

- water (little, if any, in space comparative to earth)

- right temperature (ditto)

- sunlight (the whole earth is bathed in sunlight)

We like (but don't need per se)

- metal (the whole earth is a ball of iron)

- energy sources for cooking, heating, travelling and toolmaking (energy gathering from space is a net loss equation if humans are sent)

- complex carbon molecules for making plastic (few, if any, of these in space)

Even if some suitable resource were to make the effort of distance worthwhile (let's call that resource unobtainium) Why would need to send humans to get it? We could just send robots to do such menial work.

A whole year?

[NPN_Transistor]

So it took an entire year to decide whether or not to attach a little piece of foam to the space shuttle? Even the development of Windows Vista is going faster than this!

Re:A whole year?

[Slithe]

Hell, even the development of Duke Nukem: Forever is going faster than this!

Re:A whole year?

[Basehart]

A friend of mine who works out on Sea Launch from time to time was telling me that insulation has been falling from shuttle booster rockets since day one, and most of it a lot bigger than the piece that damaged Columbia.

It's a shame the insulation issue wasn't nailed a long time ago, but just like building crosswalks on our city streets it often takes a couple of fatalities to make something happen.

Re:A whole year?

[Basehart]

Ahem, shuttle booster rockets should read external fuel tank - my bad (I'm still getting used to this new interface, honest!)

Re:A whole year?

[afaik_ianal]

I've often wondered: Why don't they just leave the foam on the tanks, and also coat the whole shuttle in foam to protect it from the bits that fall off?

I have sketched some concept drawings for my design. With my modifications, the shuttle would look a little like this.

Re:A whole year?

[Zerbey]

Yes, but if Duke Nukem forever has a problem then what, a few gamers will get upset?

If the shuttle has a problem at launch: You have several million tonnes of shuttle and associated boosters and fuel tanks, and all the nasty chemicals therin landing in and around the Atlantic Ocean. Not a good thing.

If the shuttle has a problem during re-entry: The mid-west has several thousand tonnes of shuttle and associated nasty stuff falling on it. Again. This time it may kill someone.

If it fails in orbit, well... 7 dead astronauts and god knows where it'll end up.

I think they're being very cautious here, after all if the shuttle fails this time it'll never fly again.

Private space industry booming, profitable...

[patio11]

... in the one field that using space makes sense in: launching satellites. What private industry is not doing is throwing billions down the money hole to examine, e.g., the effect of weightlessness on spiders. Thats because private industry doesn't get new billions every year even if it had a string of failures and no successes for the last N years.

Re:Private space industry booming, profitable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of which, what the heck is the government doing building the full production version of the re-designed shuttle fuel tank (spending lots of money in the process) before the design changes have been approved? I am glad they are ready to fly, but what if the changes were not approved? Worse, what if the pressure not to have to scrap something already made weighed on the approval.

Its nice, but.

[tetrahedrassface]

Its nice to see a fully functional space agency again. Sure. But its also worrysome that funding for robotic exploration is being cut to pay for it (Moon to Mars, or next week just the moon). Programs at JPL are scrambling to ensure funding. Yet.. despite all the neat bells and whistles of manned spaceflight, robotics have done more to further knowledge of our universe than any manned mission ever thought about. The astronauts didn't put a telescope on the moon, but they jumped around a lot.

Id post AC, but screw it. Im telling the truth. :)

O

Re:Its nice, but.

[wjsroot]

I think one of the biggest reason of why manned space flight is kept around is all of the people who want to be manning those space flights. Think about how many kids want to grow up to be an astronaut... and think about those who are. Its a lot more fun to actually go into space then watch a robot do your job.

Re:Its nice, but.

[WindBourne]

It will not be cut for much long. Griffin is basically funding the one thing that will make NASA move forward (bigger rockets, new space capsule). Congress is getting mad because ppl like you are writing them telling them to keep robotic exploration going; Good. What will happen is that congress will have to increase funding for NASA so that robotic can continute as can the moon shot. Keep in mind that this is what NASA does all the time. For example, the voyager were funded for something like a year. It has been funded since early 70's (IIRC less than 1 million / year). Likewise, the rovers were funded for something like 6 months. They are like the energizer bunny and still going strong (and funded).

Obligatory Armageddon Quotes

[gbobeck]

"You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" - Rockhound

"Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!" - Lev Andropov

Wow, I was wrong about Tang...

[patio11]

So after my a blast of nostalgia I just decided to Google for a local seller of Tang (got to be SOMEONE still with a stock, right?) Apparently Kraft sells hundreds of millions of dollars of it every year, 90% of it outside the US (concentrated in Latin America and Asia). I feel so much less alone now.

Re:Wow, I was wrong about Tang...

[LostInBrittany]

Another blast of nostalgia here. Tang was very popular in Spain some years ago. I remember the wonderful taste of red tropical Tang. I don't know what there was inside it, in hot Spanish summers but nothing beats a cold red Tang when you're thirsty... Now it seems gone, you cannot find it neither in Spain nor in France... Now back to your scheduled NASA discussion...

Re:Wow, I was wrong about Tang...

[Anonymous Coward]

in hot Spanish summers but nothing beats a cold red Tang

Personally, I prefer a hot, pink 'tang.

You know, the tang that was brought back by the Apollo astronauts... moontang!

The Biggest Kludge in Engineering History

[w33t]

What would have been nice is if the space shuttle had been built as it was supposed to be built. The space shuttle was originally a two part system - not entirely dissimilar to the spaceship one paradigm.

The original specs for the space shuttle entailed the orbiter (pretty much the same as it is today) and a "reusable booster" vehicle. The "booster" was going to be a hybrid jet/rocket about the size of a 747 (which explains why the shuttle fits so nicely on one) and was going to fly right to the edge of space and deploy the orbiter for the rest of the journey.

The idea was scrapped primarily because of budget contraints. It seems likely these cutbacks were brought on by the vietnam war and the civil unrest occuring around the southern states.

It is a fact that both shuttle disasters have in no way been the fault of the orbiter in any way whatsoever. The Challenger was lost due to the booster rocket and the Columbia from the external fuel tank.

IMO - Rotating the shuttle 90 degrees and strapping it onto a big fat rocket is the biggest kludge in engineering history. Now NASA has no choice but to continue to shoe shine that billion dollar...you know what.

I hate it so much because I love the idea of the Shuttle so much. I love how that thing flipping LOOKS! It's the greatest spacecraft in history! But now it's got such a reputation when it was never the orbiter's fault. And now we take a leap backwards and go with a capsule again (yes, it's tried and tested - but so is walking, but it's not the best means of travel).

Citing "technical difficulties" with the booster vehicle idea is a cop-out. If we had built the shuttle with the booster vehicle then I think it likely we would have learned much more than we have about reusability and runway-to-runway space flight. Heck, I venture to speculate we may have solved the single-stage-to-orbit problem already.

Let's just hope we don't get stuck some other war which will sap the budgets out of our technological development...

Re:The Biggest Kludge in Engineering History

[Anonymous Coward]

Why oh why do they turn the shuttle upside down on liftoff ? If it rode high debris would fall away from it.

Re:The Biggest Kludge in Engineering History

[MichaelSmith]

The original specs for the space shuttle entailed the orbiter (pretty much the same as it is today) and a "reusable booster" vehicle. The "booster" was going to be a hybrid jet/rocket about the size of a 747 (which explains why the shuttle fits so nicely on one) and was going to fly right to the edge of space and deploy the orbiter for the rest of the journey.

I had a thought that the shuttle orbiter should have been built as an evolution of the Apollo service module, with TPS, cargo bay and wings; and the flight deck should have been a stock standard Apollo command module with a hatch through the heat shield (like the proposed Gemini WET lab from the '60's).

Instead of an LES attached to the front of the vehicle during launch there would be a small solid motor right behind the CM heat shield which would separate the two parts of the spacecraft during launch or reentry.

The advantage is that you have a redundant escape system for most failures.

Re:The Biggest Kludge in Engineering History

[maxume]

The initial design was also a whole lot smaller. It was enlarged to give it the capability of launching and servicing military payloads. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that's what brought about the strap-it-to-a-big-rocket plan. It was an engineering response to political stupidity.

The capsule isn't a leap backwards anyway. The 'reuseability' of the shuttle is a joke. The ability to bring large payloads back to earth is nice, but it doesn't really come up that often.

Re:The Biggest Kludge in Engineering History

[Anonymous Coward]

Without being overly Freudian, the Saturn V (remarkably absent from the discussion) was just absolutely cool. And maybe worth looking into for ISS supply missions. Proven technology. Oh, to see that fly again...

Funding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, robotic exploration is great. But why the funding is being cut is the greater question. Can it be that our government, or NASA (not sure which), doesn't care about space exploration as much as it used to? I wonder why.

LOOK OUT MARS, HERE WE COME!!!!!

[gasmonso]

Next stop Mars!!! Or the boring old space station AGAIN :(

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:LOOK OUT MARS, HERE WE COME!!!!!

[DerekLyons]

Next stop Mars!!! Or the boring old space station AGAIN :(

it's only boring to those who mistake sizzle for steak.

In other news...

[MeatNoodle]

...NASA states that the foam used on the tank has not yet been approved for a return to space.

P

NASA and money

[Rickler]

Looks like nasa can't uses that "foam problem" as a way to ground anymore shuttles to save money.

Machines cannot do everything

[Slithe]

It would take plenty of time for a machine to, say, analyze a rock and decide whether or not one should further examine it. A human could do this in a few seconds. Don't just take my word for it, though. Here is a passage from Robert A. Braeunig's Rocket and Space Technology page that debunks the Fake Moonlanding Myth:

The moon rocks allegedly collected by Apollo astronauts were actually collected and returned to Earth by robotic spacecraft.

Any mission capable of returning over 800 pounds of rock and soil samples would be a massive, complex and difficult undertaking. If NASA could pull this off, then surely they had the technical know-how to land a manned vehicle. In fact, with an astronaut at the controls, a manned mission would likely have greater odds of success than a robotic mission. Perhaps the greatest case for the Apollo landings exists in the variety of rock samples collected. A robotic mission would be limited to a random collection of samples in the lander's immediate vicinity. However, the Apollo astronauts visited vastly different geological sites and were able to roam about the surface looking for particularly interesting and valuable specimens. For example, it is very unlikely that a robot would have been lucky enough to scoop up the "genesis rock" found by Apollo 15 astronauts. Only trained human explorers could collect the diversity of samples credited to the Apollo astronauts.

NOTE: During the 1970s the USSR successfully completed three lunar sample return missions - Luna 16 (1970), Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976) - however these missions returned a grand total of only 301 grams (10.6 ounces) of soil.

BOOM!

[Baldrson]

Why is it that with each passing Shuttle disaster, I look forward more to the resumption Shuttle launches?

Re:BOOM!

[Dan East]

I don't know about that, but I am wondering how we can flag story tags ("boom") as flamebait.

Dan East

Re:BOOM!

[freeweed]

Nascar fan, by chance? :)

What do you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tank is a single-use item. Wouldn't it be more risky to use it twice?

It's NO more functional than before

[Anonymous Coward]

It's NO more functional than before. It may be safer, but it's still a risky business. From the beginning it was a 1 "bang" per 100 missions.

Only half the story!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

The summary only mentioned half the story. The tank has been upgraded too. Besides the sensor changes, NASA estimates this tank to be just under a megaton, a substantial improvement in power from the previous airbursts.

Ads in the RSS?

[Apraxhren]

Is this going to be the new thing? Are you that desperate for money to inculde advertising for a summary that consists of 2 sentences?

some other war

[nido]

Let's just hope we don't get stuck some other war which will sap the budgets out of our technological development...

You obviously haven't been paying attention. :)

"United States Federal Government on the fast-track to bankruptcy, News at 11"

The only reason "we've" lasted so long with the twin deficits (trade and federal budget) as large as they are is because of the "petro dollar".

Sometime in the 70's, a U.S. president struck a deal with an Arab royal family that was, essentially, "we'll use our military to keep you in power, if you accept our 'dollar' and only our 'dollar' in exchange for your oil."

Even though manufacturing started fleeing the U.S. in the 80's (in response to inflationary pressures at home) and the trade deficit started ballooning, the dollar has held it's ground relative to other countries' currencies. Why? Because the trade partners who were now building "our" stuff for "us" needed the dollar to buy oil for themselves. So, instead of having a "trade" - a U.S.-produced widget for a Tawaineese-produced widget - foreign manufacturers were happy to take a "dollar", because they could go buy a barrel of oil with it.

The petro-dollar has been breaking down for at least 6 years. Saddam said he wanted Euros for Iraqi oil circa-2000. Iran and Venezuela are now moving in the same direction. Who's to blame them? What good is a dollar, if you've already got all the oil you need?

Specific fuel modifications

[TheDarkener]

From the NASA website:

"Well basically what we've done is created a hybrid shuttle. Given a Toyota Prius electric motor, we started playing with it. We ended up attaching solar panels to the side of the shuttle, which provide energy to the motor once the shuttle leaves the atmosphere. This provides us with enough remaining government funding to actually launch the ship, with gas prices at THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY F**KING CENTS, PEOPLE!!"

Shell and Exxon were not available for comment, as apparently the entire executive staff already had a Scrooge McDuck style 'vault swim' scheduled.

No, they THOUGHT it would last that long

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, they left in a margin of error, but... Remember Pathfinder? The only reason Pathfinder died was because the solar cells got tons of dust in them, and there wasn't enough left to power it. They based their estimates on that, and nothing at all else. The mysterious cleaning events they've been having is responsible for the rovers lasting this long (and of course the good engineering that let the rest of the rovers continue to function).

Someone has made a typographical error here

[Sentri]

Here, where it says: ""There were no surprises. Everything went smoothly," NASA spokeswoman June Malone said" (fta: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/06/08/space.shu ttle.reut/index.html)

They obviously meant to say, "Everything went smoothly, We were pleasantly suprised"

Silly moderators :-)

[A nonymous Coward]

Slashdot sure is funny. I never expected to be modded troll for this. It's as if the moderators actually believe NASA, as if I had dissed a bunch of girl scouts or spelling bee contestants. Sure surprised me. Flamebait maybe, or even funny, but troll? Sheesh. I guess it just shows to go ya that slashdot is more fun than digg.

Re:Silly moderators :-)

[kfg]

Well, I have been relegated to join you in the "Shut the fuck up" corner. Looks like a decent enough place to bang your head against the wall; and if the damn thing does blow up or something I'll buy you a beer, or something.

KFG

Bugs? No - just some Surprises.

[giafly]

After redefining bugs as features or issues since time immemorial, programmers now have a new word.

We can all follow NASA's lead and call them surprises in future.

Headline

[ms1234]

Am I the only one seeing the headline and thinking: Why did they empty it before launch?

NASA should wait until July 4th to launch

[Anonymous Coward]

That way if the shuttle explodes, they can break the record for the largest firework! Make sure to have Tom Petty's "Free Falling" ready to rip...

What pace were you expecting?

[pavon]

Private industry is making significant steps. After winning the X-prize in fall of 2004, Rutan estimated that it would take about 4-5 years until SpaceshipTwo was ready for regular flights. That schedule still looks reasonable, with the first flight around 2008, and passenger flights around 2009. Furthermore, several other groups are continuing to work on suborbital vehicles to compete with Virgin Galactic, including XCOR and Blue Orgin. Bigalow is progressing far better than people expected and will be launching a proof-of-concept space station shortly (russian launcher). SpaceX had their first launch recently, and while it failed, this is normal for new rockets. They are making good progress, and still have enthusiastic customers. Not to mention all the established private industry like Orbital Sciences, who are great guys and consistently do good work.

This stuff takes time - it took Nasa time, and while these entrepreneurs have Nasa's mistakes to learn from, they also have a much smaller budget. What they are achieving with that budget is impressive. I am really looking forward to seeing these people start making money off the suborbital rides, so they have a solid revenue stream for more development. Of all the plans Bigalow's is the most risking, and most interesting. If he can create a profitable space hotel - if he can do for LEO space stations what Orbital Sciences did for satellite lauches, then the government can just rent whatever space they need from him, and get it's manned space program back to what it should be doing - pushing the boundries on human colonization, not draining money on the ISS.

...and in other news

[bky1701]

Bill Gates buys a new computer mouse.

Re:...and in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates buys a new computer mouse.

Yes but that is big news! It was a logitech and for his dual G5 tower.

He was also heard mumbling as he shuffled back to the cash registers at the Fry's store he was spotted at.

The words heard were "Yeah, vista's gonna be cool, yeah..."

There are further reports that on the wayhome he actually stopped and bought a bag of granny smith apples and was overheard saying to the clerk, "granny smith! what a great product line name!"

Steve Jobs was unavailable for comment.

Chicken != Hatched

[Duds]

It's nice to have a more functional space program again, isn't it?

Might want to wait to make that assertion :)

Re:Copyright Infringement.

[Alioth]

You can still quote part of an article without violating copyright. It was properly attributed to CNN, and the summary is a good example of fair use.

Better than flying whirly birds in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than flying whirly birds in Iraq. Or sitting in a Humvee going down the road. Or heck, reporting the NEWS from there. Guhd Gawd it must suck to be there! 1 in a 100 sounds like pretty good odds.

More functional?

[The Wicked Priest]

You mean, the way they cancelled valuable unmanned missions to make room in the budget for questionable manned missions? Yeah, that's great.

Good for the local economy

[HotBBQ]

Good news for us locals. The is quite a bit of worry about the shuttle program ending dramtically sooner if the external tank problems didn't get fixed. NASA brings in a lot of money to Brevard County.

obligatory

[master_p]

Even the development of DNF is going faster than this!

Challenger and Columbia both cleared the tower OK

[Ellis D. Tripp]

, but were damaged or destroyed shortly afterward...

I don't think that system made sense...

[YesIAmAScript]

The shuttle is just too big.

Once it reaches a certain size/weight, it becomes very heavy. To counter this weight, you need wings with a lot of lift. Once you make a vehicle that can carry this weight it becomes very large itself. Lift creates drag and size creates drag, so you need to put on enough thrust to fight the drag up to 40,000 feet, maybe 50,000 if you want to stretch it. Finally, you need to put in enough fuel to fight this drag created by the vehicles and vehicle lift requirements for at least 15 minutes as it flies to its target altitude.

And the shuttle still needs a ton of thrust because it needs still needs to reach 500,000 feet (100 miles).

Meanwhile, the current shuttle makes that trip of the first 50,000 feet in about 40 seconds. So for all that effort spent fighting for 20 minutes, you saved 40 seconds of fuel. And even that is misleading because most of what the shuttle does in the first 40 seconds isn't even make altitude, it's make vertical velocity. A system where you fly to 50,000 feet starts with zero vertical velocity, so it has to carry even more thrust on the main engines to combat that.

All this together makes it seem to me it's pretty likely that the shuttle actually is more energy efficient with the current system than a partial fly-to-orbit system.

If it were smaller it could be different, like Spaceship One is probably more fuel efficient and definitely more cost efficient by a partial fly-to-orbit system. But then again, Spaceship One doesn't have the weight of a heat shield capable of withstanding reentry from orbital velocity.

As much as I like Spaceship One, it isn't actually anything NASA hadn't tried before. SS1 is basically a modern X-15. NASA didn't know how to turn the X-15 into an orbital vehicle in the 60s, in the 70s and it's unclear anyone knows how to do it today.

I do feel bad the "space plane", Delta Clipper and other SSTO projects have been cancelled so many times. It would like to see more time spent on that project and hopefully a solution.

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Your opinion doesn't mean squat in this case. The X-Prize Foundation is the one to certify who is the winner. Rutan didn't just say "hey, I won" and the X Prize Foundation didn't say "really? okay, here's $10m". The rules say nothing about establishing a space tourism service. The rules state the competing team must launch twice in two weeks to an altitude of 100 km or greater, do it without public funds, on a reusable vehicle capable of carrying the weight of three people (one can fly and the rest of the weight can be anything used as ballast). Specifying anything about creating a space tourism service would have been, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, rather dumb. Prizes can only be awarded based on performance of specific actions.

Further reading on the coming collapse of the $

[nido]

I usually give links to back up what I say...

See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for more on the Feral Government's response to the 70's oil crisis. Before "we" got involved, the Saudis let goats eat their garbage, because they were all so good that none of them would stoop to the level of garbage collector. Now they import asians to pick up the trash. And so on...

The commentary on the petro-dollar were largely inspired by a recent Freedom Report from Texas congressman Ron Paul (not online at that site; I got a hardcopy in my now-deceased Grandmother's mail earlier this year - March or so?). I don't have my copy handy, and the scan is on another computer. But this looks like it might be what I read: The End of Dollar Hegemony - Part I, Part II

Not Quite True

[iamlucky13]

The cuts are being made to originally projected future budgets. The science budget will actually continue to increase year-over-year, but not nearly as much as planned before the Columbia accident. If the CEV lives up to its long-term potential for lower-cost human access to space (hard to lose given the size and complexity of the shuttle), the science budget actually stands to benefit in the long term.

No need to post AC, you're pretty much right about the science achieved by robotic missions, but there are a few things to recognize. First, astronauts did place the Hubble and other observatories in orbit, and serviced it twice. It's possibly the best science investment NASA's made, but it had help. Second, robots don't expand human horizons. Some people think it's a corny goal, but a heck of a lot don't. Third, if we can get human's out there cost-effectively, I have no doubt that we will far outpace what we can accomplish with robots.