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NASA Clears Shuttle Fuel Tank for Flight

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the back-in-action dept.

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?

13 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Private industry seems slow by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Private industry seems slow by RsG · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    2. Re:Private industry seems slow by monoqlith · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Private industry seems slow by SenseiLeNoir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 :(

      --
      Have a nice day!
  2. Faith in NASA by mikesd81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
    1. Re:Faith in NASA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Faith in NASA by RsG · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  3. Its nice, but. by tetrahedrassface · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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

  4. Re:You tell me. by kfg · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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

  5. LOOK OUT MARS, HERE WE COME!!!!! by gasmonso · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
  6. Machines cannot do everything by Slithe · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.
    --
    ---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
  7. some other war by nido · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
    www.teslabox.com
  8. No, they THOUGHT it would last that long by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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).