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Shuttle Launch Delayed
fizzix writes "Weather has delayed the launch of Discovery to tomorrow (Sunday the 2nd), but not everyone thinks it is ready to go. CNN reports both the chief engineer and the chief safety officer gave it a 'no go' for launch. Despite their reservations, barring inclement weather the shuttle is planned to liftoff at 3:26 ET." Update: 07/02 05:00 GMT by Z : I said launch not lauch. Fixed headline.
STS-121 Mission Status Center - 'nuff said.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
25 years of this program and with nothing to show for it. It's getting damned embarrassing and is really starting to reflect America as the stagnant dying empire it is.
I'm almost surprised they even decided to proceed to the point that they did today (the hold with T-9 minutes to go). Standing on the ground at Kennedy, if you looked West, the sky was almost black with storm clouds over the runway at the Shuttle landing faciliity. You know, the one that needs to be clear for the Shuttle to land if there's an emergency? Seems like a bit of a waste.
Just my two cents.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
If it eventually goes up successfully July 4 it'll either be a triumph or a complete PR disaster. I'm sure the engineers and administrators are taking this into account.
I hope the person responsible for the current 'go' decision can be held criminally responsible if things do go wrong.
Of course, the paranoid might think that this is somewhat intentional as a number of republicans would probably like to get in on private industry taking over NASA role in space exploration.
(Too bad there is no money in space right now.)
Two people who are obviously very high up on the pecking order around there say, "No-go," and and yet it's still decided the shuttle is going to launch. Is it just me, or are we asking for another disaster?
"Earlier Saturday mission managers decided a problem with a thermostat in one of Discovery's thrusters, which was showing a reading in the 80s when it should have been in the 60s, was not dangerous and it could be fixed once the shuttle was in orbit."
Given the fact that foam striking the side of the Columbia during takeoff wasn't considered dangerous, I'm suprised they didn't stop to recheck everything before hand. When it comes down to rechecking everything and delaying the mission for a little longer vs. the millions lost and the following PR hit, the answer pretty obvious. You could say "it could never happen", but try and tell that to the crews of the Changeller and the Columbia.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
Here is the link to the radar image for Melbourne, Florida
I'm close enough to see the space shots, and there were some storms west of the Cape this afternoon, a few more out to sea. Forecast for tomorrow is less of a chance of thunderstorms in the area and downrange.
I have my thermos of coffee ready. "I always have coffee when I view radar". (Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.)
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Whats "lauch"?
Seriously, Slashdot is read by millions of people and yet it lacks the basic courtesy and professionalism that any media outlet should have. How can this thing be taken seriously?
If the chief safety officer can't cancel a launch due to safety concerns, what's the point of having a chief safety officer?
Apparently NASA has failed to have a good weather analysis completed. I don't know of too many people who have lived in Florida for over five years that don't know about our semi-scheduled summer afternoon thunderstorms. Then, on top of that, there is a lot of weather coming in from the Gulf for the next few days. These next few days are not good for any important space launches.
They say "no go" because a repeat of the foam damage appears reasonable.
The decision is overridden because the crew can camp out in the space station.
The "no go" people claim to accept this. (they damn well knew too)
So...
Why say "no go" in the first place? Why worry about foam damage if
you know that you ultimately won't care?
Last time I Lauched I was sick for a week!
The details in the Slashdot posting are slightly incorrect. Todays/yesterdays launch (the scheduled on on the 1st of July) was postponed at T-9minutes after a 40 minute scheduled hold (if it's scheduled, why didn't they add it into the count down?) and approximately 3 minutes of 5 into an "extended hold" (after they "polled" all the various sections of the launch team). Then the decision was made the "scrub" (abort) the launch due the weather being too unpredictable and there being storm clouds (anvil clouds) within 20 miles of the emergency landing strip (although they have got backup landing strips in France and Spain). They will retry the launch tomorrow, and can abort for any reason up to 31 seconds before main ignition.
At the moment, they are still "go" for the launch tomorrow.
BTW: You learn a lot from watching the live stream on nasa.gov!
So if the engineer says no, and the safety officer says no then who is saying yes? Whose opinion could be more important than these two people?
Philosophy.
Because they put the nice cold fuel in there already, right? Now, in the humidity, all that water can condense and freeze, making any foam that falls off much more of a weapon to the rest of the craft. They shouldn't fuel until they know they're gonna go for sure. I'm sure there's some reason they think they can or must do it this way, but since I don't know it, I'll assume I'm as good an engineer as any other.
I was looking for a good streaming video of the launch in a F/OSS-friendly format, but I couldn't find one - NASA was Wmv/QT/Real, BBC was Real/Wmv. Does anyone know a good source of a shuttle launch stream that's in a free format like mpeg or theora?
Thankfully, Ubuntu made it easy to add a extra repository and install RealPlayer 10 in less than 10 minutes. Just in time to catch them scrub the launch.
Duncan McLauchlin "Lauch" Faircloth (born 14 January 1928), served as a Republican U.S. Senator from North Carolina.
Before his Senate service, Faircloth was a prominent and wealthy hog farmer. One impetus for his political activism was his disagreement with the increasing regulations targeting large hog farming operations such as his, fueled by an environmentalist and populist backlash.
Faircloth once joked that he wanted to be known as the conservative senator from North Carolina. Since the state's other seat was held by Jesse Helms, that may be seen as an indication of his ideological proclivities.
I'm disappoited. Everyone is suddenly covering their asses. Where is the spirit of adventure? Where is the risk? All I see are a bunch of people covering thier ..... in case something goes wrong then they'll point and say always helpful "I told you so". Sit down and shut your yapper. Space missions are inherently unsafe. The shuttle came back about a hundred times with tiles missing - sometimes 100s. And no one thought anything about it. One shuttle goes down, and everyone (including the posts on slashdot) is pesimistic. Maybe the US doesn't even deserve to be in space. Let someone with some balls do it.
Hell, 2500 die in Iraq, makes the news. Thousands and thousands Iraquis (sp?) die, no one gives a crap. A few *volunteers* give their lives in persuit of science, and everyone wants to cancel everything that is dangerous. Just like a quote I once heard - something like "If millions die, it is just a number and you just keep sending in more. If one is in danger of death, no expence is spared to try to save him/her." Pretty fscked up set of priorities we have here.
Personally, I believe that any delays, scrubs, cancelations and PR disasters at this point can only help space exploration as a whole. No, of course I don't want to see another shuttle go up in flames with the loss of anoter crew, but a PR disaster in the form of an indefinite launch hold is another story. Sadly, I think that political and budgetary pressures will force this shuttle up, ready or not.
With the hard date set for the retirement of the current shuttle fleet, I think NASA is wasting its efforts and budget on the dying program instead of trying develop alternate space vehicles faster. (Of course, I admittedly know very little about NASA budgetary constraints. For all I know, they may be forced by congress to use that part of their budget on the shuttle fleet or lose it. I've seen beurocracy do sillier things.) Doing so may be the only way to revitalize a space program that's been in decline since the end of the cold war.
However, like many, I believe that the real future of space travel lies in the private sector. With privately-funded quasi-space-progams like Virgin Galactic (is that what it's called?) which may someday fund private research and exploration (all in the name of commerce, of course, as opposed to pure science or strategic advantage), and state-funded programs failing to keep up, what other course could there be?
Of course, this is just be rambling, feel free to tell me I'm full of it. But this is the way I see it: private space progams will continue to make space travel more affordable and accessable, and that can only be a good thing in the long run.
I hate to be that guy, but the word is inclement.
Damn it! I came all the way down to Melbourne for this photo op (see sig for explanation) and it gets delayed. Oh well- in the interest of protecting the safety of these American heros, so be it.
barack to the future?
In other words, the CSO probably can only approve if an unreasonable (for what they have) level of safety is achieved. Hence, they are likely to be ignored because their requirements cannot be met.
If the launch has to be cancelled Sunday because of weather, it will be pushed to Tuesday. This seems like a spectacularly bad idea. It would be a while before any forgot the billion dollar firework on independence day.
NPR's Morning Edition did an interesting articleon June 22 about the impending launch:
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
They interview the two senior officials who have reservations about the launch. What I found most interesting were the odds that one NASA employee mentions, which are definitely in favor of the launch and mission succeeding based upon the track record of the shuttles. Yes, it's a dangerous mission and NASA cannot guarantee that falling foam will not damage the shuttle, but in the hundred plus launches only two shuttles have been lost, which isn't a bad track record. However, from the sound of the article, NASA is ready to finish the planned missions and be done with the shuttles. Definitely worth a listen.
End of Line
No, they're not launching at 3AM; they slipped all the way to Sunday afternoon.
Why the Japanese? They don't have much of a space program and certainly no manned vehicle. The US and Russia are far ahead in that respect and currently only the Russians have a relatively high frequency manned vehicle (the Soyuz).
The Russians are a different story, but even there, I think the Soyuz and Proton aren't launched in sufficient volume and they have limited access to equator launch sites (Sea Launch being a notable exception).
My take is that we really don't have proper access to space, mostly due to low launch frequency.We had 17 years of disaster-free shuttle launches since Challenger, the odds of something going wrong with the next one are next to nil. That being said, I agree they should definitely hold back the launch if they think there's a good likelihood of a problem.
Maybe I'm just naïve (I hardly think so), but I think if you're getting your information about the Shuttle launch and in-flight status solely from news media, you're most certainly not getting the whole story. Last year, there was a news conference after another chunk of foam came off the shuttle (after all the precautions that they went through to prevent it), with all the experts showing the evidence and explaining it. As usual, they opened it up to questions at the end. The question was along the lines of, "Are the remaining missions grounded until this is resolved?" The response was similar to, "Of course the remaining missions are delayed until we figure out what went wrong here again." Despite all of the content of the news conference (which I personally watched in its entirety), the headlines in the newspapers in the next day were, "Shuttle Fleet Grounded". All of the media made it into a much bigger deal than it actually was. Of course they're not going to send more shuttles into space after a reoccurance of what they thought they fixed without reanalyzing the situation (again).
Before you make any comments about the operations of NASA, I suggest you actually follow the status of the mission. NASA TV and Spaceflight Now should be your primary sources. NASA has a multitude of experts, each focussing on a particular area of expertise. Each one gives their opinion on "go/no-go" at various stages of the mission. Today's scrub was based solely on the weather.
Its on the web, java based maybe?
Shows just dandy in a browser window.
Zonk actually did something of an editorial nature!
He corrected a spelling error and turns out actually used the correct spelling!
The world is coming to an end.
The least NASA wants right now is further Shuttle problems -- imagine what another severe shuttle problem would do to the entire NASA program and funding now. And if they are to be cautious I think it was surprising that given the doubts they had from staff (that happened to be related to their security as well), when they have already gone through all these months of preparations. It will likely add for some increased costs, sure, but I'm sure the public won't care and take it as a sign of weakness or something, but rather the opposite.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Actually the Japanese have a kickass space program. No manned stuff, but they have quite a few space telescopes and other missions like asteroid rendevous do some great science. Hayabusa, Suzaku, Akari - some very cool stuff.
Ok, my wife is a former NASA engineer, and used to be one of the top folks with actual go/no go decision (her specialty was hypergolics). Here's some of what she wrote after yesterday's attempt (and if the language bothers you, tough: she's ex-Navy ):
************
For the record, speaking as someone who can see the goddamn launch pads from
my roof: there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the last lightning had been
over four hours ago (gave me an excuse to quit mowing), and the nearest drop
of rain was in west Orlando, some fifty or sixty miles away.
I was a member of the "go / no-go" team during Return To Flight in 1988.
There was no hesitation or wimpiness in our hours of pre-poll discussion, and
when Safety was called on during the poll, we all but cheered and danced
yelling "GO!" You could cut the tension with a damascus sword, but there was
no greasy sweat and shifty eyes.
Friday, I made a snide prediction to the local paper: they were gong to count
down to the built-in T-9 minute hold and sit there until they got a weather
excuse. I should have made it for money, but there would not have been many
takers among the spaceflight-savvy. It's practically a ritual.
I'll go out on a limb on this one, since I'm up against the bushitsta's "You
WILL launch so George can give his speech and distract attention from the
Iraq disaster" orders, but if they have anyone with any balls at all on the
launch team, this time they'll count down to the five minute mark and call it
off after a five-minute hold on some computer-glitch excuse. (At T-5, they
start the APU recorders, which puts them on an MFP -- the APUs are strictly
limited on run time.)
(Sorry, MFP isn't in the NASA handbook. That's Major Fuckup Point.)
Then they'll try again on July 4th, just for #$%!ing show. Goddess of fire,
protect the astronauts. But it wouldn't break my heart if John Ellis and
company were doing a photo-op on Monday and a tetroxide valve blew.
************
it ain't the weather they're afraid of. That's their EXCUSE.
Put it this way -- the ten minutes of cross-chat I bothered to listen to
sounded like full-blown panic. "O-ten-six is a negative" means nothing to
anyone who hasn't worked countdown, but what that means is THEY COULD NOT GET
A SENSOR RESPONSE FROM THE MAIN ENGINE TURBINES. As in, the fucking engines
weren't saying yes or no as to whether they would even turn on. Flood a
system with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and hit the "on" button, and if
the turbines don't spin up, you have a very large bomb with the fuse burning
down fast.
And that was only ONE of the "re-check" (means "no fucking response") calls
that I heard, and I only bothered to turn on the TV to win a bet.
Rain and lightning here as of 0900. Clear sky by noon. Bets on the T-5 stall
still better than a lotto ticket.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the British Royal Navy gradually improved its safety record until, in the absence of actual battles at sea, the best captains were achieving around 1% fatality rates per year on long voyages on known routes (I'm indebted to N A M Rodger's quite amazing history book The Command of the Ocean for this statistic, by the way.) The interesting point here is that for a lot of the period it was probably safer to be a qualified (able) seaman on a well run British warship than to live ashore.
The difficulty with space exploration (actually near Earth orbital trips) is that the risk/benefit analysis seems to be nowhere near as good as with these earlier voyages, which were also pushing the envelope with what was possible for human exploration. Travelling on the Shuttle is clearly more dangerous than not travelling on the Shuttle, whereas the benefits are hard to quantify. Astronauts do not suddenly become rich, either as a result of bringing back large quantities of valuables (resulting from piracy or trade), or as a result of being made unrefusable offers by other countries wishing to profit from their expertise. The same issue is going to apply to anyone who tries to commercialise "space". Anybody trying to sell bits of the Moon is a fraudulent businessman, and the difference between, say, low Earth orbit and asteroid mining is probably about equivalent to the difference between building a footpath from one hamlet to another, and establishing regular trade routes between Europe and India or China. Unfortunately, there is a step function in the way. In every previous advance in transport, there have been immediate or rapid commercial benefits. When the Duke of Bridgwater built the first real commercial canal in the North of England, he went heavily into debt but made a fortune in a few years. Railways caused bigger cash flow problems for early investors but main lines rapidly went into profit. It took only a few steam ships to establish new profitable trade routes. But to make any real money with space exploration, you have in effect to bypass almost the entirety of transportation history in one leap. A few rich guys will doubtless piddle about losing their fortunes trying to build a bigger phallic symbol than the neighbour - but when it comes to hard, cold risk benefit analysis, the commercial world won't find the cash and it won't find the crews. Personally, I doubt whether even governments can do it and I regard Professor Hawking as being seriously barking on this one. But the only way to fix the odds is to have nearly bottomless pockets and the ability to appeal to pride and patriotism, and that is what governments do.
The trouble will the Shuttle is that it lacks the appeal to pride and patriotism; it's the equivalent of setting off to sea in a rust bucket and noticing that the owner has spent more on insurance than repairs.
Pining for the fjords
Chief Engineer to some high up manager guy: I said we're good for lunch, not good for launch!
cat /dev/ass > /dev/mouth - this is slashdot!
The current US system barely explores space. Most of our time is spent launching spy satillites and communication satilites -- both of which are meant to be used to send signals from one point on Earth to another. The ISS is a nice idea, that is if it ever gets used as a weigh point towards getting manned craft out of Earth orbit. Mostly it seems to be used right now so that Astronauts and Cosmonauts can meet in space, drink vodka, and play with slinkys. For all the billions spent getting the ISS built, maintaining it, and launching ships to dock with it, we should be using it for something more. We should be going toward other planets and moons. We have all the technology we need -- we just seem to lack courage and desire.
Launch Director just announced a scrub for today due to the weather.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Are taxpayers really that dumb? I hope not. Astronauts are totally unnecessary - other than the fact that the cost of the "space" program (translated>military domination of planet by pin point firing of rockets from "space") when using humanoids (astronauts) versus using robotics.
Using humanoids is likely 1000 times more expensive than using "robots" (translation > computers) - which of course keeps the industrial military complex run by the self appointed/unelected rich elite - richer and "happier".
Only dumb engineers would want to design "space ships" that need to lift tons rather than pounds. For example, the University Of Toronto engineering school has designed communication satellites the size of a carton of milk. The carton size satellite could be shot out of a "Super Gun" - at 1/10,000 the cost of the current launch costs.
If you all remember, another Canadian, Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull - the inventor of the Super Gun was executed by the Israeli undercover cops - because he was working in Iraq - building "Super Guns" to kill Israelis.
Shuttle launches remind me of a road traveler carefully calculating the time when he will hit all the green lights on his trip. So much as a sprinkling of rain throws everything off. All this because he doesn't have enough gas.
NPR reported that the shuttle would be grounded in cloudy weather due to potential electrical activity in the atmosphere.
Yes -
the shuttle really is THAT fragile!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You're looking once again at something designed in the 60's, built in the 70's, flown in the 80's 90's that needs to be RETIRED. It's old, not very dependable (considering what they are asked to do with it). The expendable launch vehicles are far more SAFER. They can launch & land the shuttle without PEOPLE on board. Design something similar, but without all the envirometal systems needed to keep humans alive, use a ELV to get people up and down, and relegate the shuttle to a museum, or gate guard outside KSC, or the Johnson Space Center. Time to put this worn out horse out of its (and our) missery!
Cape seasonal weather variations certainly have a degree of predictability. STS-71 had similar conditions to contend with: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-7 1/mission-sts-71.html
Because the entire program is so beleagured and under the microscope at this point, it's easy to overlook that hold-ups due to weather have occurred quite frequently. Another important factor is wind monitoring, typically done by balloons. Simulations are done at regular intervals with the up to the minute winds available data to determine potential adverse loads on the vehicle. This could possibly hold up a launch as well, completely aside from cloud cover or thunderstorm activity.
The post 2010 Space program would optimally take Cape weather and the possibility of higher hurricane frequency into account as a cost factor. Alternate launch locations may be advisable, despite the existing infrastructure built up at the Cape. Would there be any possibility of government and commercial concerns sharing responsibility and building up a different launch facility? The Richard Branson/Virgin spaceport comes to mind, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tourism-05zt.html. Other sites in New Mexico and west Texas could be considered.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
As I understood it when this news was fresh (2 months ago...and yes Slashdot already covered it back then), the top NASA officials took a vote. The chief engineer and the chief safety officer voted not to launch until further work had been done. The rest voted to go because they didn't want to keep making change after change without a chance to test them, and evaluations of previous launches suggest that the foam which will probably fall from ice frost ramps in this launch will be in harmlessly small pieces that will fall in a way such that they miss the orbiter. The two who voted not to launch accepted these arguments and did not try to veto them.
These guys have enough authority and influence at NASA they can definitely speak their minds on this. Everyone at NASA, especially these guys, is keenly aware of the threat to the manned space exploration if something goes wrong with this flight. If they're not genuinely concerned enough to say more than "I'd rather not, but ok," then I'm not concerned.
We aren't going to get there unless one of two thinks happens: First -- Chinese manned mission to Mars or Moon (Just like when the Ruskis kicked our asses in Space Race 1, it will make space an issue of national urgency). Second -- private companies sending rockets up themselves for various investments (mineral mining, space tourism, etc.) Competition is the only thing that's going to drive space exploration. The greed to make money is about the only thing that's going to have people launching rockets with enough frequency to make any dent in space exploration.
If reason 1 applies, then we'll be sitting on our tails for a long time. China isn't moving quickly with its space program, manned or otherwise. They could end up on the Moon in ten years, but they'd have to launch an order of magnitude more stuff than they currently are first. That's to even make the attempt. And the Chinese leadership is notorious for being risk adverse.
Competition in space seems to be more likely to produce something.
The current US system barely explores space. Most of our time is spent launching spy satillites and communication satilites -- both of which are meant to be used to send signals from one point on Earth to another. The ISS is a nice idea, that is if it ever gets used as a weigh point towards getting manned craft out of Earth orbit. Mostly it seems to be used right now so that Astronauts and Cosmonauts can meet in space, drink vodka, and play with slinkys. For all the billions spent getting the ISS built, maintaining it, and launching ships to dock with it, we should be using it for something more. We should be going toward other planets and moons. We have all the technology we need -- we just seem to lack courage and desire.
I can't argue with this. My take is that the Shuttle and ISS have little to do with any productive activity in space, and a lot to do with converting public funds to private profit (with a bunch of employment of friendly voters on the side).Actually the Japanese have a kickass space program. No manned stuff, but they have quite a few space telescopes and other missions like asteroid rendevous do some great science. Hayabusa, Suzaku, Akari - some very cool stuff.
I'm aware of most of this. My take however, is that they need to have a couple orders of magnitude more probes in action before I'll consider that program "kick-ass". Pretty high standards, but it would mean among other things that someone has abandoned the "one-off" (using a design once or twice) straightjacket and launches probes with higher frequency. Joining cutting edge space technology and space science can work, but it's extremely expensive. And low launch volume is another big reason why space is so expensive. To me who exploits these economic factors is serious about space science. Ie, they want to get as much done as they can with the money they have.