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Shuttle Launch Success
mkosmo writes to tell us NASA is reporting that shuttle launch today was successful. This launch occurred despite the safety warnings from many top NASA officials.
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It is so inspiring to see that shuttle blast into orbit. Such a technological achievement, such an affirmation of the power and beauty science has brought to us.
And yet, here alongside these feelings of grandeur in my heart are these off-putting notions of what the shuttle actually means. How, even though it's one of the most amazing creations in the history of mankind, it represents so many of our failings.
The cost of a shuttle launch, while great, is dwarfed by the day-to-day costs of modern wars.
The shuttle, while technologically impressive, is still very much a cut-back version of what it was intended to be.
If you have the time I recommend watching and listening to Rutan's adress to the National Space Society.
Rutan makes many points to ponder - which highlight questions I myself have wondered. For instance, why can't I fly to space yet? Why is it so hard?
Burt Rutan makes the observation that when he saw the Redstone rocket at the national air museum he wondered, "why don't we fly this anymore?".
Indeed why! It's cheap, it's simple - simpler can and often does mean safer. The Redstone can get a person or two into orbit. And why not launch a couple a week? Burt Rutan goes on to point out that after each new space vehicle is created the old designs are never used again.
He states that if we followed this philosophy with aircraft we would have only one airplane flying right now, the B2 bomber!
I don't mean to be a naysayer on this great launch day. I don't mean to steal thunder from such a remarkable achievement (and few are greater fans of the space shuttle than myself). But I think there is a problem with NASA's philosophy of what space exploration is - what it means to the average person.
For me, space exploration means the exploration of space. And I want to be the explorer.
As far as I know, NASA doesn't have me slated for any launches in the foreseeable future.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
Godspeed, Discovery, and come home safe!
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Still trying to drum up some backing.... Since when is complexity a good thing? The space shuttle is really far more complex than it needs to be and is far less reliable than it needs to be to do a proper job. While this complex machine falls part, Russian "pickup truck"-style space vehicles just get on with the job with little fanfare.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I watched the launch on CNN, and I have to say, it was very successful. Over the years, I probably haven't seen a cleaner launch than that. It still amazes me that the shuttle can hit such speeds after such a geat time in the air. RETURN HOME SAFELY, DISCOVERY!
Granted, a launch is the controlled ignition of the largest bottle rocket ever made, and that's dangerous. But isn't the primary concern these days the foam breaking off of the fuel tank and damaging heat tiles, which don't matter until re-entry? Post again when it's touched down on earth safely, please.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Yeah, but do Russian spaceships have heated seats, air conditioning, all-leather interior, a 16-speaker sound system and all-nozzle drive?
SRSLY.
Lets hope the LANDING goes just as well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's successful when it lands and the astronauts step back onto terra firma. Especially, as other comenters have already mentioned, given how swimmingly the last Columbia mission was going until the last few minutes.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I believe that they still use pencils in space.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
watched it live from my front yard in Titusville - the wind was perfect and it was the loudest launch I have heard in a long time - my garage door was rattling for a good 5 or 6 minutes - perfect launch for the 4th of July !!
Yeah, it was a safe take-off. Apart from the 5 objects that fell off during the launch.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I missed it because I was at work :( So sad. Ah well - I did feel the tiny earthquake that occured two hours later, that was neat. :)
...possibly foam insulation has been seen falling off the shuttle during launch.
Hmm. I forget whether this is classified as "normal" or serious for a shuttle.
Until today, I thought trolling/crapflooding was the most pathetic form of internet nerdery. Today I have learned that failing at it is the true low point. I hope that the mysterious inner circle of reject friends gives you a lifetime ban from their secret club for being such a failure.
I hope to Christ they get through these last few shuttle missions without a problem and manage to stick the remaining three in museums where they belong.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It's a great urban legend, but it's not true.
p
At the beginning of the space race both the American and Russian astronauts used lead pencils. However they found that the leads tended to break, and could get short out electronics if they got lodged somewhere they shouldn't, not to mention striking an astronaut or being inhaled (never mind the lead/graphite dust). Fisher independently developed the pressurized "Fisher Space Pen" in 1965 and all American and Russian space flights since, have used it.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.as
Complexity is exponentially proportional to cargo capacity and delta-V. You shouldn't call the Russian craft a pickup truck when it really doesn't have the horsepower (delta-V) to push the space station up. The russian spacecraft are more like a really reliable 4 cylinder coupe.
I wish space exploration was advancing faster. It seems sad that in this, the 21st century, the world's superpowers are still spending vast sums of money on killing other humans, instead of seeing what's beyond our own back yard. It's a really geeky thing to say I know, but I often wish I'd been born a few centuries later, and had the chance to live the Star Trek life. A lifetime of exploring space sounds great to me.
On a more serious note, I've often thought of manned deep space exploration as a bit of a Catch 22. I think it's the sort of thing that could really bring humanity together and encourage us to look past our differences and work together towards a common goal - but then I also think that we couldn't achieve a united deep space exploration programme until humanity learned to work together ans set aside our petty squabbles.
I'm holding out for a discovery of some kind that will shunt the human race into a new era of enlightenment, but I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.
I can only imagine the bad-taste jokes that would have happened if there has been an accident.
"Why doesn't NASA have 4th of July BBQs anymore?"
"They can't convince any of the astronauts to show up."
"New from TNT Fireworks: The Discovery! The biggest bang for your bucks! Fits any space-exploration budget!"
Every time I go to the grocery store in my piece of **** car, to buy some beer and smokes, I too leave with a thunderous blast and cloud of smoke, rattling my own garage door for 5 minutes... and I'm guaranteed on every trip that at least 5 objects fall off my car as well.
In fact, everyone knows in my neighborhood I'm about to do a launnch, because I have to run an air compressor to pump up the bald back tires... they gather in lawn chairs to watch and kids on bicycles patrol the streets like F15's to make sure my air space is clear.
If I tune the radio just right I can pick up Rush Limbaugh, which is as close as I get to mission control.
Once it caught on fire, and darn near well exploded. I had to pop the hood right quick and jump on there and take a good p*** on the fuel rail which was on fire... took everything I got to put that one out. That was Grocery Trip number 13. I guess it was jinxed by the number. I hear Ron Howards planning on making a movie short about that trip. I had to patch up the fuel rail with some duck tape and used condoms I found behind the back seat.
You know, buck for buck, I believe the American public gets more drama and excitement out of my car then they do some old space shuttle. With the front end alignment being as shot out as it is, I know it gives me plenty of excitement on the turnpike, jumping all over as it does
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom!
Watched the online broadcast, looks like everything went without a hitch.
http://www.uncoverip.com/
Since the shuttle is going to dock with the ISS, make sure you check on Heavens-Above for ISS and STS-121 sightings from your city in the next few days. The best time is just before they dock (or right after they separate) because then you see two small dots in the sky racing in close formation.
Why do you suppose that is? Is that 'being first' was enough of a motivator to get to the point where the x-prize was claimed, but once you get into the nuts and bolts of going to the next step there just isn't the demand, or if there is the demand the economics just don't work out?
How much would you pay to go into space? Would you be able to afford it?
-
Yeah, the whole orbiter thing is absolutely flawless! ...except for that whole "burns up on re-entry" thing... yeah that might be a small problem...
...except for that whole "the shuttles all have the same design" thing... yeah that might be a small problem...
I love how the contingency plan is that if problems with Discovery are found during its inspection, the crew will stay on the ISS while another shuttle goes to rescue them!
Great plan!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
"The launch went great"... so friggin what! After over 20 years of shuttle flying, a successful launch should be routine and not a newsworthy event.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not sure they're trying to say that it's a good thing in and of itself that the shuttle is complex, but rather to point out (rightly) that it's impressive that it works right on a fairly consistant basis.
I would be the last person to argue that the shuttle isn't overly complex. Because of the dueling priorities between NASA and the Pentagon during its design phases combined with the basic nature of design-by-committee, it ended up trying to do too many things. The shuttle is one of my favorite cautionary examples to bring up during requirements meetings because of this.
That aside, it's a serious mistake to take KISS too far -- this is something I see over and over again. Once you start diking complexity out of anything, it's always tempting to keep going even to the point where it starts impacting your actual goals (a fact which, in my experience, you won't realize until you go into testing, at which point you get to try and tack it back in at the expense of timelines, vast amounts of money and the jobs of easily-blamed underlings).
But I guess that's the value of experience.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Gravity?
You shouldn't call the Russian craft a pickup truck when it really doesn't have the horsepower (delta-V) to push the space station up. The russian spacecraft are more like a really reliable 4 cylinder coupe. - you mean you shouldn't call the Russian 4 cylinder coupe but you then should call the Russian pickup truck
You can't handle the truth.
Unnecessary complexity is your enemy in any mission critical system. I don't know if it's necessary, but the Shuttle is capable of doing a lot more than the Russian launch vehicles. Hubble and the International Space Station were possible only because of the Shuttle's capability to allow extended spacewalks, as well as the use of the Canadarm.
Just the same, the next generation of American spacecraft should be based on the SRB/ET system but with a robust reentry/crew vehicle, and not one covered in glass. At some point complexity isn't your enemy as much as common sense should be your friend.
The Russians have done a great job, but the technology to take the leap to Mars or back to the moon is not going to come from the Russians, if only due to the lack of funding. I hope the US gets back on track.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
There are seven people on board that rocket today, they are smarter than you or I, and harder working, and they have seen 14 others go to their deaths on the same craft.
So: let's all do something to make ourselves worth defending, okay?
I guess what I was trying to say (as indicated by the website links you gave), is that the *really* reliable and often-launched Russian specraft does not have the delta-V and cargo capabilities that the shuttle does. In aerospace there are always trade-offs. The websites you gave show that very clearly. The Russian "pickup-truck" hasn't been launched since 1988.
Listen: SPACEFLIGHT IS DANGEROUS!!!! If you wait until everything is 100 percent safe, you will never leave the ground. I am glad someone at NASA had the balls to risk it. We have impotant work to do in space that will need humans. If we are ever to have colonies on the Mars or the Moon we have to risk it. It's just the same as Lewis and Clark, Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. If noone in Europe ever came here, none of us would be here to celebrate Independence Day. I am proud to be a American even if the American's on Slashdot aren't.
Gorkman
I think it's time to realize that the human race is in the middle of a race right now. A race between our technology rescuing us from ourselves and our technology dooming us.
The only way we can win is to attempt to save ourselves. Begin settling elsewhere on the moon, on mars in space stations. We should be thinking for the HERD right now. We have a natural responsibility to defend ourselves, our familes, our herd, our species and something else. LIFE IN GENERAL. If we destroy our Earth the brand of life we know to be inhabitting it will be gone forever.
I say it's about time we consider the consequences to our technology and prepare for what may lie ahead.
Click here to download the 16.3 MB MP4 video file. It is about 3 minutes and 22 seconds long. Awesome stuff.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Oops. Looks like it was renamed. Try this one.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Agreed. The video footage during ascent is amazing.
The planned Ares V should continue the tradition of spectacular launches. It will use 2 shuttle-derived 5 segment solid rocket boosters and 5 (!) RS-68 H2/O2 engines that burn even more colorfully than the shuttle SSMEs. Should be a great show at night.
an ill wind that blows no good
http://www.emergencyemail.org/nasawang3.asp
One video on NASA's site shows the complete launch but no audio. The other shows just the first part of the launch but with audio(including the cool sound of the orbiter engines ingiting).
Why does NASA insist that the shuttle is the most complex machine humans have built?
The shuttles are decades old...surely someone somewhere has built some much more complex machines....
So, what's more complex than the shuttle?
I've seen a lot of of comments about the dangers of going into space, and I wonder when crossed the line from being safety conscious to being just paranoid. This is an inherently dangerous job, performed by people who are more than aware of the risks involved. There comes a point where you just have to depend that everyone has done their job, and pray for the best. This decision isn't made by the engineers on the ground, or the public, but by those in the shuttle agreeing to go up. 5 things fell off the shuttle? So what. What about things falling off the shuttle BEFORE a piece destroyed one? My bets say that it happened, and nothing happened. There's a line, and we've crossed it.
The SRB fuel is very similar to a fertilizer bomb. Rockets of very similar composition have been known to detonate.
Rocket: aluminum powder fuel, powerful per-chlorate oxidizer, a tiny bit of iron catalyst, and a binder.
Bomb: aluminum/magnesium/diesel fuel, weaker nitrate oxidizer
The bomb needs a teaspoon of primary explosive to get it going... unless you are unlucky, as the residents of a Texas harbor town found out with the largest non-nuclear explosion.
I have to wonder, what if NASA gets unlucky? At the very least, I think the launch complex would be gone. The launch control buildings would be in mighty bad shape, even at two miles away, if the SRBs detonated.
keep foam from falling off? It doesn't seem to be rocket science. Do we need a breakthrough in glue technology? Can't they screw them on?
I was at Epcot when the shuttle launched. I had just gotten out of Mission Space and noticed that everyone was looking to the sky. Then I remembered that the shuttle was about to launch.
And sure enough, about 30 seconds later, it came into view. You could see the shuttle, the fire from the rockets and the thick column of smoke, right over the Mission Space building. The entire theme park was at a stand still looking at the spectacle. Some people cried, most clapped. It was a great moment.
was actually two large coolers full of ice-cold PBR left over from the festivities.
[http://it-tastes-so-good.blogspot.com] Are you hungry?
The problem isn't just a 'hostile' nation learning how to get a payload into space.
The problem is that once in space, that payload can then be dropped on any location on the planet.
...no iPod for a week.
It took Columbia's dissentigration to convince me, but Alex Roland is right. The Shuttle is a jobs program with a little bit of scientific research thrown in for fun. It's far more expensive than it was designed to be, and it's proven itself not viable time and again. The only people who aren't taking note are those who write the checks.
Fred DeJarnette, who worked on the original tile engineering is ready for a replacement. Let's do some real engineering and come up with a better spacecraft! (The Onion has an interesting take on the Shuttle program.)
What should we be doing in space? We should be using robots to explore (like the Mars rovers) and perform experiments in orbit. We should send people when we get the fuel to vehicle mass ratio better than 97%, and when it can warrant the expense of taking life support systems on a mission.
The Moon/Mars trips are another bigger jobs program, but they don't even have to get anywhere because the guy who called for them (and his successor, for that matter) will be safely out of office before the promised arrival date of 2018, so when it falls short, he won't have a
price to pay.
If Mars is the goal, the Mars Direct plan is much more economical. If the Moon is the target, go straight there, but don't use the Moon as a lillypad to get to Mars because landing and launching from there takes a certain amount of energy that needs not be expended on the way to Mars.
I want to see us (humans) explore space. I want to learn about the cosmos and I'd love to leave the planet (and probably return). I've followed the U.S. space program since I was old enough to know what a rocket was, and I've learned about the Soviet program since Glasnost. Now I'd like to see us do something meaningful - not just run a space truck to orbit and back, and not just design a fantastical Moon/Mars mission for the sake of it, but really learn about better forms of transportation and about the universe.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
That's not a great analogy. It's NASA that has a crew cab pickup with room for 7 and cargo, the Russians have an old motorcyle with a side car that can fit three if they hae a guy hanging on the back.
Of course the motorcylce is cheaper, but it does a lot less.
Mars will probably be next, but there are plenty of other doable things.
How about Venus? Seriously! There are two ways, phase-change material (boil liquid hydrogen?) and the nuclear-powered air conditioner. The nuclear air conditioner could last for years. Escape is a bitch, probably involving launch from a baloon or from an airplane that uses nuclear jet engines.
Mars has moons. Saturn has moons. There are a few nice asteroids out there. The really terrifying-yet-possible trip would be to a comet.
(probably we have to skip Jupiter's moons, as Jupiter is damn hard to escape or even slow down for)
I have to wonder if pluto is doable. You'd need super-insulated shoes to avoid melting the surface. You'd need to do the air-bag landing thing, or hang on a cable far below a rocket, to avoid disasterous melting.
I disagree. The F1's have a pretty boring bright yellow flame. The start sequence isn't very dramatic. The only real interest is in the cool turbopump exhaust that is introduced at the midpoint of the bell nozzle and main engine exhaust. The dark cooler gas does add to the sensation of exhaust speed and power. But it is dreadfully inefficient. The RS-68/SRB combo is a beautiful orange/red color plume with several shock diamonds and no obscuring smoke. The start sequence is fantastic. Because the engines start fuel rich the entire rocket will be enveloped with flame. Check out the inferno surrounding the Delta IV at startup. Then multiply by 2.5. We already know how great the SRB's look. They will now be 20% bigger. The 9 million lb thrust of the whole stack will dwarf the Saturn V at 7.5.
an ill wind that blows no good
the ship has to be designed and developed to last for a number of launches. In contrast, I would guess that SS1 was designed for less than 6 launches. And even with that, it took something like 5 years. While Paul (allen) is still funding it, he is going to want to get bang for the buck (so to speak). That means that the white knight replacement will probably be designed to carry not only V2(low space, of 100 miles with regular passengers, or very small cargos launches), but also V3 (LEO space or better with regular passengers).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
which reminds me of the story that took place in the early days of the Space Race. The US and Russia were keen on topping each other at the time. The US was spending lots of money to design a pen that would write no matter what direction it was pointing, if there was no gravity, whether you held it upside down, whatever.
The Russian solution? Use a pencil.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
For a very funny video explaining the history of NASA (and NASSA), check out the Old Negro Space Program.
Space and Computers.
Remote landing capability
Should Discovery's STS-121 spacewalkers be forced to make a serious heat shield repair, the chances of which NASA officials believe to be extremely remote, flight controllers could opt to try to save the orbiter without endangering its astronaut crew.
Herring said that a 28-foot (8.5-meter) cable packed in the orbiter's middeck has been certified to fly in just such a situation, which would keep an astronaut crew aboard the ISS while the orbiter returns home on remote control.
"It's kind of like a jumper cable that would only be used in an event where you had done a repair, but couldn't be 100 percent certain [it] would be something that would be flight worthy with a crew," Herring said.
The cable would connect an avionics bay in Discovery's middeck with the controls one level up on its flight deck, effectively allowing flight controllers in Houston to perform landing activities currently done by shuttle astronauts.
Those manual activities include starting the shuttle's auxiliary power units, deploying an air data probe, unstowing the orbiter's landing gear and releasing its drag chute after landing, Herring said.
"The things that would be manually controlled, this jumper cable allows them to be controlled from mission control," Herring said.
In such a contingency, Discovery or any future shuttle would land at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, NASA said.
"We would not target a landing site at KSC or Edwards Air Force Base [in California]," Herring said. "The prime landing site would be at White Sands because of the wide expanse of the range."
Damn! I hope it never has to be used (of course); but that would be one hell of a thing to watch. The article also talks about a tile patching/repair system.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I'm about a quarter of the way through Rutan's speech. Here are my thoughts so far:
/know/ how difficult and expensive space flight would turn out to be. Today, I think most people are far more cynical. I think most who stopped to think about it would probably believe that whatever is going to replace the Shuttle will cost 10 times more than they say it should cost and it probably won't work much better.
/function/. Today most things are engineered around /cost/.
I agree with him in spirit, but I think he's overlooking something. My parents' generation was a generation of dreamers. Those dreams were great - they propelled their generation to do great things concerning flight and space flight.
But I believe they were also much more naieve then than people are today. They didn't
Also, I think people of my parents' generation were willing to work harder and sacrifice more than my generation and my children's generation. I think most kids today probably think spaceflight is mildly cool but would never set themselves up on a path to actually try and bring such things to reality - it's too much work, has too much nerd stigma, and is not likely to pay much. We'd rather buy our spaceflight at Walmart.
They were also a generation where a refrigerator was built like a tank - it was engineered around
And finally, when space flight was so intimately intwined with our military capabilities, development flourished. It's not so hard to get congress to spend money on defense issues. But it's hard to buy votes with exploration.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Money is a form of control developed by the powerful. The barter system would transfer power semi-randomly, and those who hunger for power cannot allow that.
... later. That frees you from the tyranny of proximity, and frees you from worrying about who controls your timing, when it comes to certain trades/barters. And with currency, you can pool your resources to do long-term things like build pharamceutical labs and factories so that you can actually have the antibiotics you need for a sick child... when you need them, not just when you happen to have eggs at the same time that someone with antibiotics happens to want an omlet.
Look, someday when you've turned 13 or 14, you'll realize how ridiculous you sound. "Money," meaning, a token that represents the value of something else (like a sack of flour, or an hour of your labor), isn't a form of control - it's a form of liberty. If you had to rely on the physical movement of bartered goods from one barterer to another, or could only barter your services with people that happened to have in hand just thing you neeeded that day (broccoli? some new refridgerant?), you'd get very, very little done and have very few choices.
But wait: I can hear it now... you say: but what about some global version of Craig's List, or some other online way to arrange bartering, so that no one needs evil money? Um... OK, so how do you advetise what you're willing to barter? Say you've got a dozen eggs, and you need everything from some antibiotics for a sick child, new toothpaste, some lumber for your collapsing roof, and a thousand other things. What do you do... list all of the things (and quantities of those things) you're willing to exchange for eggs? Ah... you're setting a price. Now, you've got a thousand other people all doing the same thing... a gigantic, inefficient bartering matrix that requires constant fiddling to see if you can get what you want, and whether it's available for a barter you can make. And, while you're spending all that time trying to get the best barter for your eggs, you could have been better doing what you're good at, and improving your egg production in the first place.
And then, what if you know you'll find such a barter a week from now, but your eggs are only valuable while they're fresh? What do you do, barter them for something else that looks valuable, just to hold the value in your hand while you look around for a good trade on the other things you need? If so, the interim thing you're holding is just a token representing the value of the eggs. What is it, a car battery? Some firewood? A basket of turnips? Here's an idea: how about we get together as a society, and provide everyone a vastly better standard of living by removing the third-world marketplace components of all of that, and use currency instead. Oh, right - we already do that.
And it allows you to do work when and as you can, and then get the goods and services when and as you need them
A group of these smart people developed money.
No, a group of these smart people realized they were wasting their lives carrying their value around on their backs and haggling in vegetable markets all day, just so they could swap out what they produce when they're not busy looking for someone to barter with. Money is super-flexible, time-shifted bartering at distance, and if you can't see that, no wonder you're unhappy.
It's so scary cuz it's no longer the group of smart men, it's became an idea.
You want scary? Go back to standing around with a basket of eggs and wondering how you'll get what you need if no one in the vicinity happens to need your eggs that day. Or having some other need on a week when you don't happen to have any eggs to trade. Currency and a banking system take the capriciousness out of it, and reduce fear. You've got it backwards.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I had a conversation with Pete Worden about exactly this issue, back when he was head of the USAF Space Command. He pointed out that the big issue is "surprise package delivery". If anyone with $50M can own his very own reusable manned vehicle, then anyone with $50M can put pretty much whatever he wants wherever he wants with just 45 minutes' notice.
On reflection, that's pretty scary: a nav system capable of a rendezvous on-orbit is also capable of rendezvous with other similarly sized objects such as the White House.
But what happens when that pencil tip breaks?
On Earth it falls to the ground. In zero gravity it flys around.
Remember that graphite conducts electricity and that little tip could easily float into a mission critical computer system, or the left nostril of your fellow comrade.
(FYI, the U.S. Government didn't spend anything on the development of the space pen, it was all done independently)
On the other hand, an automobile battery shorted by electrolyte-rich urine could very quickly turn you into a blob on the driveway. How? You have to close the curcuit for the battery to work AND it will use the path of least resistance. Even if you put your Johnson on one bettery terminal and then pissed on the second one, that may only weld your valve shut. To kill you, you would need to piss on your left arm, grab one of the terminals with your pissed hand and continue pissing on another. Keep in mind you must continue to piss to keep the circuit closed for a significant amount of time to fry your heart. Now, this is something I would pay to see you do.
It must be a slow slashdot news day. NASA Shuttle has launched hundreds of times before safely.
It's still more of a news story than Dork-vorak's latest opinion on any random subject or an article about "Is [insert the name of a lame duck technology] dead/obsolete?". How many "news stories" did we have to endure about Bluetooth being a dead technology only to mill through waste-deep comments from pizza delivery boys who talked up how bitchin' their bluetooth mouse is. Not to say that the opinion of a pizza delivery boy isn't just as legitimate as Dvorak's...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It doesn't say much.
Reviing other articles on the topic says that the engines were not found in a warehouse, the engines used (RD-180) are American made from the design recovered from older Soviet engines.
Also, the hyperbole here seems to overstate the edge this engine has. Yes, it's more advanced than current US designs, but current US designs aren't any more advanced than US designs from the same timeframe as the creation of the NK33 engine (the RD-180 came from). In other words, yeah, it's 5 years ahead of its time, not 25. It's just time has halted since.
I can't imagine the Raytheon folks were too blown away considering how little money has been spent on development of high-output liquid engines lately.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
For those who haven't read it, Richard Feynman's Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle is a fascinating look at some of NASA's inner workings, and the problems that led to the challenger disaster. What is suprising (or perhaps totally expected) is that once again we hear managers and engineers differ on what is acceptable levels of risk.
For those who don't know Richard Feynman, he won the Nobel prize, helped develop the atom bomb, and suggested ways for geeks to pick up women.
As pointed out by this post, it's an urban legend.
What an absolute waste of money all 2 trillion dollars.
What is the point ?????
We have became lost in our own hubris
There is just not much value for humans in space, other than to have humans in space.
in Empire Niall Ferguson points out that by 1773 and the Boston Tea Party, taxation had all but disappeared from the American Colonies. The right to impose taxes was the issue, which at that time had been levied by British Parliament operating under same marginal 'permission' to do so by the British Monarch as is today in Britain, and it had been that way for over 100 years by 1776. Constitutionally, Britain is run by the Parliament with a hat-tip every so often to the reigning Monarch.
The Declaration of Independence, while uniting the 13 states that signed it and having great support, did also leave approximately one in five colonists supporting the Crown during the war of Independence, dividing families and communities.
Finally, I don't think that the idea of a monarchy is so repulsive to citizens of the United States of America. American History is framed in such a way as to give people the idea that Independence was about rejecting the Crown -- but "no taxation without representation" was a call for a local legislation on the same footing as Britain's Westminster Parliament. Admittedly, it's the British Parliament's fault for spend the forty years before the 1770's centralizing power and control throughout the colonies of the British Empire.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And everyone must again be reminded that that's a myth.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The Saturn V flew 13 times including tests and Skylab. 2 were put on display.
Why would it be smart to outsource technology of such strategic importance, that the US already posseses, to an enemy? That is an absurd idea.
an ill wind that blows no good
The difference being that the shuttle can put a school bus into space, the Russians can't. The shuttle has a great track record, something like 114 flights, with only 2 major problems. It's a little more epxensive than I'd like, but eh... its just money.
Regrds,
Steve
Doesn't it have to come back to be a success?
NASA has become so mired in bureaucracy (good luck firing a Federal worker when he screws up) and so beholden to deep-pocket contractors and the politicians they own that it has long ceased to be an effective, or even remotely practical, way to approach space travel. Couple this with the agency's deep ties to the Cold War mentality, and resulting decline when the Ruskkies decided not to play that silly reindeer game anymore, and you can see why this is NOT going to be the agency to take us to Mars (I would be surprised if they could even get us back to the moon).
Men will get to Mars one day, but it won't be NASA who takes them there. I suspect they already know that too.
As much as it saddens me to say it, as a kid of the 70's who grew up still believing in NASA, I think it's time to mothball the agency and focus on developing incentives for smaller private enterprises like Scaled Composites. As it stands, NASA is little more than an inefficient sinkhole for taxpayer dollars.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As an european i found it to be verry intresting that it launched again still wit foam falling off. Such rocket designs are an old-aged design, while there have been lot's of crash investiagtions no lessons have been learned nor changes have been made.
Ofcourse i hope for it's passengers it all will works well the way down (i wouldn't feel that comfortable about the foam). Or is it planned to simply deliver crew to the international space station and then fly home in automatic flight (that's the only hardware improvement they made as far as i know, now it can be controlled from the ground computers(like the Russians mega clone of the space shuttle who could do the same).
I wonder if it will have people on board for the way down.
Perhaps thinking of it, it's better to use it as an automated big transport vehicle and let the international space station crew do the human based work on it. Until a renewed transport device is made. (what ever happened to the delta clipper??)
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
We celebrate independence from British monarchy rule. But more than that we celebrate the great, fortuitous political experiment that is the United States and the enduring wisdom of the founding fathers. Only in classical Greece do you see a comparable political and societal quantum leap. The world now dreams American dreams.
an ill wind that blows no good
You'd think between NASA and North Korea we could have had some 4th July fireworks.
!sig
It's really the boy who cried wolf all over again.
NASA engineers demand precision to the point of insanity. The managment knows this is not possible, and that if the engineers were in charge, the thing would never even get off the ground.
The problem we have is that the engineers tend to over-dramatize the risks, causing the managment to often disregard them completely.
It's a problem, and honestly, I'm not sure that there's any easy solution other than redesigning the craft to be significantly simpler (less engineers complaining = more time for the managment to listen to the ones who legitimately have something to say).
I think NASA's reached the point where the engineers AND managment both agree that the shuttle is a flawed design, and needs to be retired ASAP (which, if all goes well, it will). However, in spite of the clamoring of the engineers, there are many practical and political concerns which dictate that the shuttle must fly. Saving the Hubble is probably the most significant of these (and right now, it looks like we actually WILL go up there in 2008 to fix the thing).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Unnecessary complexity is your enemy in any mission critical system. I don't know if it's necessary, but the Shuttle is capable of doing a lot more than the Russian launch vehicles. Hubble and the International Space Station were possible only because of the Shuttle's capability to allow extended spacewalks, as well as the use of the Canadarm.
That's true. The shuttle is often criticized, but it's important to remember that it really has a lot more capability than any other spaceship that's ever been designed.
If the criticism is, "omg it's so expensive to put seven people in orbit" well yeah, that's valid, just like it's valid to say, "omg it's so expensive to drive my two kids to school in a $50,000 hummer that gets 8MPG" That's true, and the *reason* it's true is that you have too much vehicle there to use it as a taxi.
If you just want to put people into orbit, experience seems to show that a capsule is best. That's the bottom line, and every time the shuttle flies with no payload other than passengers, it is a waste. We really need a space taxi for that. It'd be safer and cheaper.
On the other hand, if you want to carry a satellite or space-station module into orbit AND you want to have the option of bringing it back to Earth (as opposed to throwing it away) if it turns out to be broken somehow, then guess what, the shuttle is perfect, and I challenge anyone to even come up with a better concept than the shuttle.
The real waste is that we don't use it for that. We bought the $50,000 hummer, but we so rarely go off-road. It's politics. The people in NASA know that the problem is as I've described it, but they also know that congress wont give them money for both a shuttle and a taxi, any more than your wife will let you buy a hummer to use just for those weekend trips and a honda to take the kids to school.
Just think about what is possible. Think how efficient we'd be if, back in the '70s we had built both the shuttle and another capsule-based launcher. Then today we'd have frequent, maybe once a month taxi missions to the ISS. Scientists from all over the world could make trips up there. And once a year or so we'd launch a fully loaded shuttle with a new space station module (or better yet, a component for a large interplanetary ship that we'd assemble at the ISS).
Then we'd be a space faring race.
I would have to strongly disagree almost completely here. The engineers are the people who are designing this stuff, and they put themselves in the pilot's chair when it comes to safety. When an entire engineering team (this is not just a rogue parnoid person saying this) is complaining about safty and their chief of that team is voicing grave concern over safty, it is time to stand up and take notice of what is going on.
The Shuttle was a good experimental design, and it did push some technologies further that otherwise wouldn't have been developed. It has also given a good baseline dataset for what it would mean for reusable spacecraft that otherwise wouldn't be known. The problem here is that additional launchs only give additional datapoints to this knowledge base, and the fact that two Shuttles have completely failed with full loss of the crew gives additional room to pause and wonder if it really is worth the added risk.
Much safer and even cheaper launch systems have been demonstrated. For crying out loud, NASA has even developed some better launch systems than the Shuttle but ended up killing those programs due to changes in political leadership and changing requirements for those projects that made them incredibly expensive.
Saving the Hubble and completing the treaty obligations for the ISS are noble things, and that is what the Shuttle is being kept around to do right now. I still question if there might not be a reasonable alternative, and strongly question the idea that during the years since the loss of the Columbia that the money spent toward trying to put band-aids on the Shuttle couldn't have been wiser spent on a whole new launch system. $15 billion and 4 years could certainly have built one hell of a good launch system, I think. Certainly this is not justification to send 14 people into LEO just to retrieve trash and rotate out the ISS crew. Think about it. Over $1 billion per astronaut. That is not wise spending of money by any criteria, nor are the astronauts billionaires either, which might have been wiser spending of the money and had more people servicing the ISS for the same money.
With the announcement today (July 5th) that NASA is still having foam issues on the external fuel tank, I think it is going to be yet another year before the next Shuttle mission goes up. There are some serious safty issues that are being overlooked, and I would tend to believe the engineers in this case. It is time to kill the Shuttle fleet and move on. Unfortunately, NASA has nothing to move on to.
It was successful? Darn, then I can't use the joke, "U.S. Space Program with loud report. Light and get away." And it would have been so topical for a July 4th launch too.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I've been a NASA nerd ever since Challenger (circa '86). I've seen tons of launches on TV, but yesterday was the first time I saw a launch in person. I realize this is already old news, and it isn't quite fashionable to be patriotic on this board, but what else can I say? America rules.
I defy any of you to stand on the beaches just south of Kennedy Space Center, to feel the earth quake a few MILES away from launch, to watch this miracle of (not quite) modern science leap off of our little planet and into the heavens while the bath-water warm sea laps at your ankles and the children around you squeal with delight- and NOT choke back a tear.
It's an awesome town. It's an awesome sight to behold. And, call me old fashioned, but I still think America is an awesome country.
Best. 4th. Ever.
barack to the future?
You'd have a point if they said "Shuttle Mission Success" but the headline is "Shuttle Launch Success".
No, fiat money is a form of control developed by the powerful. Real money was a great invention that controlled no one -- and that is why it had to be replaced.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Thing like this keep getting repeated. There is no evidence that the Saturn V would have been any safer than the shuttle either in a similar number of launches or a with a similar number of people lifted to orbit. The same is true of any other expendible launch vehicle. In the commercial launch business 98% success rates are considered outstanding. When launching people, a 98% success rate is considered a dismal failure.
Please remember that the 13 "successful" Saturn V flights include one where the crew was nearly lost. It might be possible that the Saturn V would have had a long term 98% success rate. But all the numbers we have can tell is there's a 95% chance that its success rate would have been better than 80% and a 50% chance that it would have been better than 94.8%. But that also means theres a 50% chance that it would be lower than 94.8%.
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Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It is. The comments are directed mostly at Russia and China. Consider the former ideological intransigence of our cold war enemies Russia and China, and how they now preen in their new found world stature built, not on the discredited ideas of Marx, but on their own warped immitations of American turbo capitalism. They will never admit that.
an ill wind that blows no good
These are foremost of the growing list of Russians transgressions against the US:
Russia is being very naughty indeed.
an ill wind that blows no good
He also isolated the cause of the Challenger explosion.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
While this complex machine falls part, Russian "pickup truck"-style space vehicles just get on with the job with little fanfare.
As do American ones. The US still launches many satellites into orbit every year on "good old rockets" using the vertical stack. You know, ones where the crew (return) vehicle is on top of the stack - where it won't get hit by falling insulation.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
After an interview by Max Faget where he talked about the very simple, clean interface between the Mercury and the Redstone consisting of a single umbilicle, I had used this as an example of what object-oriented software should strive for. But I guess even this simple interface had its bugs.
That the tail plug on the booster was too short and the booster shut down is one of these things that happens, and that is why you have the escape tower. But I hadn't realized that the space capsule (OK, OK, Mercury spacecraft -- the Russians have this word korabl which I guess translates as "cabin" meaning space capsule) and the escape tower were separate "object classes" that both had methods for "booster failure" but had separate specifications along with implementations of the "booster failure" method that caused them to go their own separate ways, and that no one thought through how those would interact.
Aggression and embargo against Cuba?
That policy is maintained by Cuban emigres now US citizens who were robbed by Castro.
Financing in every way Afghan fighters (who ended up being bad guys, surprise!)
We are hunting down Al Qaida and Taliban to the death with great success.
Helping KLA and bombing Yugoslavia after the war ended?
Serbia was openly massacring the Muslim minority - genocide in Europe. That hawk Bill Clinton initiated the bombing.
Murder at Ruby Ridge, mass murders at Waco?
When a policeman comes to your door do you shoot him? David Koresh had arrest warrants for child abuse.
Killing of several Russian agents in Iraq a week ago?
Don't be crazy. If the Sunni's worked for us there would be no insurgency.
Military bases in Asian -stan republics?
When Uzbekistan wanted us out, we got out. The central Asian republics fear Russia and China.
Expansion of NATO closer to the borders of Russia?
As Vice President Chaney said, Russia has nothing to fear from stable democracies on its borders.
Invasion of Iraq where Russia has interests?
Oil for food doesn't count.
When you start a long trip through a difficult terrain, is it wise to hit your companion in the teeth, for no reason, just when you started? Mind you, if you do that then if you break your leg one day the companion will gladly leave you in the dust, to die.
Comrade Wolf would be wiser to not keep company with such a one at all.
Stop making enemies, make friends instead, and you will be happier and live longer (as a person and as a country.) Nobody wants the USA blown up?
Nonetheless, Russia covorts with, arms, and otherwise props up those who seek to. Who should we blame, the puppet or the puppeteer?
Insults not withstanding, at least you are thoughtful and informed.
an ill wind that blows no good
There has been one high-output liquid rocket motor developed in the US since the NK33 was created. And it was already being developed when the NK33 was developed.
So yeah, it is ahead of anything the Americans could have done at the time. And yeah, it's still ahead 20 years later, but that's because the Americans didn't do anything in the intervening 20 years.
If there had been any money spent on new liquid rocket motor design in the intervening years, it's possible we would have surpassed the NK33 (after the fact). But the money wasn't spent, and so I again say I can't imagine the Raytheon rocket engineers were really all that surprised that after 20 years of no development, a 20 year old motor from the Soviets was still ahead of the game.
Honestly, it all kind of underscores how privatization of rocket launches (legalized and begun in the Clinton years) is a smart idea. We're finally reaping the rewards.
Go Sea Launch!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
On the other hand, if you want to carry a satellite or space-station module into orbit AND you want to have the option of bringing it back to Earth (as opposed to throwing it away) if it turns out to be broken somehow, then guess what, the shuttle is perfect, and I challenge anyone to even come up with a better concept than the shuttle.
are there any satalites that are so expensive its worth trying to bring them back down?
plus the shuttle can only get to LEO which limits its usefullness for satalite recovery.
BTW are there any plans for boosting the ISS once there is no longer a shuttle to do it with or will it be left to burn up?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It is called the CEV.
Shuttle will be retired in 2010, earlier if problems arise. CEV takes over in 2014.
We should send people when we get the fuel to vehicle mass ratio better than 97%
Grab a copy of "Mechanics and Thermodynaics of Propulsion" by Hill and Peterson or "Rocket Propulsion Elements" by Sutton. 97% is kind of a magic number I guess for a SSTO but if you are willing to do multiple stages (you might as well, for a mars visit you will most likely do at least three burns to to trans-martian-injection) the mass ratio requirement drops quite a bit. The math is laid out quite well in either text.
The progress modules have been boostng ISS without any problem.
The BIG FEAR is someone could drop a rock from a space vehical and hit something important on Earth. Ever wonder why it is so expensive to go to space? It is to keep the rock throwers home ON Earth. Ever wonder why your Global Positioning Device doesn't keep the same location on Earth that you had last year? So you can't aim your rock and hit something important. Sure it would be great if your car 'knew' were the road was and the on board radar 'knew' your location so you wouldn't have an accident. But it would work for rocket powered rocks so they would hit somthing important on Earth! There you have it! Fourty years of fear from others and don't mean Life from outer space. Speaking about other life: 1) If we are taking so long at geting off the Earth and going to other places. 2) Life that is thru out the universe is close to our genetics and why should they think any diffrently than we do? 3) They would be to busy killing and spending money on wars to go explore Earth in person!