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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.
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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.
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
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 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.
What does Godspeed mean, really? It's an abdication of responsibility. If the vehicle is good enough, by luck, to make the round trip it's somehow a supernatural event?
No. This is the designers and planners and builders and maintainers who put together a complex set of systems. If they all did their job right, the risk should be so low that nobody feels the need to say 'Godspeed.'
This isn't a flame, and it's not meant as flame-bait. It's just that when people say 'Godspeed' they're really misplacing their wish for a safe journey whose responsibility is far more in our hands, and we should give credit to those engineers that made all the past successes happen.
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.
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?
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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.
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?
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'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.
Godspeed is a nominalization of the phrase God speed (you), understanding which depends on two things: speed in this sense means 'to prosper; succeed', which is now archaic, but which is the original sense of the word; and the verb is subjunctive, expressing a wish, with the entire phrase meaning "may God cause you to succeed." Semantic parallels are such common expressions as God bless you or God forbid!; another nominalization is goddamn (as in "I don't give a good goddamn what you think"), shortened from God damn you.1 9980129
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=
So Goddamn you for nitpicking something as simple as a phrase which in this day and age is just the same as saying "Good Luck."
Oh, Yeah. Godspeed!
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
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
It was routine until Challenger went down. Then it was routine until we lost Columbia.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
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)
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.
Doesn't it have to come back to be a success?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.