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.

Comments

When is it my turn?

[w33t]

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.

Re:When is it my turn?

[QuantumG]

Two years ago the X-Prize was won. Since then, no-one has had the opportunity to buy a suborbital flight. The vehicle that won the X-Prize is hanging in the Smithsonian. The spinoff of that vehicle (Virgin Galactic) won't be opening its doors for 4 more years. It would appear that the only people with the means to make suborbital space tourism a reality no longer have the motivation to do it as fast as possible. Maybe this just means other groups will have time to play catch up, but when you consider that suborbital is just the first step of many in commercial space flight, you gotta wonder when, if ever, we'll get our turn.

Re:When is it my turn?

[Lumpy]

It is so inspiring to see that shuttle blast into orbit.

you have no idea. My daughter and I were 20+ miles away at my brothers home and watched the column of smoke rise in the sky. She is 14 and is of the "whatever" generation not caring about anything. I pointed at the sky and said, "there goes the shuttle" and she turned into an 8 year old kid once again. She then marvelled at the fact that I mentioned that I watched the exact same thing when I was 14 and that she will probably be the last of the family to ever witness a shuttle launch.

Seeing it for real although miles away is more awe inspiring... Even for a who cares 14 year old girl that still thinks emo is cool and that adults are stupid.

And my family though I was mential for vacationing in florida in early july... I was given one of those father daughter moments that will be in her memory long after I am gone.

That's how awe inspiring it is.

Re:When is it my turn?

[cyclone96]

Even if they didn't have the money to maintain 2 concurrent launch systems, they could have released the plans to private industry, so that these "tried and true" vehicles could be put to commercial use.


A lot of the older systems did make it to private industry (although that's an odd way of putting it, NASA didn't build rockets, they contracted Lockheed, Martin Marietta, etc. to do it for them - private industry already had the plans - they developed them).

Most of the commercial American heavy launch vehicles (Boeing Delta, Lockheed-Martin Atlas) have their early roots in the NASA and military space and missile programs in the early 60's. In fact, the government has a vested interest in commerical exploitation of launch vehicles, since the more that are built, the lower the unit cost for government launches.

Now, if you are talking about the Saturn V...there simply was not a commercially viable market for a launcher of that size in the 1970s. If there was one, industry would have been free to exploit it. Even the government (traditionally the customer for very heavy launchers, even today) never used the Saturn V outside of the Apollo and Skylab launches. While many bemoan the fact that the infrastructure for the Saturn V was not maintained, the decision was made that it was not of enough national significance to do so when Congress and the Executive branch (not NASA) made the decision to shut down that program.

Re:When is it my turn?

[Moofie]

Two years? Two whole years? Those darn slackers.

Get some perspective. You want a real failure? How about going to the Moon 35 years ago, and then dicking around in LEO ever since then. THAT is a travesty.

"The mst complex machine ever built, blaah, blaah"

[EmbeddedJanitor]

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.

The launch went great

[nurb432]

Lets hope the LANDING goes just as well.

It's not successful yet.

[localroger]

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.

I gotta give NASA one thing...

[Skyshadow]

Even given how outdated, expensive, failure-prone and downright dangerous the Space Shuttle is, they're still pretty goddamn sweet looking when they lift off.

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.

Re:It's not the launch that matters anymore

[enitime]

"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?"

Probably mostly because that's what went wrong most recently. One shuttle has been lost during take-off, one during re-entry. I think is small sigh of relief that all is well so far is justified.

This is great and all but

[Kazzahdrane]

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.

worth defending

[Inspector Lopez]

In an era in which a larger world can be frustrated by other actions of the United States, take some comfort in physicist Robert Wilson's testimony to Congress in 1969 to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, when he was asked to explain why the United States should fund a very expensive atom smasher. Wilson had already explained that the atom smasher wouldn't do much at all for the defense of the United States, but Wilson continued,

It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

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?

Disappointed.....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

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.

Time for a replacement.

[ke4roh]

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.