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Safe Landing For Space Shuttle Discovery
dylanduck writes "Discovery is back safe and sound, despite minor problems with a leaky power unit and a last minute change of approach direction to the runway. The mission tested some post-Columbia safety changes, and also set up the space station for future construction. But in some ways, the tough job starts now - NASA has just 40 days or so to get Atlantis up."
I can't wait for the next mission.
Um.... now... take off again. 16 more missions to complete the space station?
Space shuttle pilot would not be the life for me!
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It is good news that nothing major went wrong... but somehow lately when I hear of the space shuttle making a journey, I'm reminded of my first car... towards the end of its life, I was quite happy as well to make a long road trip without major problems... But unlike with Nasa, that didn't mean I was eager to go on a long road trip again, just because I got lucky... I knew not to trust push my luck...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
This is a perfect example that STS program has fulfilled expectations placed on it. Astronauts are now able to go to low earth orbit, take pictures of the shuttle and land it safely.
Oh? The scientific experiments? We forgot about those. Maybe next time.
Congratulations To the crew and all of NASA. I am glad to have our astonauts back home safely. And I am glad NASA is willing to overcome this chalange and continue our space program.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Congratulations to NASA on a very successful mission. Most slashdotters will whine about spending money on this, but what we have to realize is the internet and much of our communications infrastructure depends on satellites and other things that the shuttle either researchs or launches directly. Many improvments in many things we use today are a result of research NASA either has did in space or did to get to space. GO NASA! :D
Gorkman
It won't be easy, the wraith will find it soon and the power cells can only last so long.
This was technically the last flight to test the changes made for the CAIB recommendations.
In the next flight, the shuttle program resumes the construction of the ISS (not just delivery of the supplies and take back some garbages). So until the next mission is complete, I wouldn't say that we are back on track with this mission.
It's good to have her back safely, nontheless.
The tough job starts now?
Not really... The other orbiters are processed in separate buildings, by separate groups of technicians.
After Columbia, each flight requires a 'backup' orbiter be available to rescue the crew, should an emergency arise, so Atlantis is already nearly flight-ready.
The processing of Atlantis and the training of the next crew has been underway for quite some time.
It's not like KSC can only process one orbiter at a time...
/sig
Upon entering Kennedy Space Center, Homeland Security made the crew take off their shoes, belts, and put laptops into plastic bins before entering.
Random ISS question here: Are the shuttle dockings ever used to give the ISS a slight nudge to counteract a decaying orbit? I know the ISS isn't going to drop back into the atmosphere anytime in the near future, but i wonder if there are any adjustments made to its orbit by the shuttle of the supply rockets.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
This was one of the fears of a too-long gap between shuttle visits. ISS needs a shuttle-assisted orbit boost at least every other year.
when that results in half your usuable vehicles being lost.
The 2% number might mean something if we didn't need the main piece back. As such, that number is only good for people who love to toss numbers around without including the context of them
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I've been following this flight since a great launch on July 4th, watched it on NASA TV streaming to Realplayer - and the biggest lesson I learned is that journalists are really such dopes. I love reading about the mission, the challenges, the science, etc. But everytime NASA has a press conference the reporters ask such idiotic questions I just turn it off. Having to rely on them for the only source of knowledge about the US space program is the pits. It's like great science filtered thru the brian of a tabolid publisher. It's like they don't know what to ask, and are constantly digging for some 'human angle' to make an interesting story for people who would rather watch soap operas and golf games. Over and over we get "How do you FEEL about taking such an incredible RISK knowing there are problems with FOAM". I *just* turned on a post landing press conference and the first thing I heard, an NPR reporter AGAIN WITH THE FORM (then hit STOP in disgust). Thankfully we can get info directly from NASA these days. People who get their info thru 3rd party media don't know how badly a distorted view they're getting. Journalists reporting on NASA are like Martha Stewart reporting on NASCAR.
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Don't forget the good old B-52. Half a century and those things are still flying. I suspect there's been a lot of learning since, "No Highway in the Sky."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It would take longer and cost more money to restart production on the shuttle than it will for the CEV to be completed. It took over five years for endevour to be built, and they already had stuctural spares. It is the worst possible decision that NASA could make both politically and pragmatically.
Shivetya is right. The reason for the ultraconservative behavior with regards to NASA is because they can't afford another failure until the CEV is ready to fly. It would very likely result in the termination of the shuttle program altogether. Now many people here would applaud that, thinking that it would free up money for the CEV, but it wouldn't.
One of the major costs of any rocket program is the maintainance, launch, and support crews. There is no CEV related work for them to do right now as it is still on the drawing board, and you can't just fire all those people, and then expect to hire them back once there is work again. They will have moved onto other jobs, and the people you hire as thier replacements wouldn't have the working knowledge of the system that they current staff does - remember that the new launcher will be heavily based on shuttle technology.
So NASA has to keep flying the shuttle, in order to justify these jobs, and they can't be to risky about it, lest they lose another. I have the luxury of saying that we should just accept the risks, and finish the ISS with the shuttle as quickly as possible, but NASA doesn't. So we will continue to see slow sheepish behavior until the replacement is ready, and NASA is poised to do things that the public finds worthy of risk.
I've been reading James Gleick's bio of Richard Feynman, "Genius" and I've just been through the part where Feynman is on the 1993 Challenger investigation team, and he does the famous rubber-O-ring-in-the-ice-water trick for Congress. Feynman interviewed many engineers in different areas of the Shuttle program and was appalled as he found out that NASA was "approaching the envelope" on so many things. They had set high technical standards at the beginning, and then loosened them as they had more flights, and assumed that since they had had an uneventful flight that the more lax standards were okay. As the Challenger loss (and more recent Columbia loss) shows, this is a bad, HORRIBLE way to run things.
I do hope that not only future Shuttle missions, but also future NASA manned programs are run much differently and to much more rigorous standards.
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