Space Shuttle Atlantis Delayed Again

eldavojohn writes "An electrical short cause the space shuttle Atlantis to be delayed since a lightning strike to the pad and Tropical Storm Ernesto caused delays. From the article: 'Liftoff was only hours away Wednesday morning when engineers reported a short in one of three fuel cells that supplies electricity for all the on-board systems, including the crew compartment.' It also points out that 'The faulty cell is currently operational even with the short. But after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed all seven astronauts, NASA says it has adopted an aggressive, safety-conscious approach to launching.' It causes one to wonder whether pre-Columbia-disaster NASA would have just replaced the fuel cell on the fly without telling anyone — and whether or not that is an ethically sound choice."

Comments

Fuel Cell Supplier

[tygerstripes]

NASA are presently in conference with the fuel-cell's supplier, Dell.

Re:Fuel Cell Supplier

[kingtonm]

Dear Dell Customer,

Dell has identified a potential issue associated with certain batteries sold with the NASA Shuttle(TM) series. In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other regulatory agencies, Dell is voluntarily recalling certain Dell-branded batteries with cells manufactured by Sony and offering free replacements for these batteries. Under rare conditions, it is possible for these batteries to overheat, which could pose a risk of fire, explosion, or firey death.

Re:Fuel Cell Supplier

[LiquidCoooled]

If you think thats bad, think about the poor Dell guy who has to replace the ISS batteries.
Nasa were smart and paid for onsite maintenance.

If only.

[rtyall]

I bet they wished they bought Duracell now.

Great timing there...

[interiot]

Unfortunately the article is a day old... Countdown is continuuing for a launch this morning (Friday morning).

Re:Great timing there...

[keithmoore]

for news about something like the shuttle, where the status changes from day to day,
it really pays to check a primary source. like
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/ind ex.html

Re:Great timing there...

[Aglassis]

From your link, a fuel sensor issue has occurred:

The launch team has reported that an ECO sensor on the hydrogen side of the external tank has failed. At this time the team is pressing forward with launch preparations. Mission Management Team members are meeting to determine if they will consider launching with three working sensors or if it will be necessary to de-tank and come back tomorrow.

I don't know if they'll launch. But they launched Discovery before with a (presumably) similar issue. I must admit that I'm a little annoyed that the external tank manufacturer didn't fix this problem after the last time this occurred.

CNN reports that a program manager thinks its likely the launch will be delayed for 24 hours.

Re:Great timing there...

[lxs]

Thanks for that info. Between the state of the shuttle program and the state of Slashdot, I didn't know whether this was an old article, a dupe or Yet Another Shuttle Delay.

Re:Great timing there...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

It's not that they didn't fix it. They tried. There's only so much you can do to the ET to fix this problem. This is what happens when you use Cryo fuels. Even with the improvements that were made, when you have the FL humidity freezing on the side of your tank, it has a tendency to work itself into the cracks, expand and then the vibration of launch shakes it loose.

I think NASA has come to the realization that space craft don't need to land like aircraft and that space vehicles need to be designed for launching to and operating in space and not for the landing which is what the shuttle was designed for. Also, modern day astronauts could care less about the space vehicle handling like a airplane (which is what the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts wanted).

Re:Great timing there...

[WED Fan]

Hey!!! Don't rattle the Slashdot Errors...err...Editors. Do you expect them to be on top of things? This is just a hobby for them, right?

A day after the launch of the shuttle, we'll probably get a posting from Taco Boy that the launch will occur yesterday.

Re:Great timing there...

[Tobs84]

Its probably all three..

Re:Great timing there...

[Rei]

I think it's more of 1) a problem with side-mount (which was a development-budget-saving decision) than with wings. The shuttle also suffers a lot from 2) orbiter size.

1) Wings add extra weight, of course, but it's not dead weight except on landing as many perceive it to be. Quite the opposite: much of what the wings contain would have to be stored in the body if they didn't exist. They allow one to target a landing site, which is one of the big downsides to Soyuz; Soyuz craft have fallen through frozen lakes, nearly rolled off cliffs, etc. Wings also lower the reentry beta, allowing the spacecraft to spend longer radiating off the heat of reentry. Which leads to #2:

2) The scale of the shuttle is a big problem. We never should have tried for such a huge reusable for our first generation. The volume of the shuttle increases by O(X^3), but the surface area increases by O(X^2). While mass doesn't rise linearly with volume, it's still faster than the surface area increases -- let's say O(X^2.5). This means that you need to dissipate more energy per unit area the larger you make your vehicle. At high temperatures, material challenges increase very rapidly with each incremental increase in temperature. A skin with a tensile strength of 1GPa at 800K may drop to 500MPa at 900K, 100MPa at 1000K, 10MPa at 1100K, and melt at 1200K. When you're dealing with these sort of extremes, any extra bit of heat is a great engineering challenge.

I'd prefer something more like the vaporware "Kliper" spacecraft for the next gen: Reusable, but not for a tremendous number of launches, thus lowering the engineering requirements. Lifting body for a low reentry beta and to target the landing, without the penalties of full-sized wings. Smaller craft to make reentry easier. I just like its design principles.

Re:Great timing there...

[Anonymous Coward]

> There's only so much you can do to the ET to fix this problem.

What did they do to ET? Those evil scientists.

Re:Great timing there...

[constantnormal]

"... NASA has come to the realization that space craft don't need to land like aircraft ..."

Now if only they could come to the realization that they don't need to launch them from a Florida swamp, at sea level with plenty of humidity.

NASA could easily come to an arrangement with a friendly country (while there are still some around) and set up launch facilities someplace like the Atacama Desert of Chile, which is closer to the equator (about 10 degrees of latitude closer), higher (about 8K ft), and drier (drier than anywhere else on the planet). I'd guess there's not much lightning either (Florida is the most lightning-prone place in the US).

But I guess that having a major federal employer located in a state is worth more as a political plum than eliminating a bunch of difficulties that cost us incredible amounts annually and make launches much more challenging than they really need to be.

We don't have a problem with having military bases all over the planet, and we even have a prison in Cuba. I'm sure that all sorts of government (state as well as federal) work is being offshored to various places around the globe. So why can't we contract with Chile to set up launch facilities there? The Europeans had no problem seeing the value in setting up observatories there.

The important thing is not where we launch from, it's where we launch to.

Tad unfair

[StuBeck]

I think its a tad unfair to question what may or may not have happened years ago. They learned and are acting on the safe side now.

Re:Tad unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, this isn't the first time NASA has screwed up, and this isn't the first time that they had said they learned from their mistakes.

Re:Tad unfair

[samsonov]

I think its a tad unfair to question what may or may not have happened years ago. They learned and are acting on the safe side now.

I am not convinced they have learned enough and are acting safe enough. It seems every launch has revealed mysterious issues that have been overlooked in prior launches. It makes the moon landing look more like a falsified event. I understand they have deadlines, but if you equate this to a car (I know - nothing like it really, but I'll never get to drive the shuttle...) I wouldn't want to be driving with the doors falling off...

Re:Tad unfair

[Ron Bennett]

The moon landing was real, at least in my view ... the U.S. had a do anything spirit up through the 1960s with some of that flowing over into the early 70s.

Major projects invisioned / started around the late 1950s / 1960s...

* World Trade Center Complex in NYC

* Supersonic Concord

* U.S. Interstate system

* The Internet

* The Space Shuttle

Much of what is holding back progress these days in the U.S. is the lack of will, not technology.

Ron

Re:Tad unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check who designed and built Concorde. It wasn't a US project.

Re:Tad unfair

[kannibal_klown]

No, it just means they weren't "unlucky" when they launched to the moon. Just because things are overlooked doesn't mean something bad will happen, just might happen.

Take seatbelts: driving without one is dangerous and can kill you. However I know people that drive without one, and they've never gotten into an accident. While it's stupid of them, nothing has happened as a result of it.

I believe it happened. I'm not saying there's NO chance that it didn't happen, but some of the "evidence" that is was a hoax I've heard is laughable.

Re:Tad unfair

[morgan_greywolf]

Much of what is holding back progress these days in the U.S. is the lack of will, not technology.

Not to mention a lack of common sense, a lack of discretion, and a lack of thinking ability...no wait, that's just the White House, sorry.

Re:Tad unfair

[DoktorTomoe]

> * Supersonic Concord

This was a British-French Joint Venture, the US of A had nothing to do with it and killed their supersonic passenger jet program off.

Re:Tad unfair

[khallow]

I don't. It doesn't appear to me that NASA has learned whatever there was to learn from the previous accidents. Ie, there seems to be a well-established disfunctional life cycle of a NASA disaster now. Lots of irresolute soul-searching immediately after the disaster. A couple years later they finally resolve to start launching again with extremely conservative rules in place. As the number of launches since the last disaster go up and the need to actually launch the backlog grows, the rules get weakened. Eventually, they have another accident and repeat the cycle.

There are a number of problems here that aren't being addressed by being "safe". First, there's tremendous pressure to launch the Shuttle. It consumes five billion USD per year even if it is never launched, and there is, of course, political pressure. It is meant to be used. Launch delays also postpone all future launches, and increase the risks associated with an aging Space Shuttle fleet. More aggressive safety rules also narrow the usable launch windows (especially the new requirement that the Shuttle be launched so that its trajectory remains sunlit). These requirements are already being violated in order to launch the Shuttle at all.

Second, there is a lot of "eggs in one basket" here. NASA has no equivalent platform to the Shuttle. So it can't shift the burden from the Shuttle to another vehicle whenever problems are discovered. Nor does it have redundancy in launch sites. Technically, you could launch two Shuttles at once, but it's never done (probaby in order to have a backup Shuttle if a crew needs rescuing from orbit). This is why delays are so costly. You can't bypass a roadblock in a Shuttle launch by moving a second launch in front of the first. So the whole chain of launches is delayed.

Third, launch frequency is way too low. A high launch frequency means that you have far more experience with what is safe or not safe, and experience in streamlining the logistics of a full launch cycle (including reburishing of the vehicle and associated equipment).

Now, given what we know, let's consider NASA's plans for the future. First, it plans to construct two vehicles with low launch frequencies. This probably means no duplication of launch facilities and the economics is otherwise bad. Second, there's no alternate launch vehicles planned (though there is a great chance that the smaller Ares 1 will have a competitor by the time it becomes active). The intent to reuse Shuttle components seems an indication that NASA will attempt to continue to fund a good part of the immense supply chain for the Shuttle. So this implies to me that the new vehicles will also have a high fixed cost per year though perhaps substantially lower than the Shuttle was.

But in summary, it seems to be more of the same. High cost, low launch frequency vehicles with key failings in redundancy of infrastructure. I feel that unless NASA can diversify it's launch infrastructure and involve multiple launch platforms with high launch frequencies, it will continue to have the same problems it has exhibited for the past twenty to thirty years.

If it's broken ...

[Gaima]

... replace it.
As long as they test it properly after replacement, what's the problem?

Re:If it's broken ...

[PrinceAshitaka]

The problem is filling out the paperwork in triplicate. They may have enough time to safely repair the shuttle for launch, thye just don't have the time to do all the paperwork. This is why private space endeavors are they way of the future.

Re:If it's broken ...

[MichaelSmith]

As long as they test it properly after replacement, what's the problem?

One article I saw said the faulty pump is between the payload bay and the heat shield of the spacecraft. You would have to disassemble the whole stack and much of the orbiter to replace one little motor. That might be six months of work and if you think you can get by safely without this motor it may be worth the risk.

Re:If it's broken ...

[Silver Sloth]

The problem is filling out the paperwork in triplicate. They may have enough time to safely repair the shuttle for launch, thye just don't have the time to do all the paperwork. This is why private space endeavors are they way of the future.

So you would be quite happy with the batteries being replaced with a cheaper alternative which might work almost as well because the savings made will increase share dividends.

For those who insist that the private sector is always preferable my I remind you what happened to the Herald of Free Enterprise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herald_of_Free_Enterp rise or, for that matter, how much better UK trains are running in the Hatfield area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_rail_crash since privatisation.

Re:If it's broken ...

[Alioth]

Both of those incidents could have happened either to a private or publically owned company - they all boil down to negligence of which there is plenty in both the private and public sector and it doesn't really make your argument one way or the other!

Re:If it's broken ...

[Silver Sloth]

From the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine)

The Hatfield rail crash was a railway accident that occurred on 17 October 2000, at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK. Although the accident had a low death toll in comparison to other railway incidents in British history, Hatfield's historical significance has become much greater, since it demonstrated many of the flaws present in the mid 1990s privatisation of the British railway system and ultimately triggered its partial renationalisation.

As someone who was a civil servant and now works in the private sector (my job was sold) I have seen both sides of the fence. I'm not saying that the public sector is better, but I know that the private sector has just as many problems and is not a panacea. In very broad brush terms the public sector tends to err on the side of caution, and hence fail to achieve anything, the private sector is so profit driven that it cuts too many corners. I know which attitude I want behind me if I ever fly on the shuttle.

Re:If it's broken ...

[Opportunist]

In a nutshell, better to not go up than to blow up.

Re:If it's broken ...

[pilgrim23]

well, it depends on the Accident avoidance response and practivity committee findings. They will be submited to the Budget Committee, the Inventory Committee, the Human Resources committee, the Technical Services committee the Union Shop Boss, the Public Affairs Committee, OSHA, and any Congressional Executive, State, Commisision, Department, or internal Houston advisory staff who has a "need to know flag" on their respective forms. Then once signed off, by each (this shoudl take 6 months) the one illegal alien tech who bought the duct tape out of his own pocket down at Wal*Mart will fix it.

Re:If it's broken ...

[ChronosWS]

The public sector has no competition, and thus will ultimately end up inferior to a good private sector implementation. Because of competition, it is possible to build a business selling a 'safer' implementation (see Volvo) alongside unsafe implementations which appeal to other consumers for different reasons (some people are willing to risk safety for other things they consider important.) Much like you can't paint the private sector with a broad brush, neither can you paint consumers in the same fashion.

But the public sector... government IS monopoly. The only way to hold them accountable is by electing new representatives (you don't have the option of using someone else's product because they are the only purveyors) and maybe convincing them to fire the offenders after 5 years and three commissions which cost you, the public, millions of dollars.

Re:If it's broken ...

[doshell]

The problem is that nowadays it's hard to have the government have a grip on the whims of the private sector (see the current situation with the American administration being effectively in the hands of the big corporations). While the public sector has no "competition" to drive improvements, it is supposed (at least in theory) to act in the best interests of the public. The private sector provides no such guarantee.

That really is (IMO) what's wrong with capitalism as we know it. In a free market, competition is supposed to work out everything the best way possible for the consumer in the long run. In practice the market isn't free because corporations do not just compete with each other; they usually also have objectives in common which are prejudicial to the consumers, as the RIAA/MPAA cartels have demonstrated. You can't get past this limitation unless you take measures to avoid such cartel-like behavior. And the only entity that can deliver such regulation is a government acting in the interest of the general public.

Re:If it's broken ...

[khallow]

Infrastructure often gets neglected since it tends to be a public good or because the company or government agency can push risk into the future. However, I'm not clear why this is considered a problem of private rather than public organizations. Government agencies, eg, NASA, often run systems, eg, the Space Shuttle, with a bad safety record.

Re:If it's broken ...

[ChronosWS]

Competition works out in the interests of the consumers, who provide the funds for continued corporate operations. You may recall that corporations are operating in the interests of their shareholders, who want money, and that money comes from consumers who purchase the products _voluntarily_. While it is POSSIBLE that a company could, for a time, hold a monopoly, without the force of government on its side, it can only do so as long as consumers are convinced to _voluntarily_ purchase its products over those of a competitor. Presumably consumers cannot be actively coerced into this purchase. Even if it were the case, such coercion is likely expensive, and therefore less attractive to shareholders.

I suspect that much of the trouble you feel exists within the current market (excepting those cases where direct government regulation causes issues) is that the majorty of consumers, for whatever reason, continue to send their money towards corporations which do not, in your opinion, work in your best interests. This is to be expected in a free market, since the market goes where the money is, not where the ideology is. If you wish to cause an ideological change in the way a free market behaves, you need to get consumers to shift where they spend their money. Crying out for the 'public sector' solution is to FORCE consumers to make your choice (or the choice of whomever happens to be at the public sector head) which is great when it favors you, bad when it doesn't, and ultimately is more expensive, less efficient and less responsive to the needs of the very consumers it supposedly serves than the free market alternative.

All your measures to avoid "cartel-like" behavior involve you using the enforcement powers of government to reshape society to your whims. And if the 'public whims' do not match yours, then you will be back here decrying how unjust/unfair/unresponsive/inefficient/monopolisti c the government is, but without an option to purchase a competitor's product, putting you in a worse-off position than when you started.

Re:If it's broken ...

[doshell]

While it is POSSIBLE that a company could, for a time, hold a monopoly, without the force of government on its side, it can only do so as long as consumers are convinced to _voluntarily_ purchase its products over those of a competitor. Presumably consumers cannot be actively coerced into this purchase.

Yes, they can't, provided they take their decisions rationally and only after pondering all the options carefully. In practice, this doesn't happen because they are too susceptible to brainwash by the media, advertisements and, of course, "what everyone else does". This is another premise in which the free market theory fails spectacularly (in my opinion).

I suspect that much of the trouble you feel exists within the current market (excepting those cases where direct government regulation causes issues) is that the majorty of consumers, for whatever reason, continue to send their money towards corporations which do not, in your opinion, work in your best interests.

True. But I also feel, without wanting to be too self-centered, that the interests I'm talking about are those of humanity as a whole. :)

All your measures to avoid "cartel-like" behavior involve you using the enforcement powers of government to reshape society to your whims. And if the 'public whims' do not match yours, then you will be back here decrying how unjust/unfair/unresponsive/inefficient/monopolisti c the government is [...]

I do understand that a market governed at the government's whim is no better than one governed at the corporations' whim. But some regulation is needed. To say the contrary is akin to saying we shouldn't have police forces at all, because any action the police take to protect the citizens is completely unacceptable and puts the society at the whim of the policemen. It's a matter of checks and balances, of ensuring the government provides the necessary regulation -- but not too little nor too much.

I didn't mention this in my previous post, but to further clear up my point: I certainly do not believe that the private sector should be wiped off entirely in all fields of industry. What I mean is that certain components of a functional and progressive society (such as healthcare and education, for instance) are better served by the public sector because of their extreme importance to the well-being of the people. As for space exploration, what I feel is that the risks involved and the need to ensure effort is being put on the right things (i.e. actually exploring space and not, for instance, putting expensive billboards in space or creating lunar resorts for millionaires) are an indicator that the interests in question are best served by the public sector (parallel private sector investments notwithstanding).

Re:If it's broken ...

[ChronosWS]

Yes, they can't, provided they take their decisions rationally and only after pondering all the options carefully. In practice, this doesn't happen because they are too susceptible to brainwash by the media, advertisements and, of course, "what everyone else does". This is another premise in which the free market theory fails spectacularly (in my opinion).

So you propose a system where the enlightened tell the masses what are best for them, and of course, you are such an enlightened person. :) The function of government cannot and should not be to protect a person from themselves, only from others doing that which is actually wrong (for instance, threatening, stealing, attacking, etc.) When government steps in to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves, we actually demonstrably weaken society, regardless of how pure the motives for the original intervention were. This is easily demonstrated by the public education system which has slowly been made more and more responsible for bringing up our children as parents have elected to spend less and less time doing it themselves. This was not the intended purpose of the system, but that is what it has become, and we all pay for it every day (both through taxes and through building a society which is less capable individually.) In order for a free market system OR a democracy to function properly, the individual MUST be vigilant about protecting their own self interests AND ensuring society doesn't try to do it for them. As soon as we, as individuals, start to abdicate responsibility for our decisions to others, we necessarily start to sacrifice our individual rights and liberties. And I am sure you and I can both agree that is a bad thing.

True. But I also feel, without wanting to be too self-centered, that the interests I'm talking about are those of humanity as a whole. :)

Most people who think [their] government would solve problems do. Bush certainly thinks his interests are those of humanity as a whole, for example, but his interests definitely do not mirror mine - maybe they mirror yours, and that's good for you, bad for me. The shoe could easily be on the other foot though.

I do understand that a market governed at the government's whim is no better than one governed at the corporations' whim. But some regulation is needed. To say the contrary is akin to saying we shouldn't have police forces at all, because any action the police take to protect the citizens is completely unacceptable and puts the society at the whim of the policemen.

I have not suggested that there be no police force - there has to be a method to enforce contracts and to protect the rights of citizens that may require the use of force, in some cases beyond what an individual is capable of doing for themselves.

What I mean is that certain components of a functional and progressive society (such as healthcare and education, for instance) are better served by the public sector because of their extreme importance to the well-being of the people.

You are correct in that certain essential services might best be handled by the government. Services such as a legal system, fire system, and the like, may be most suitably handled by the government. I do not agree that healthcare and education are such systems, however.

As for space exploration, what I feel is that the risks involved and the need to ensure effort is being put on the right things (i.e. actually exploring space and not, for instance, putting expensive billboards in space or creating lunar resorts for millionaires) are an indicator that the interests in question are best served by the public sector (parallel private sector investments notwithstanding).

If people wish to spend their own money to place billboards into space, then that is their peroggative, much like it is yours to spend your money to

Re:If it's broken ...

[doshell]

So you propose a system where the enlightened tell the masses what are best for them, and of course, you are such an enlightened person.

No. I propose a system that fosters educated and conscious citizens capable of acting rationally. What I said is merely that brainwash by the media (which are ultimately controlled by the big corporations) seems to contradict that goal (have you ever realised how commercials always appeal to your emotional side, almost in an abusive way, and rarely ever, if ever, to your reason?).

When government steps in to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves, we actually demonstrably weaken society, regardless of how pure the motives for the original intervention were.

It's not about the government doing things for ourselves. It's about the government providing what we can't afford on our own...

This is easily demonstrated by the public education system which has slowly been made more and more responsible for bringing up our children as parents have elected to spend less and less time doing it themselves.

That's just the reflex of a bad education system that tries to absorb all the parents' duties, instead of encouraging their participation in their children's upbringing. But see it the other way round: would we ever have a society as educated as today's (despite my criticism) without a public education system? How would the uneducated masses of the 1800s who couldn't even read have access to education they couldn't afford on their own at all? Do you think the rich (who wanted them as dumb sheep working for them in factories) would have gladly contributed to that cause? Do you for one second doubt that, if the public education system were struck down today, we would in a matter of decades regress to that state?

In order for a free market system OR a democracy to function properly, the individual MUST be vigilant about protecting their own self interests AND ensuring society doesn't try to do it for them. As soon as we, as individuals, start to abdicate responsibility for our decisions to others, we necessarily start to sacrifice our individual rights and liberties. And I am sure you and I can both agree that is a bad thing.

I strongly agree. But see next paragraph.

I have not suggested that there be no police force - there has to be a method to enforce contracts and to protect the rights of citizens that may require the use of force, in some cases beyond what an individual is capable of doing for themselves.

It was an analogy. You seemed to be advocating that the government should have no business in regulating the competitive behavior of corporations. Surely, regulating that behavior is something the individual (you and me, common people) is not "capable of doing it for themselves"?

You are correct in that certain essential services might best be handled by the government. Services such as a legal system, fire system, and the like, may be most suitably handled by the government. I do not agree that healthcare and education are such systems, however.

Okay, we disagree in detail, but I'm glad to see you believe the public sector is needed sometimes.

I can quite reasonably choose where my money should be spent and I resent others telling me that they somehow know better where to spend it, especially when it is manifestly evident (at least to me) that they do not (for example, supporting the Space Shuttle, funding a war on drugs, propping up illegitimate governments, etc.)

Well... I do understand where you're trying to get, but the problem is really that modern democracies can't actually hold their governments accountable before their people... Assume for the sake of argument that your government is truly accountable: then you surely have to accept the government's budget, b

Re:If it's broken ...

[ChronosWS]

I think we agree more than we disagree. Generally speaking, I prefer government to stay out of the way unless it is absolutely needed, not out of convenience (which is why government is often involved today) but because it is not realistic for us to go something on our own via other, less invasive means. Consider some ways in which we can accomplish things without government: 1. Corporation abuses monopoly by raising prices Government Solution (G): Declare company a monopoly (if proper officials haven't been paid off,) subject company to mandatory oversight for some period of time or force a breakup or whatever other remedy happens to be in the law at the time. Consumer Solution (C): Educate consumers, boycott company's products, picket company, boycott company's suppliers and affiliated stores, run media campaign (using a consumer group), form competing businesses, encourage competing businesses by buying their products. Convince organized labor to strike. 2. Education of the public (G): Create system of quasi-mandatory attendance where the rich districts get the best money and teachers, create ineffective testing regimes which pander to someone's pet philosophy about teaching, direct studies based on the whims of politics, tax everyone even if they don't send their children to the public school system because of the aforementioned problems, and because of the existence of this system, private schools cannot get into the areas they are most needed because children are already stuck in the public system. (C): Parents or citizen groups want education for their children, business forms to provide it. Business held accountable by need to keep parents (the consumers) happy. Parents may withdraw their children if school is doing poorly and send them elsewhere WITHOUT having to keep paying for school. Parents may send their children to schools which uphold their values. 3. Health Care (G): Create a massive, mandatory system of healthcare which provides only those services the government is convinced are necessary. All persons pay into it even if they don't use it (mandatory insurance.) All persons subsidize the poorest and least healthy, even if those people are not inclined the improve their health or to improve their income. Government only provides coverage up to a certain amount, which may be much less than the person can afford themselves, and may not fund some services because they are (a) too experimental (b) conflict with the ideological whims of the current administration (c) have been excluded because of lobbying by interested parties. Bureaucracy drives up the cost of medical care, lowering the kind and quality of service which can be provided. (C): Individuals choose insurance based on their perceived need and ability to pay - even low income persons can band together and show there is a need to be fulfilled by an enterprising business. Lack of bureaucracy and _unnecessary_ oversight lowers cost of medical care, bringing more and higher quality service into the reach of more people. Bad doctors/services lose money and go out of business because they do not have a government trough (i.e. Medicare/Medicaid) to feed from. Individuals are not taxed for what they do not need and pay for what they get. These are just a few examples of problems traditionally "solved" by government which have private sector solutions. The general theme is that consumers, if they are motivated to take care of it themselves, can do so. Government in the form we presently have encourages individual laziness, which has a noticeable deleterious effect on those of us who are NOT lazy and who suffer in various ways from the methods our government uses to accomplish its goals. Since the "majority" of people are lazy in the manner, all of us must succumb to these policies, even though they are quite inefficient and in many ways harmful to the non-lazy component of society. So yes, I agree with your statement that modern democracies cannot be held accountable. I can propose an alternative which relies on individuals to take mor

Re:If it's broken ...

[doshell]

I think the main difference between our points of view is simply that you have more trust in the capitalist system than I do (essentially going back to my first post in this thread). Me, I might be a tad paranoid about it but I simply refuse to believe that someone whose only incentive is profit will ever contribute to an (ethically, socially) improved society any more than just marginally. The "private sector" alternatives you propose for healthcare, education, etc all make sense in the light of an optimistic view of capitalism, but that is one I do not have. I really think capitalism in its present form creates an effective barrier between those who produce/are rich and those who consume/are poor, with very little permeability between the two groups, and the former tends to control the latter in a very effective, albeit dissimulated manner.

(However, we are totally in agreement in that one of the requirements for a better society is to have less passive people who take their personal and social responsilities more seriously.)

Another reason why your "C" solutions fail (and you have to admit it, your arguments are quite slanted towards saying that G's are all bad and C's are all good... reality is different for both) is that sometimes it really is impossible for the consumers to create an alternative (that is a requirement when nobody in the "producers" group steps up to offer one). I'll give you an example: oil. I doubt most people have oil in their backyard, and even if they had, the startup costs are incredibly huge. Even if you secured a third-party investment, I still doubt you could make it both profitable and cheaper than the already existing choices, and admitting you succeeded in this respect, the oil companies would probably try to strike you down or buy you out because you would be hurting their (cartel-like) monopoly.

I'm sure oil isn't the only example.

You advocate a solution which is practically anarchy: everyone does what they want and hopefully no one will get hurt. We already know that doesn't work because people don't act ethically without rewards in place. The only true solution I can envision is to create a system (which might not necessarily be that different from present-day capitalism) in which the reward goes to those who act in an ethical way, not to those who manage to make the most profit. Admittedly, I don't have a friggin' clue about how we could do this; in fact, I'm not even sure it would be possible because of the lack of a definitive criterion of what is ethical (money at least can be counted, property can be evaluated, but there is no standard unit nor measuring instrument for ethics...). Hell, I'm an idealist and I feel comfortable with that. A more practical, down-to-earth solution is a more regulated version of capitalism. The purpose of regulations would be countering the tendency producers have to control the consumers. The arbiter would be the state (government) because there really is no other suitable choice.

Fuel cells ...

[LaughingCoder]

At least they aren't using Sony laptop batteries. Now that would be a problem.

On again?

[Anonymous Coward]

CBC radio is saying it's on for today. This is in spite of the fact that the chief safety officer objects. They say they can go with only two fuel cells and don't need the third one. The spokesman I heard said that replacing the fuel cell had its own risks. Could this thing be so complicated that they can never get the whole thing working at the same time?

Re:On again?

[Detritus]

It's complex system. You often see similar issues with modern jet aircraft. There are so many things than can degrade or fail that it is unusual for 100% of the systems to be working perfectly. You end up making a list of what systems must be working before takeoff. That's also why there are redundant systems. You don't want to be in a situation where you are one failure away from a catastrophe. You don't want to be running on a single fuel cell. With two fuel cells, you can lose one, abort the mission and safely return to Earth. With three fuel cells, you can lose one and safely continue the mission.

Re:On again?

[0123456]

"With three fuel cells, you can lose one and safely continue the mission."

No you can't. Every mission that's lost one fuel cell has been brought back early, because they can't risk losing another.

Given how heavy the current payload is, you seriouly don't want to have to bring it back to Earth unless you really, really have to (e.g. an early engine failure during the launch where there's no alternative).

Re:On again?

[samsonov]

CBC radio is saying it's on for today. This is in spite of the fact that the chief safety officer objects. They say they can go with only two fuel cells and don't need the third one. The spokesman I heard said that replacing the fuel cell had its own risks. Could this thing be so complicated that they can never get the whole thing working at the same time?

From the looks of it, it might be another 24 hours (credit to CNN the bias news source):

The scheduled late-morning liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis on Friday is likely to be delayed by 24 hours, NASA program manager Wayne Hale told CNN. As NASA prepared for launch, crews on the launchpad were troubleshooting a glitch in a fuel sensor for the main-engine cutoff system. A similar sensor has plagued previous missions, and a malfunctioning fuel cell held up the launch of Atlantis earlier in the week. Weather conditions at Kennedy Space Center were forecast to be 70 percent favorable for the scheduled 11:41 a.m. ET launch.

Re:On again?

[nocaster]

"Could this thing be so complicated that they can never get the whole thing working at the same time?"

It is rare for any aircraft to have everything working at the same time.

Re:On again?

[XenoRyet]

Or even any automobile, for that matter.

That's right, I know you ignored that check engine light...

Re:On again?

[khallow]

No you can't. Every mission that's lost one fuel cell has been brought back early, because they can't risk losing another.

They can't afford to lose *three*. The problem they have to worry about is that the other two fuel cells may fail in the near future for the same reason. I imagine that's why they don't bother with four fuel cells. Otherwise, you'd be able to allow two fuel cells to fail before the mission is compromised.

Tell me again, Americans...

[Sunburnt]

...why, exactly, our country's spaceport is still located in a state known for nothing so much as lightning and storms? I'm silly enough to live in Florida right now too, but I'd be moving even sooner if I had a multimillion dollar vehicle parked in my garage. Everything seems to point to Florida's climate worsening throughout the foreseeable future.

Ha, I'm just kidding. Congress would love to see NASA inoperable so they can go back to spending money on bridges to nowhere (Thanks, Ted Stevens!)

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[celardore]

I'd be moving even sooner if I had a multimillion dollar vehicle parked in my garage.

I should hope so too, for all that money.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Anonymous Coward]

"why, exactly, our country's spaceport is still located in a state known for nothing so much as lightning and storms?"

Uh...because being as close to the equator as possible has advantagous trajectory characteristics for many important orbits and with a trajectory heading eastward one needs to be on the east coast so as to minimize time over land while still at low altitudes?

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[MichaelSmith]

why, exactly, our country's spaceport is still located in a state known for nothing so much as lightning and storms?

Ummm because its in the extreme south east of the country. Launches to the north give you a high inclination orbit. Launches further west expose landmass to bits of spacecraft in the event of an abort.

I could suggest that they launch from Cape York but the weather is pretty bad in that general area as well.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[keithmoore]

The spaceport is located in Florida at least partially for two reasons: (1) the extreme easterly location means that launches in the direction of Earth's rotation are over water, reducing hazards for persons and property on the ground. (2) it's closer than most states on America's mainland to the equator, which makes for more efficient launches (more payload can be lifted into a given orbit).

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[onion2k]

You save a huge amount of money if you launch from a geographic location that is near the equator, heading east (so you get the benefit of the Earth's rotation, which saves fuel and allows for an increased payload), and is far enough away from people that you don't get bits of rocket landing in residential areas if it all goes wrong. Being near the equator also puts you in a good position for a geostationary orbit.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Florida is such a lousy state, all snakes, bugs, and gators. Half the land is swamp. They get lots of bad weather each year and have had two tropical storms this year plus multiple hurricanes the last two. Most of the people are rude ex-New Yorkers. Disney, which everyone on slashdot hates due to DRM, owns half the state. They are one of the lightning centers of the world.

There really is NO reason to move to Florida. Visit, maybe, but NOT TO MOVE there.

Please don't move there (I only own several houses there...).

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Sunburnt]

What about Texas, in the area south of San Antonio? It's mostly water to the east (except for Florida, of course) and you can get closer to the equator. The area has problems with tornadoes, but unless I'm mistaken, that can be mitigated by building a reinforced structure along the lines of the current structures in Florida. (We certainly get tornadoes here as well.)

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[clickclickdrone]

>a state known for nothing so much as lightning and storms?
And oranges. It's a well kept secret that rocket fuel is actually distilled orange juice. What colour is the shuttle's fuel tank? Orange. To hide the leaks.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[guabah]

And why not moving the spaceport further south east? To Puerto Rico, maybe.

Or, is there a need for a land connection to the rest of the US Mainland?

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Megane]

What about Texas, in the area south of San Antonio? It's mostly water to the east (except for Florida, of course) and you can get closer to the equator. The area has problems with tornadoes, but unless I'm mistaken, that can be mitigated by building a reinforced structure along the lines of the current structures in Florida. (We certainly get tornadoes here as well.)

I don't recall hearing much about tornadoes along the gulf coast. Certainly Texas would be a good location, but I guess that back in the day Florida had better pork-barrel politicians than Texas did. There is, of course, some NASA presence in Houston (in fact, that's where shuttle conrtol is after launch), especially after LBJ became president, but Houston is too far north because it's north of the gulf and doesn't have the needed splashdown area. Also, Florida has a lot better permanent civilization along its eastern coast, whereas Texas mostly has drive-by tourism. In Texas, that part of the gulf coast is somewhere you go for the weekend or spring break, not somewhere you live.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Strangely enough though, hydrazine is actually found in certain mushrooms. It's used in the Shuttle's RCS.

Rich.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[CheeseTroll]

I wonder if anyone has ever considered opening a launch pad even farther south, like Mexico, or Central America? Would an army of engineers & technicians need to move there permanently, or could a (relatively) small crew handle setting up a launch?

I know, Congress would allow NASA to launch from a foreign country when pigs fly, but a private company could have more flexibility.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Intron]

Don't we have some land in Cuba? Are we using it for anything important?

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

So is psilocybin, and you can fly even higher on that...:)

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[camperdave]

I imagine much of the shuttle supplies, and support arrives by road and rail. Aha! Here is some proof.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[Rei]

And risk another Otrag? No thanks.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[mencomenco]

The spaceport is in Florida because of Claude Pepper, powerful member of the US House from Florida, who served for over 30 years from 1962 to sometime in the 1990's. He nsisted the spaceport be located in his state. Because he controlled a powerful committee, he got his way -- almost always and on almost everything. His career inspired later pork-stars such as Rep Stevens (Alaska).

For what it's worth, September 8 is Claude's birthday.

Gentlemen, Launch your Pork!

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[FleaPlus]

You save a huge amount of money if you launch from a geographic location that is near the equator, heading east (so you get the benefit of the Earth's rotation, which saves fuel and allows for an increased payload), and is far enough away from people that you don't get bits of rocket landing in residential areas if it all goes wrong. Being near the equator also puts you in a good position for a geostationary orbit.

Cape Canaveral is at a latitude of 29N. Vandenberg, the site of the West Coast Space Shuttle launch site, is at 35N latitude. An entire space shuttle launch complex was constructed at Vandenberg at the cost of $4 billion, and the launch complex was never used. Is the difference in latitude (29N vs 35N) worth all the problems and costly delays from Florida weather?

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[novus ordo]

It has more to do with escape velocity.

The surface velocity decreases with the cosine of the geographic latitude, so space launch facilities are often located as close to the equator as feasible, e.g. the American Cape Canaveral in Florida and the European Centre Spatial Guyanais, only 5 degrees from the equator in Guyana.

Re:Tell me again, Americans...

[MichaelSmith]

It has more to do with escape velocity.

If Shuttle achieved escape velocity it would be in a heap of trouble since (unlike apollo) it is incapable of aerobaking from more than the energy it gets from low earth orbit. It would have made more sense to refer directly to the Earths rotational velocity.

Hmm .... T minus 4 hours pr so

[CiRu5]

This article is a little late wouldn't you say, the shuttle launches this morning baring any further delays. Also I believe they are choosing to fly with the damaged fuel cell as it is not a threat to the safety of the crew.
Good Update: http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3484
Countdown ticker: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/ind ex.html

Weather.. sure.. right

[saboola]

..or maybe it's the Goa'uld Ha'tak mothership sitting a couple hundred miles above Port Canaveral preventing the launch. You can fool me Nasa, I watch television.

Re:Weather.. sure.. right

[multipartmixed]

Dude, get over it. They blew up the Goauld ships two (three?) seasons ago. Colonel (now General) O'Neil used the Ancient Control Chair they found in Antartica. He can control it because he has a special gene. It shoots these really cool yellow drones.

Re:Weather.. sure.. right

[Eli Gottlieb]

True, true. I'll betcha the GP's really just a plant by the Wraith. They're behind it all!

Re:Weather.. sure.. right

[Mercano]

When the first two motherships showed up in orbit:

"Perhaps when the warships of your world attack... Surely you have such vessels?"
"Well, we have a number of... shuttles."
"These shuttles, they are a formidable craft?"
"Oh yeah. Yeah... Bad day."

safety first ... duh

[Anonymous Coward]

it's great nasa is so radical about safety.
but i wonder why the space shuttle was
out in the open during a storm? one could think
that with all the previous endevours to outer space
an the infrastructure orbiting our planet and with
all the super computer crunching power
nasa could make some reliable weather predictions.
i mean they can land a probe on a far away planet like
mars to some amazing accuracy. the weather, it seems
is still to unpredictable, even for nasa ;(

Re:safety first ... duh

[Rei]

Instead of speculating, ask or look it up. They began to move it back to the building before Ernesto, but reversed course because it would almost certainly mean that they'd miss their launch window. Missing a launch window has serious costs associated with it; the faster the shuttles launch, the cheaper payload delivered by the shuttle is because most of the shuttle costs are constant, not per-launch. As a consequence, it's often worth it to weather the numerous weaker Florida storms, even if it risks the shuttle getting struck by lightning.

Basically, it comes down to: if they get hit, they miss the launch window and have to repair the shuttle -- but that repair won't cost as much as the delay will, and to move the shuttle to safety would almost certainly cause the launch window to be missed.

Back during the Apollo days, we used to *launch* during thunderstorms. One craft was actually struck by lighting midlaunch (I mean, come on, you're in a metal craft venting a huge plume of partially ionized gas behind you) and nearly had to abort. We're not that crazy any more, though.

As for weather predictions, our weather predicting ability has gone up tremendously in the past decades, in case you hadn't noticed the standard "three day forecast" becoming a "ten day forecast." However, chaos theory causes fundamental limitations on weather prediction systems. The shuttle team simply cannot react quickly enough because of the size of the vehicle. Nor would they want to, as discussed above.

aggressive, safety-conscious?

[sveinb]

What's aggressive about delaying?

Re:aggressive, safety-conscious?

[Stormwatch]

What's aggressive about delaying?

Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking delays on this motherfucking shuttle!

Re:aggressive, safety-conscious?

[mr100percent]

Enough with your trying to ban circumcision already. Did you read their "government response" page? Everyone laughed them off as they should. I support circumcision, better as babies then when they become adults (and get them anyway).

Re:aggressive, safety-conscious?

[Anonymous Coward]

better as babies then when they become adults (and get them anyway).

Better NEVER doing it because it's NEVER necessary anyway. You idiot.

off topic //

[deviceb]

with all the battery jokes, i just have to comment.. this is devine Karma on Sony for that lil rootkit.

oh, the misstatements!

[Ancient_Hacker]

Lotsa questionable statements in this article:

• There's very little likelyhood the lightning strike is directly connected to the fuel cell problem.
• It's not a "short". Everything isnt a "short". A shorted fuel cell would be totally unusable.
• NASA, now or then, can't replace the fuel cell without major trouble-- the whole thing has to be taken back to the assembly building, anything in the cargo bay has to be unloaded, the cargo bay floor has to be taken up-- major hassle. Not something that can be done on the Q.T.
• The shuttle has *three* fuel cells, so it's not a major problem if one is acting a teensy bit unusual.
• There are plenty of safety issues with *not* launching, parts tend to age quickly when out in the humid Florida sun. It's not clear that delaying launch is a ssafety improvement.

Re:oh, the misstatements!

[0123456]

"The shuttle has *three* fuel cells, so it's not a major problem if one is acting a teensy bit unusual."

But if one stops working, then mission rules say they have to return to Earth within a couple of days in case another one stops working. It just seems bizarre to me that the new supposedly 'safety-conscious' NASA is going to fly with a possibly duff fuel cell and possibly duff fuel tank sensors, apparently because 'it's never caused a disaster before'.

Re:oh, the misstatements!

[khallow]

But if one stops working, then mission rules say they have to return to Earth within a couple of days in case another one stops working. It just seems bizarre to me that the new supposedly 'safety-conscious' NASA is going to fly with a possibly duff fuel cell and possibly duff fuel tank sensors, apparently because 'it's never caused a disaster before'.

But all three have to stop working before it's a problem. And while some people dislike the attitude, "It's never caused a disaster before" is a fair reason to change the rules. Every shuttle that makes a complete trip is a positive test that the circumstances of the flight were to some extent safe. This is one of the advantages of a reusable launch vehicle that NASA has exploited in the past. If NASA had enough vehicles and a high enough launch frequency, then they could carefully explore the launch regime and modify the launch rules to better balance the risks to the mission.

The thing to remember is that no matter what NASA does, they're launching a vehicle with at least a 1% chance of catastrophic failure. Further, every time they postpone the launch now, it increases the burden of all their future launches. The question should be does the increased risk of a faulty fuel cell of three outweigh the increased risk and costs to this mission and all future missions from postponing the launch. I don't see that the decision was unwarranted.

Re:oh, the misstatements!

[WilliamSChips]

The shuttle has *three* fuel cells, so it's not a major problem if one is acting a teensy bit unusual.

No, you need three ZPMs to fully run Atlantis, but you only need one for day-to-day operation, and currently the Atlantis expedition has only found one.

who has batteries??

[keithhackworth]

The shuttle was designed in the late 70s. Where do you find a fully charged battery built in the late 70's on such short notice?

Keith

Re:who has batteries??

[hcob$]

The same place the find many of their repair parts now...

ON EBAY!!!!

And while it's funny, it's also sad.... Because it's true

Dupe!!!

[mangu]

How long will Slashdot keep reposting this "Space Shuttle Delayed" story?

Apollo 12

[jonwil]

If Apollo 12 (and the lighting strike) were to happen under the current safety-focused NASA brass, its likely that NASA would have ordered an immediate abort without even considering what went wrong with the CSM (or failing that, ordered some kind of abort from earth orbit in case something fried)

Re:Apollo 12

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas if Apollo 12 had exploded, Apollo 13 would have been cancelled, Tom Hanks would never have gone into space, and THEN where would we be?

Moo

[Chacham]

I've always wondered how things that cost millions and millions can be so shaky. I kind of understand, but it just seems odd that their hardware is so sensitive.

Can't they just hire Woz to build it for them?

Re:Moo

[AlecC]

It's just the total complexity of the system. Most successful systems are simple enought hat, at some level, one person (such as Woz) can understand the whole system; and the purts on which that system are well understood and well characterised. In the se of the Shuttle, there too many parts, and too many of the parts are designed for that system alone, for anyone to understand the whole thing.

Re:Moo

[hcob$]

It's not that it's a "shaky" piece of hardware, per se. It's just there are SO MANY points of failure, and after a few really bad problems, they've learned to be almost overly cautious with every failure.

An electrical supply on the ground goes down, you're fine. You just wait for a new one. An electical supply goes down in space, it's likely you're going to face serious challenges just staying alive.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

for anyone to understand the whole thing.

That actually make some sense. :)

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Yeah, but isn't it something another million couldn't fix? It's not like they have a realistic udget or something.

Re:Moo

[AaronLawrence]

Complexity.

Hazardous environment (vacuum, extreme cold, extreme heat, vibration).

Very little of regular hardware would survive well in such situations.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Very little of regular hardware would survive well in such situations.

But what if the nails were banged in with $200 hammers?

Seriously, why can't a few more dollars fix it? Or are we that incompetent even after forty years?

Re:Moo

[hcob$]

The only way to "fix" the shuttle at this point is what they are doing. Using it as a bridge untill the newer, simpler crew modules are built.

Re:Moo

[ate50eggs]

NASA had much better technology in the early 80s. Remember Space Camp they had a robot and Tom Scarett. Also, the shuttle was robust and user friendly enough that a bunch of kids could fly it while simultaneously learning to work as a team. What ever happened to that space station they were building anyway?

I'll never understand

[Mr.Dippy]

Yes, let's spend billions of dollars on some of the most complex, advanced engineering known to man and then put our finished product in FLORIDA! The place where they have at least 5 hurricanes per seasons and unpredicatable weather year round. Wouldn't it have been smarter to put Cape Canaveral somewhere like New Mexico or Nevada?

Re:I'll never understand

[FatAlb3rt]

I think your subject line says it all. It's funny how many people so far in these comments have pointed out how dumb it is to put a launch complex in Florida, ignoring of course all the technical and safety reasons. Nasa has been launching vehicles from there for 40 frickin years. And suddenly all the smart guys think it's a bad idea...

Re:I'll never understand

[nocaster]

Well shame on NASA for not consulting /. before deciding to put their launch complex in Florida. Those silly morons. I'm sure there is no real good reason to launch from Florida anyway.

Re:I'll never understand

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always been a debate over it as long as I have been paying attention to it.. The desert has alternative launch facilities (theoretical at this point)*already*, such as edwards in california. They have problems there, too, dust gets into equipment. All the decisions have tradeoffs.

Re:I'll never understand

[Ancient_Hacker]

There are many reasons it's done from Florida:

• Swamp land is cheap.
• It's near the equator, which gives you a 1040MPH boost when launching to the East.
• There's lots of water to the East, with nobody there to complain about falling boosters.
• There are lots of islands along the way, good places to put tracking stations.

By comparison, Vandenberg or White Sands have LAND to the East, and much less equatorial boost.

Vandenberg is used mainly for spy satellites, which go into polar orbits, so the boost is not needed.

Who cares?

[Jugalator]

It causes one to wonder whether pre-Columbia-disaster NASA would have just replaced the fuel cell on the fly without telling anyone -- and whether or not that is an ethically sound choice.

Sorry, but who cares?

Was that a questioning of their historical policies having been ethically sound? Ummm...

Whether or not it is ethical?

[Snowtide]

Well here goes my positive karma.
The summary asks if it would be ethical to replace the cell or not without telling anybody. Who does the author want them to tell? The only people who have an ethical need to know the conditions of the shuttle and the risks associated with them are the crew in the shuttle and the ground crew. These people, the crew in particular, are taking the risks and making the decisions. These two groups of people are likely to know anyway, astronauts, especially the flight crew, tend to be technical people, it goes with the job. Read about the boring parts of an astronaut's job, including hundreds of hours getting to know the details of the shuttle and the booster assembly. It is often said Murphy was an aircraft engineer, astronauts know this. Space travel is risky and can be dangerous. From Florida to orbit and back is hell on materials, electronics and mechanics. The decision to go or not go under a set of conditions belongs to the crew on the shuttle and the ground crew.
Any errors in grammar, spelling and tone are due to my uncaffinated state. Getting my breakfast apple and Dew now.

Re:Whether or not it is ethical?

[Mifflesticks]

It's also our tax dollars.

Re:Whether or not it is ethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people who have an ethical need to know the conditions of the shuttle and the risks associated with them are the crew in the shuttle and the ground crew.

But it's my money!

Re:Whether or not it is ethical?

[BradleyUffner]

no it's not. It's the goverment's money. It doesn't belong to you any more. It was exchanged for services provided by the goverment, ie. roads, police, and military. Do you still call it your money after you buy gas, and the gas station uses that money to buy other things?

Re:Whether or not it is ethical?

[khallow]

The only people who have an ethical need to know the conditions of the shuttle and the risks associated with them are the crew in the shuttle and the ground crew.

As does the US voter. NASA is a US government agency and as such is beholden to the US public just like every other government agency. So legally (which after all is applied ethics), it should be required to report decisions which materially affect the safety of the Space Shuttle unless that would compromise a legitimate national interest (eg, national security, integrity of US Constitution or legislative mandate, etc). So they should release information on what critical equipment gets replaced, but not describe the ground security for a Shuttle launch or the identity of a minor arrested for trespassing on launch day.

"It causes one to wonder"

[Gothmolly]

No, it does not cause me to wonder, it causes YOU to wonder. Please leave the passive-voice editorializing out of this... or was this a feeble attempt by an Editor to actually edit?

Old news - Shuttle to launch Friday monrning

[CaptSolo]

The shuttle Atlantis is set for liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:41 a.m. EDT this morning. This "news post" is a little delayed. See NASA Launch Blog and NASA Online TV for up-to-date info.

Re:Old news - Shuttle to launch Friday monrning

[igb]

``Shuttle Delayed'' is like ``Earth in Orbit Around Sun'' --- always true, to the point of redundancy. Has any Shuttle every launched on time?

Not a short in the fuel cell

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a short in the fuel cell. Its a short in 1 phase of a 3 phase pump motor that supplies coolant to the fuel cell. The pump is currently limping along on 2 phases. If this pump looses another phase, it will be unable to pump and the fuel cell must be shutdown within 9 minutes. With the loss of 1 fuel cell, the mission must be aborted, and shuttle return to earth.

Nasa has said in the past that it would be unsafe to retreve the hubble and bring it back to earth because of its weight causing problems during landing. The truss that is currently in the shuttle weighs much more than the hubble. If they had to abort the mission before they can get to ISS to atleast offload the truss, they would probably have to ditch it in order to land safely. This would be a major setback for the ISS.

Re:Not a short in the fuel cell

[DerekLyons]

Nasa has said in the past that it would be unsafe to retreve the hubble and bring it back to earth because of its weight causing problems during landing.

While that's a popular legend - its false. NASA has never said any such thing.
 
 

The truss that is currently in the shuttle weighs much more than the hubble.

There are actually two weight limits - the 'safe limit' and the 'safe once' limit. If you have to land with a payload greater than the former, thus being in the 'safe once' zone, then the vehicle has to undergo a series of special inspections to ensure the structure and landing gear was not damaged. (Hubble is in the 'safe always' zone.)

Re:Not a short in the fuel cell

[purfledspruce]

Interesting stuff, Derek...where are you getting your information from? You're technically correct, the Hubble could be returned if all you look at is weight. When I spoke to one of the Hubble scientists at an internal conference last year, he told me that it wasn't the weight that keeps Hubble from being returned--it's the replacement parts. Due to the upgrades it's had over the years, Hubble no longer fits into the Shuttle's payload bay.

you work for?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you work for Sony or something?

Mod article down?

[moracity]

Slashdot needs article moderation ala digg. This article is two days old and confusing considering TODAY'S launch is still on as of right now.

Re:Mod article down?

[chrismcdirty]

Too bad digg got rid of their "Old news" article moderation.

Rats

[thorkyl]

I was going to watch it, now I guess I will just have to see it today.

MS SpaceShuttle

[Koohoolinn]

Delay after delay and when it is finally in space they experience problem after problem.

Looks a lot like a Micro$oft product to me.

That was yesterday.....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Atlantis is T minus 2 hours and 30 minutes from launch and still counting as I post this. They were delayed YESTERDAY! Did the frickin editor READ the story??

Memo to Staff

[Morphine007]

The "snakes on a plane" joke was never really funny and the novelty has definitely worn off.

Re:Memo to Staff

[Morphine007]

<TIRED JOKE>

Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking tired jokes on this motherfucking site!

</TIRED JOKE>

:-D

The Safety is for the Vehicle, not the Crew

[xHeliosx]

Everyone is always trying to stress that we need to be careful not to put the lives of the shuttle crew at risk. I find that odd because the pilots and commanders probably dropped bombs over Baghdad in 1991. Where is the concern for human life there? I like the crew, but the extra safety is really about the multimillion-dollar vehicle. If shuttles were as numerous as F-16s, Columbia would have been a page 3 story long forgotten by 2006.

Re:The Safety is for the Vehicle, not the Crew

[sobachatina]

While I can appreciate your cynicism I don't think it is only out of concern for the vehicle that they delay.

Even if you suspect that no one values the lives of the pilots just for the humanity of it there are practical reasons to be worried about killing astronauts:

1. It would create significant negative press for NASA which could jeopardize future funding.
2. It is more expensive than you might expect to train astronauts. I don't know actual figures but this article suggests millions of dollars of training each which is what I would expect considering similarly high costs of training fighter pilots.

Re:The Safety is for the Vehicle, not the Crew

[xHeliosx]

1. The "negative press" of the last two shuttle disasters has increased funding. Funding gets cut when things are "routine". 2. It costs millions of dollars a day to delay shuttle flights, which far outweighs training costs. Most everything in the shuttle is triple redundant. I'd ride on a shuttle even if it lost all of its backup systems. Why? Because there are only two outcomes: 1. Everything works fine and it turns out to be a memorable trip. 2. I die in the most spectacular way possible, and my family receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from grieving citizens that would otherwise have not given a flip about me. And I get on TV for a few weeks, posthumously. People do care about the crew, I care. However, they are not the MAIN reason why there is so much talk of safety. You can replace crew, you can't replace shuttles (as easily). It seems like a double standard that crew safety is always cited, no one seems to take notice, or send money to the families of pilots and crew that die in a helo accident in Afghanistan. I wish the crew the best, but you don't get ahead by being as safe as possible.

Lightning? Phht. I know the fix...

[AsnFkr]

SCE to Aux.

Re:Lightning? Phht. I know the fix...

[zerocool^]

The poster of the above comment is a friend of mine, aside from being a pre-space shuttle space program junkie and also a big fan of apollo 12, and he explains the above post as this (over IM):

HIM: man, im a fucking dork.
ME: how's that?
HIM: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196049 &cid=16065585
HIM: gotta read the story
HIM: problem is, no one at /. is gonna get it.
HIM: basically, like 90 seconds into the apollo 12 flight it was hit by lightning and the entire computer stopped working
HIM: the fix was a switch labled SCE, and to flip it to aux to basically power cycle the computer.
ME: heh
ME: you know your shit.
HIM: Apollo 12 is the shit.
HIM: its my specialty.
HIM: haha
HIM: im *that* guy on /. that has a absurd amount of knowedge about one small area of things that are discussed.
HIM: and its useless information.

I figured those of us who haven't spent weeks in the Air and Space museum, or read the audio transcripts from all available NASA flights, would want an explanation.

~Wx

Re:Lightning? Phht. I know the fix...

[Ancient_Hacker]

Eh, not *quite* right.

The computer didnt need rebooting, it was a problem in some Signal Conditioning Equipment.

They were getting screwy telemetry data downloaded. One of the guys on the ground remembered something similar from a practice run, and suggested this unorthodox maneuver.

Re:Lightning? Phht. I know the fix...

[blueturffan]

John Aaron -- is that you?

Redundant redundant shuttle wiring

[Triode]

I had a friend that did a few electrical engineering interns at NASA, and he was a good engineer.
He was once told by a Sr. Engineer that you could take the schematic of the elctrical control
system of the entire shuttle and draw a huge X anywhere you want on it, at random or not, then go out
to the shuttle and cut every wire that the X crossed and all systems on the shuttle would still function
100% due to the massive amount of redundancy built into the system.

My friend said after seeing most of the schematics for the shuttle, he belives the above statement
to be true.

Now if only my software could be so robust... or is it my coffee?

Re:Redundant redundant shuttle wiring

[blueturffan]

I had a friend that did a few electrical engineering interns at NASA

I had no idea NASA interns were so slutty.

Life Will Never Be Like Star Trek

[aplusjimages]

They should make a Star Trek show that is realistic. The crew never fights other species, but instead are constantly doing maintenance work on the ship. The whole show takes place only 200 miles from Earth because that's as far as they can go before something goes wrong.

It can start off with a captains log, but there's a computer error, so he never gets to complete it. Instead he calls IT to fix the problem. While that's going on the viewer is taken to the engine room where there are all sorts of problems.

I see it as a drama/comedy. There could even be a sick bay that is constantly busy, but the doctors have enough time to have love triangles and all sorts of personal drama amongst the already suspensful disasters.

The real reason for the delay...

[zish]

A GIANT SPIDER IS ATTACKING THE SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS!

I saw this on Fark, so it must be true! Here's photographic evidence: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=38EB982EE635354D3FEBF457BEEEE736

we still have better places than florida

[r00t]

The obvious is Hawaii.

Southern Arizona is damn good. Perhaps you lose a tad with the latitude, but the air is thin (you could launch from well over 5000 feet) and dry. You'll never get worse than a very rare thunderstorm. The air is so dry that ice won't be much of a concern. You fly over isolated desert, which is decent for recovering little shuttle bits.

Re:we still have better places than florida

[mgblst]

There must be huge costs to getting all the equipment to Hawaii, compared with mainland USA.

Re:we still have better places than florida

[khallow]

No it's not. Hawaii isn't much further south than Florida is. And as another sibling pointed out, it's expensive too. The Florida launch site is also attached to a lot of manufacturing. Ie, you only need to ship stuff by rail or around the tip of Florida (for the external tanks from New Orleans) to get it to NASA.

Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are even further south than Hawaii. And they're much closer to the existing manufacture base than Hawaii is.

This is outrageos !!!

[proudlyindian]

This is so lame !! I am writing this from the space shuttle itself !! i hate slashdot :P

wrong on two of those

[r00t]

It is a short, in the power to the motor that pumps Freon coolant through the fuel cell. One part of the 3-phase power is shorted. The motor can still run with 2 phases left.

They can indeed replace the thing at the pad. They'd initially thought not, but now they think that it would be possible. The device weighs 200 to 300 pounds. I don't know how they expect to be able to get at it. They'd have to get somebody out on a device (bucket? platform? crane?) in the payload bay, somehow get behind the cargo, remove the fuel cell without dropping any parts, install the new one without dropping any parts...

Re:wrong on two of those

[Ancient_Hacker]

>It is a short, in the power to the motor that pumps Freon coolant through the fuel cell. Very dubious information!

I've never seen a "short" in one phase that didnt pop the three breakers.

>One part of the 3-phase power is shorted. The motor can still run with 2 phases left.

There's no such thing as "2-phase" power. You lose one phase, you're left with two wires, across which there's a single-phase of sqrt(3) of the voltage. And no, a 3-phase motor can't run with one phase.

Re:wrong on two of those

[camperdave]

I've only dabbled in electronics/electrics, so please bear with me. What happens if you have a three phase motor, and one of the coils in the motor burns out or breaks? The motor is still be getting all three phases of power delivered to it, but only two of the phases are conducting. Will the motor still run?

Re:wrong on two of those

[khallow]

And no, a 3-phase motor can't run with one phase.

This isn't your Mother's refrigerator motor. I bet that NASA has indeed engineered it so that the coolant motor continues to function with one shorted lead.

Re:wrong on two of those

[petermgreen]

i'd think a 3 phase motor that was wye connected with a neutral wire would still run though (assuming it wasn't on a common trip breaker)?

Re:wrong on two of those

[Ancient_Hacker]

>This isn't your Mother's refrigerator motor.

Home fridges do not have 3-phase motors.

>I bet that NASA has indeed engineered it so that the coolant motor continues to function with one shorted lead.

Would be nice. But even NASA can't change the laws of topology and physics:

• A true "short" will blow a fuse or circuit breaker.
• If it's a fuse and it blows, you're left with two hot wires, which due to toplology can only deliver one phase, and it will end up applied across two of the windings in series, and across all of the thrd winding.
• That results in a totally unusable magnetic field-- no chance it can start rotating the motor from a standing stop, and very little chance it can keep it running.
• If it's a circuit breaker, most 3-phase breakers have all three breakers mechanically ganged together, so if one phase trips they all do. Ergo no power to the motor.

But that's all academic as they've apparently launched anyway.

Re:wrong on two of those

[khallow]

Home fridges do not have 3-phase motors.

Witness the power of tautology. I was talking about mothers with home fridges with 3-phase motors, duh. My logic is unbreachable.

We know that the motor uses 3-phase power. You seem to think that NASA would use a standard design. But from what I heard elsewhere in slashdot posts it sounds like they found a design that would function even with one shorted lead. All that is necessary is that the motor doesn't function in the way you think it functions. Given that it is NASA who sponsored this design amd they would want some fallback mode in case of such a short, I consider that likely to have occured.

Re:wrong on two of those

[Ancient_Hacker]

Well, that's really very touching faith in NASA. I know they have design principles that suggest one aim for designs that can continue running even under partial failure. That is a good thing. It's just that it's really very very basic-- a true short in a wire or winding is really really hard to survive. The shorted winding would tend to counter the work of the other windings, while drawing high eddy currents and overheating and/or melting. To survive with a shorted wire or winding, the motor would have to be designed with very high "leakage inductance", i.e. the coils would have to be weakly coupled to each other and to the rotor. Which makes for a very weak and inefficient motor.

I'm not saying they didnt or couldnt master this hard bit of technology, just considerably dubious.

Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

They must be waiting for a Vista upgrade

Re:Vista

[CaptSolo]

Shuttle is not running Windows (and thank God it is not).

NASA and the Millennium Falcon

[peter303]

The scene in Star Wars IV where Hans Solo's ship sputters when he trys to take it to light speed reminds me of NASA's three stooges attempts. Too bad NASA lacks a "Chewie" who can punch the right bulkhead and get things running again.

Re:NASA and the Millennium Falcon

[Anonymous Coward]

I trusted them! They said they fixed it!

As if . . .

[m0masb0y]

Fuel cells are not batteries. If a fuel cell gets shorted out, it can explode. And it isn't like a car battery exploding. Eagle Pitcher makes fuel cells for space applications. When a fuel cell would short out at the plant, it would level a city block when it exploded.

So, yes, it is considered a good idea to replace a fuel cell with a short in it.

Easy

[goldcd]

Private operators competing, with serious regulators with f'in big teeth.
Look at airlines - we might all bitch and complain about the odd late flight, but by and large (especially considering the technology/logistics etc) involved they work/are safe/and cheap(ish).

Re:Easy

[jskiff]

Cheap(ish)? The other day I was looking for a flight from London to Amsterdam. BA's price? $1 USD. Of course, with all of the requisite taxes it came to $130 USD, but that is dirt cheap for a round trip flight.

misstatements, speak for yourself.

[Khyber]

parts tend to age quickly when out in the humid Florida sun. I didn't know Florida's sun was humid. I didn't know Florida had it's own sun, for that matter.

Individual cells in car batteries short out all the time. Sometimes they still work, with reduced capacity or voltage, or they don't work at all. Fuel Cells can and do have the same thing happen.

Parts tend to age and wear faster because of the salt in the humid Florida air, not because of the humidity. Salt water corrodes metal and electronics much faster than regular water.

Now, back to the regularly-scheduled launch.

Lottery numbers?

[elyobelyob]

You got the lottery numbers for me as well as the news that Atlantis is delayed 24 hours?!

Launch scrubbed for 24h

[CaptSolo]

Shuttle launch scrubbed for 24 hours. Next launch attempt is Saturday morning.

Atlantis' Next Launch Attempt Saturday

[Anonymous Coward]

Atlantis' Next Launch Attempt Saturday

The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis has been postponed a day due to an issue with a fuel sensor. The next launch attempt will be Saturday, Sept. 9, at 11:15 a.m. EDT.

Old news?

[Luis R]

So, now that the shuttle has been delayed yet again, does this mean this article isn't old anymore?

Not again...

[kdachev]

Well - being neither American nor Russian, I can't help but notice how funny it all looks now - America - despite its "high technology" doesn't have reliable human access to outer space - always delays, cancelled flights and so on - while the russian program, although not without problems, says - we launch then and then, and the launch HAPPENS!

Wasn't the Space Shuttle supposed to be a *much cheaper* way of bringing people and payloads into space, instead of having to lose the vehicle every time?! How come, the Russians can make it cheaper, more often, and without human life sacrifices?!

Actually, what happens now - with these delays in the construction of ISS, NASA screwes all its partners (ESA, JAXA) - if it somehow manages to build their part of the station till 2010 - there are only 6 years until 2016 when it is shedulled for deorbit ... actually the American part is to be decommisioned - the Russians might keep theirs and further develop it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_S tation

codename

[godzillopiteco]

Space Shuttle Atlantis... codename "Vista".

Ah!

Re:codename

[i3iz]

awww... i was going to be like...

More like... Space Shuttle Vista.

oh shwell...good joke!

Who cares?

[igb]

The shuttle is hideously unreliable, and using it for planned purposes is futile in the way that attempts to drive long distances in ancient cars are futile. The task it's carrying out is solely there to act as a purpose for the Shuttle, and the Shuttle is only kept going to carry out that task. NASA will continue the grim circus of getting an obsolescent collection of systems that no-one still working there actually understands flying, and every once in a while one of their diminishing stock of orbiters will explode. Eventually there won't be enough left to service the ISS, the ISS too will be abandoned as the utter waste of time and money that it is, and space science can get back to things that matter like the Hubble follow-on and robotic probes to planets. The shuttle is to space exploration what the World Wrestling Federation is sport, and the sooner it's abandoned the better for all parties concerned.

ian

Not really

[WindBourne]

The issue is not having to deal with the gov. The real issue is that all capitalistic incentives are removed from the current space system. In fact, LMart, Boeing, Rockwell are all milking the system. This is part of what Eisenhower warned us about. In fact, the merger between lmart and boeing rocket divisions has to be one of the bigger disasters coming.

The funny thing is, that, by the time, the new orion is operational, we will be going to the moon, but in a ba-330 with crews of 10-20 ppl. All that will be left will be a simple lunar transport. The only part of the system that will be useful will be ares V (the cargo launcher). If we are really going to the moon and mars, there will be plenty of loads that will require a true heavy lifter (a nuke generator comes to mind).

Your sig

[WindBourne]

In current America, commerce controls the gov.

Re:Your sig

[Opportunist]

That's the punchline behind ISR-jokes...

Re: Falling Boosters

[iamlucky13]

And considering the solid rocket boosters were designed to splash down in the ocean to be recovered and refurbished, I'd say the big body of water is kind of important. It wouldn't go over quite as well to drop them onto a rocky desert plain as into a relatively homogenous body of water.

Actually, the Ancients

[WilliamSChips]

You need three ZPMs to take off Atlantis!

I was there...

[caldroun]

Finally I got the chance to be in Florida with a shuttle scheduled at the right time...but, as soon as I sat down in my beach chair in Titusville I heard someone's radio say that it was scrubbed and everyone started leaving. Pfft.

Stargate?

[H3g3m0n]

Is it just me or are they copying Stargate in more than just the Atlantis name?

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/153079main_at lantis_bn.jpg - STS-115/SG-1 makes me want to photoshop the stargate in behind then :p

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/155820main_11 5_flash_rt_bn.jpg - Round Ring, pyramidal Chevron with sun

Canadians feature in both.

Woundn't be suprising if the launch was really delayed becuase of a Wraith attack.