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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."
NASA are presently in conference with the fuel-cell's supplier, Dell.
Meta will eat itself
I bet they wished they bought Duracell now.
Unfortunately the article is a day old... Countdown is continuuing for a launch this morning (Friday morning).
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.
... replace it.
As long as they test it properly after replacement, what's the problem?
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?
...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!)
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
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.d ex.html
Good Update: http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3484
Countdown ticker: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/in
"Some of the worst mistakes in my life have been haircuts." - Jim Morrison
..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.
How long will Slashdot keep reposting this "Space Shuttle Delayed" story?
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.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
SCE to Aux.
adventure-today.com
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.
Can I bum a sig?
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.
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