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Atlantis Expected to Launch Today
PreacherTom writes "Following recent delays, NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launchpad at 11:15 a.m. EDT today. NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled departure for a faulty fuel tank sensor: the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000, and if the mission is scrubbed again, the space agency must abandon for a few weeks its efforts to send the shuttle off on a construction mission to the International Space Station."
I just watched it launch.
The launch went ok, only one issue with a support system for engine cooling (they were assuming there was water in it.) they cycled it and it's working fine. So it's all good for now.
She made it into orbit successfully. Liftoff was at 11:14:55 Eastern time.
i ndex.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
You mean the delay cost of $500,000 or so? That number is suspiciously similar to the cost of the fuel/launch, so my guess is that's what they had to pay to empty the shuttle, then fill it again. That amount of money is also accounted for in NASA as a "rouding error." In my aerospace classes, they always told us that for cost accounting, fuel is "free."
Posted by CowboyNeal on 09-09-06 11:22 AM
NASA makes its fifth attempt to get Atlantis off the launchpad at 11:15 a.m. EDT today.
What?
NASA TV always has it available. www.nasa.gov and it's a link on the main page. You need RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. It streams the whole thing including the Mission Control guy's narration.
This post keeps getting modded down even though it's rational, well thought out, and well written. Just because I see things differently today doesn't mean I don't want to hear opposition. Here is the post in its entirety:
When someone asks me why we have to spend so much money on space exploration, I should have them watch a launch with my daughters. It's all about the thrill of exploration, the daring of it, the wonder of fellow humans climbing up off this planet and touching the stars.
Um...not to be cynical, and Slashdotters hate being reminded of these things, but your daughters are in awe because they don't know that:
* It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running of which $3BN is political pork [usatoday.com], and a fair bit goes towards research which is primarily for the purposes of weapons and has nothing to do with the "quest for knowledge".
* The ISS, which this mission supports, is falling apart after just a few years in space. It was supposed to last JUST 10 years after final assembly, and it hasn't even been fully assembled. Failures have ranged from oxygen generators to basic handtools to attitude correction gyros. The price tag was $100BN; that money largely went to our nation's (and other nation's) defense contractors, which build the majority of the hardware NASA uses.
* The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid [bbc.co.uk].
* One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food, and the government currently spends slightly more than NASA's budget to feed 7 million children a year a decent lunch. [usda.gov] Let's not even get started about basic supply and book shortages. We're supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, but we can't but enough [food in the stomachs / textbooks in the hands] of our children so that they can recieve a sufficient education to support themselves later in life, instead of ending up working at Walmart for minimum wage.
Personally, I don't find any thrill in NASA's "exploration", which seems to consist mostly of "let's see what _______ does in space" and the nation's military and scientific elite (yes, military- many of the people you see up there are military officers) playing. There is no "daring" (save the small chance their shuttle will be destroyed) and they're not touching any stars.
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Detecting whether a interviewee has MacOS experience prior to OS X: yell "Frog blast the vent core!" If they run, yes.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
OK, I have to weigh in here.
F actSheet.htm According to the same source, "In Fiscal Year 2003, more than 28.4 million children each day got their lunch through the National School Lunch Program." There are about 60 million school age kids in the US (ages 3 to 17) http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cp s2004/tab01-01.xls. So already we provide lunch to half of them. It seems to me we could feed the other half for about $7BN. Now, which makes more sense - reduce the DoE budget by 10%, or elimate the space program? I know which way I would vote.
.. no big surprise. Big cross-government project ... most likely the pork is spread around not based on merit, but on political correctness.
It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running
And it costs $129BN a year to run the Department of Agriculture.
And the US government spent $71BN for the Department of Education (mind you, the federal government operates ZERO schools)
One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food,
The National School Lunch Program spent $7.1 billion in FY 2003. http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/AboutLunch/NSLP
The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid.
Nice article. Did you read it? It's filled with lots of "maybes" and "could be's". Sure, huge amounts of HCL are released, and, according to your citation, some cars parked nearby could have their paintjobs pitted. And maybe if the wind blows right, and there are enough launches, the PH in nearby ponds could drop. The best example they have of environmental damage at a launch site was in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur launch site - not where 115 shuttles have launched from. Seriously, this is not a big issue.
As regards the ISS falling apart
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I'm going to be cynical of your post here, troll, just FYI. There's a reason I view at +5 to Troll, and not just because some of them are funny. Someone might read your points and accept them at face value if there is no counter. Unlikely, but I will address them. Mods, give the parent +1 Underrated. A true +5 Troll is rare, and the points should be addressed, not lost below threshold.
It costs $16BN a year to keep NASA running of which $3BN is political pork, and a fair bit goes towards research which is primarily for the purposes of weapons and has nothing to do with the "quest for knowledge".
Yes, $16 billion dollars is a Big number. But the total 2007 budget for the US Government is 2.77 trillion. NASA's budget is a bit under 0.6% of the total. That is nothing. The pork contained in the budget is not just NASA's problem, but is a problem across the entire US Gov budget. Fix it there. Now, can you list the research items contained in NASA's budget that go toward the sole purpose of weapons? I need sources. Besides, you can turn anything into a weapon if you try hard enough. I can give you many examples that have helped in our "quest for knowledge" if you want them.
The ISS, which this mission supports, is falling apart after just a few years in space. It was supposed to last JUST 10 years after final assembly, and it hasn't even been fully assembled. Failures have ranged from oxygen generators to basic handtools to attitude correction gyros. The price tag was $100BN; that money largely went to our nation's (and other nation's) defense contractors, which build the majority of the hardware NASA uses.
Falling apart? Sources please. As far as I know, the ISS is not falling from the sky, but has been manned and operational (albeit with a reduced crew), and construction is now moving forward. Individual component failures are not unexpected. Space is hard. People seem to have this idea that we just pop up there every once in a while, hang around for a few weeks, and come back down. We're escaping our planet's gravity well, and building a huge complex outside of it in a harsh environment. This environment is a hard vacuum, filled with radiation, and has no gravity. It's like building a cruise ship in the middle of a choppy ocean, without a dock or support, only little boats. You're upset about some repairable component failures? As to the price tag...so what? 100 billion spread out over the project timeline isn't that much. What does it matter which companies got the contract to build it, as long as it is completed to spec? It isn't like these "defense contractors" are pure evil; they employ people that build things.
The "smoke" from the solid rocket engines contains huge amounts of hydrochloric acid.
I'll give you this one. Yes, it sucks. But in the larger picture, the damage it is doing is nothing compared to the current global levels of pollution. If there was a feasible method that involved zero pollution, I'm sure we would use it. The simple fact is, any fuel we have right now that provides enough thrust to escape the gravity of Earth will give off some pollution. We'll never be able to find cleaner alternatives if we don't do this research in the first place. This actually is rocket science. (Hey, at least we don't use an Orion Drive, which is theoretically cheap by comparison, but gives off a bunch of nuclear fallout, right?)
One in five of their classmates go hungry at home or at school because their parents can't afford to give them enough food, and the government currently spends slightly more than NASA's budget to feed 7 million children a year a decent lunch. Let's not even get started about basic supply and book shortages. We're supposedly the most powerful nation in the world, but we can't but enough [food in the stomachs / textbooks in the hands] of our children so that they can recieve a sufficient education to support themselves later in life, i
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