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Launch Date Announced for Shuttle Mission STS-117
chuckpeters writes "After a two day Flight Readiness Review in Florida, space shuttle managers have announced an official launch date for STS-117 to be June 8, 7:38 PM. The launch window will run in two parts — from June 8th to the evening of June 12th when the shuttle must stand down for a June 14th Atlas launch. After that the windows opens again on the 17th. This first opening gives the standard four attempts in five days. If they have not launched by the 12th, they will replenish things such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen for the fuel cells to prepare for the 17th attempt."
She was to launch back in Feb./March. time frame. But was hit by a freak hail storm. Rather than use a new fuel tank, they "repaired" this one. It is possible that this may end up being a spectacular launch. Hopefully not.
This particular mission is not that big of a deal, other than others are lined up and waiting on this. In particular, the ISS needs POWER. This will increase it a bit, but current net is actually down. The reason is that P6 was rolled up to allow for this transfer. It is only after the NEXT shuttle that we will see major increased power. In addition, EU's ATV is waiting for this to be launch, but they will launch before the columbus goes up. Apparently, they have no desire to pay for the whole thing if they have a mistake. Almost too bad that we do not have a single unit up there for them to try against and vet everything. Oh well.
All in all, by the end of this year, we will see major expansions to the ISS.
Now, if there is a way to get CAM restored to there, which is one of the few really good uses for the ISS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Technically speaking, the boosters are solid fuel, you insensitive clod. That large orange external tank on the other hand stores the Liquid Oxygen/Hydrogen. And, the poster really appears to be talking about the internal fuel cell ones for electricity in the shuttle.
17th time? Thats an awful lot of attempts; what were the causes for delays?
I'd wager that "17th attempt" means the attempt on the 17th [of June] and not the 17th attempt (or "17th time" in your wording) because a couple sentences earlier in the summary it specifies the 2nd part to the shuttle window begins on June 17th. The cause for the delay (if it's even needed)? The summary says an Atlas rocket needs some launch pad time beginning on June 12th.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
First, NASA's mission is NOT to make space access cheap. Their mission is to go where others can not. Though, they have tried to make space access cheap to be able to do more with less. In the 70's, they designed the Apollo replacement. It was to be a plane launcher carrying a rocket up to about 100K at multiple mach, and then launch the top half (where do you think scaled composites got their work from). Nixon killed it. He pushed for lower costs on the development. The shuttle is Nixon's legacy.
/lb basis. Russia has smaller launchers (which is why ISS was compromised) and they are old. Even now, they want to design new ones, but their gov. does not wish to spend the money. That leaves America. Right now, we have the shuttle, saturn, deltas, and pegasus. We are about to have falcons and SS2/Tier-2's. In addition, we have Ares to be designed and built(though I would rather see the direct launcher due to low development costs and time).
Gov. hind sight is like so many 20/20. They will continue to make mistakes. In addition, so will other gov. China has blown a few rockets. In addition, they have developed very little (though I love their concrete tower; great idea). They have bought or stolen almost all of their program. Brazil had a MASSIVE failure. Pakistan has not launched anything (yet). At this time, they have missiles. India is moving ahead slowly. So that leaves EU, Russia, and America as the big space launchers. EU has the ariane V, which is actually a decent rocket. But it has fairly high launch costs on a
While the X-Prize helped get citizen focus, the reality is that bigelow and spacex would have happened regardless of the x-prize. NASA made this possible. How? By doing the bulk of the research that BOTH companies currently use. They are simply applying a low cost approach to this. But the heavy lifting was done by Germany, USSR/Russia, and American Research dollars. If they had to pay for even a fraction of it, they would not be looking at doing these.
Finally, you speak of non-reuseable rockets. Yet, the lowest costs space access appears to be the falcons (which is on track to have lower launch costs than Russia OR china). How are they doing it? Be re-using just about everything. On the falconI, the cheap 2'nd stage and payload will not return. On the falcon 9, but stages will return AND be re-used. Most of the dragon will be re-used. Musk has made a HUGE point of showing that it is re-usablilty of nearly everything that is half of lowering his costs. The other half of lowering his costs is the russian way; Develop minimal amount of hardware and re-use it over and over. He has developed 2 engines. And one design is used up to 27 engines for the falcon 9 heavy. Smart on his part (assuming that it works).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A small summary of the planned mission:
The mission will deliver to the International Space Station (ISS) the second starboard truss segment (the S3/S4 Truss) and its associated energy systems, including a set of solar arrays. During the course of the mission the crew will install the new truss segment, retract one set of solar arrays, and unfold the new set on the starboard side of the station. STS-117 will also bring Expedition 15 crewmember Clayton Anderson to the station, and will return with ISS crewmember Sunita Williams. For more information, see also the Wikipedia STS-117 article.