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Historic Shuttle Spacesuits to Meet Fiery End
collectSPACE writes "While some museums bid for retired space shuttle orbiters, the real prize may be the spacewalking spacesuits, at least if NASA's plans for them hold true. The now-reusable extravehicular mobility units (EMUs) are soon to become disposable, allowed to disintegrate as they reenter the Earth's atmosphere inside spent cargo ships."
they take the astronauts out first.
"Historic Shuttle Spacesuits to Meet Fiery End"
Who also though on first sight that it was about Shuttleworth and Feisty Fawn?
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They are talking about after Orion replaces the current space shuttles. Orion does not have the ability to carry as much weight as the shuttle; thus, some things can not be brought back. One of these will be some suits that are stored on the ISS.
I think that perfectly summarizes NASAs problems.
Their heads are so far stuck up their asses that they've forgotten what their Mission is.
Develop access to space.
And if they can't even BRING BACK THEIR STUFF, then they've failed completely.
And another thing. These suits suck. Hamilton Standard needs to lose their lock on it, so we can get some innovation and development.
And another thing. For less than we've spent on the Iraq war, we *could have had* a constellation of space solar power satellites, and the lifting infrastructure to ensure access to space.
Fucking Oil Junkies.
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Egads people. The shuttle is scheduled to launch today. Could you please not post a front page story with words "Shuttle", "Space", and "Fiery End" all together? A quick glance at the sentence made me gasp and ask "WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?"
A half second later, I understood the context, but it took a few moments for my heart to slow back down...
-S
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If we want to advance instead of grandstand, we need a faster technology development cycle. We can't have that because of the safety issues associated with putting Meat in space. If we skip (government funded) manned missions for say, fifty years, we could have far more capable unmanned systems.
We have as much time as we care to take.
If we can study and manipulate the things in space we need to study and manipulate without human attendants, we can get far more bang for our investment. Terrestrial exploration was carried out by humans when these were relatively expendable. Astronauts may be willing to take risks, but the public snivels when they die (unlike the risk acceptance in the heydays of test pilots...) and their life support systems impact mission duration.
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Not to sound like a jerk, but the number of things that our taxes pay for that we can't see in museums is most likely staggering. I'd love to see all of our latest and greatest gadgets... not that spacesuits are state guarded secrets, right? Perhaps some fat-cat space contractor just talked NASA Manager #45ef.99 into agreeing to a deal where fat-cat space contractor gets to make a TON more money by making "disposable" space suits... Nothing ensures orders like a terminal product.
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But if they cant even fly down a EMU because of its weight... whats going to happen if god-forbid they need to emergency evac the ISS and the only thing left to leave on is a Orion? I realize there is a Soyuz, but say its damaged in the emergency, or say it happens at a point where they are switching out the lifeboat. Your telling me that this new spacecraft is going to be so poorly designed in relation to our assets as to be useless in the case of a emergency? Have we learned NOTHING in regards to planning for the worst?
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"And if they can't even BRING BACK THEIR STUFF, then they've failed completely."
Which is exactly the kind of narrowminded thinking that brought us the Shuttle in the 1st place.
The whole concept of shuttle "reusability" came from the idea that *OBVIOUSLY* reusing the orbiter would be cheaper. But it wound up costing more to basically rebuild the shuttle and SRB's every time. Real economy there.
Sometimes, it actually makes more sense from an engineering economics standpoint to throw something away. If it is cheaper to build something for 1 time use, and throw it away after that use, that's OK.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
ok. say there are 6 people, that's 1200 pounds. bugger chutes, more fuel, who knows what else, that would add even more weight. Falling out of the sky mach 25 (at 120 km up), think about the extra trusting power it would take to avoid wither shaking to pieces or leaving a crater at Edwards. The more powerful thrusters and extra propellant would take more fuel at launch, requiring more space for the extra fuel, requiring slightly more fuel. Then there's storage of these things when landing. I know how annoying it is to have something sliding from side to side in the back of my truck, but while flying your shuttle home at the end of the day? That would get on anyone's nerves. :)