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Discovery Launch a No-Go, Again
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Tech Fragments that says "NASA has yet again postponed the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which was due to launch today, because of a hydrogen leak in the vent line between the external fuel tank and main engines. The vent line is at the intertank region of the external tank and is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. ... The NASA launch team is resetting to preserve the option of attempting a Thursday night liftoff at 8:54 p.m. EDT depending on what repairs are needed and what managers decide. The Mission Management Team is meeting at 5 p.m. today to discuss the issue." You can watch for updates on NASA's Space Shuttle page, too.
It can't be fixed...
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
The vent line is at the intertank region of the external tank and is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off. ...
All you gotta do is reflangulate the intertank, recalibrate the L16 connectors for the overboard vent pad, then halve the current to the flare dampener in the flare stack to compensate for the excess vented hydrogen. Bake on 350 for 20 minutes and allow to cool.
For the first time I find out about a scrub before the crew loads up from work not /. - or CNN, or Fark, or Fox news.
It's sick but I do ground system maintenance and unless I'm actually watching the screen and listening to DVIS we find out about the scrubs from the news, not the pipeline around here.
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The shuttle is set to take an unusual course nearly parallel with the east coast for this mission, which will be visible to nearly everyone from Florida to New York. The weather is a bit cloudy today, but should be perfectly clear Thursday night.
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This is the first scrub of STS-119 since the T-44 countdown start. Colour me pedantic and all but... *shrug*
It sounds to me like they're expecting to have to pull down the stack to fix this, though the clock's theoretically only reset to T+24 in case they decide it's OK to fly with this issue, in which case we'll see the next launch attempt at 01:20 UTC plus a bit tomorrow night, when the ISS orbit's next sync'd with Florida.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Any guesses as to how many times that plane you last flew on was delayed because it needed a repair?
It hapened to me once, and boy i got down of the plane :)
NASA delays shuttle out of sheer habit
Monstar L
This article is very poor, I can't manage the way how to blame Microsoft for that failure.
if you are an astronaut an the mission has been rescheduled like 3 times because of failiures on the ship would you fly on that? i wont, i guess that bird its to old to fly any more.
Yes, but NASA also has Astronuts, many of whom have been flying quite frequently.
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Given all the myriad dangers of space travel encountered over the past 30 years, that have been dealt with or fixed in-flight, NASA is aweful skittish these days about flying shuttles with flecks of paint missing.
Yes, I know a hydrogen leak is potentially far more serious, but that's what it seems like I hear about delaying launches.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
Hopefully it's just poor phrasing in the summary, but rather than a manager, I think I'd prefer it if an engineer decided whether or not the shuttle was safe to fly. In fact I'd probably trust the tea lady before I'd trust a NASA manager.
FFS, that poor shuttle needs to get retired while it's still in one piece or it's going to end up scattered across the North Atlantic, and we'll have to make do with a scale model for the Smithsonian.
Can someone please build us another spaceship before it's too late?
The space shuttle isn't even 30 years old yet. They still fly airline jets older than that.
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attempting a Thursday night liftoff at 8:54 p.m. EDT depending on what repairs are needed and what managers decide. The Mission Management Team is meeting at 5 p.m. today
I'm looking at a career change. Does *anybody* at NASA go home at 4:30 every day?
I'm sure if SpaceX went the giant fucking booster rocket route they'd have a much better success rate. Instead, they're trying to find a reliable replacement for the booster/shuttle combo.
It would seem that NASA is not as serious about the new space race as China. Someone will end up controlling the skies, just got to wonder whom.
I never took a plane you insensitive clod!
if you are an astronaut an the mission has been rescheduled like 3 times because of failiures on the ship would you fly on that? i wont, i guess that bird its to old to fly any more.
You get a chance to fly into freaking space (ok LEO, but it's still space) and you're going to say no because the craft needs some maintenance? I'm going to guess you never bungie-jumped or sky dived.
It's over and done, put a fork in it, outsource to someone capable of handling the job and be done with it. It's time for private industry to take over.
but airlines don't have to handle the extreme pressures of space flight. a re-useable space craft is a great idea but material science isn't up there yet to handle it well. It's like trying to do super-sponic speeds with cheap metal or wood in an aircraft, it just won't hold up well especially over time.
..not just for NASA but for the "hydrogen-based economy," which could be nothing but a pipe-dream but for which a great deal of research is nevertheless ongoing.
Hydrogen is not an easy gas to contain -- the atoms are so small they can penetrate most materials. Hydrogen is odorless and colorless, so leaks can go undetected. This can cause unknown problems. For exmaple, once released into the atmosphere hydrogen could increase greenhouse gasses due to uptake of hydroxyl radicals, which would otherwise react with and remove the greenhouse gasses.
Solving problems in containing hydrogen is an important step and we have NASA to thank once again for being among the first to meet new technological challenges.
The vent line is at the intertank region of the external tank and is the overboard vent to the pad and the flare stack where the vented hydrogen is burned off
Its the fucking hydrogen line from the storage tank to the engine. How hard was that to write?
I tried to call NASA to see if they needed my 32ft aluminum ladder to replace the line but they said they had it covered.
The manta of 'It's ready when it's ready' should always apply in scientific efforts like this -- it's a life and death gamble with millions of variables for the astronauts not to mention the far less important but still relevant raw costs of researching, constructing, testing the shuttle.
It's worth the time to make sure everything is working right. Everyone who takes the risk to go into space and work on the tax-payer's dime deserves to come home to their family.
Every time I see the word "yet" in a news item concerning a delay in launching a shuttle, I'm taken back to Dan Rather's words the night before NASA launched the Challenger for the last time.
"Yet another costly, red-faces-all-around space shuttle-launch delay. This time a bad bolt on a hatch and a bad-weather bolt from the blue are being blamed. What's more, a rescheduled launch for tomorrow doesn't look good either. Bruce Hall has the latest on today's high-tech low comedy."
There was a lot of talk and reports about NASA being pressured to launch this mission and the resulting slack in decision making. No excuse for that, of course, but I worked at NASA at the time and Dan Rather was on the s**t list for a long time afterwards.
I could argue that to a degree, but more simply, your point is irrelevant to this latest delay and even more generally to both of the fatal accidents the shuttle program has suffered.
What pressure? atmosphere is 14.7 psi. Submarines see much higher pressures. The main forces on the shuttle are during the launch and the re-entry. Not during space flight. OK, maybe I'm being a little pedantic; but, those forces are fairly well understood, well modeled, and the craft was designed to handle them. There's nothing wrong with the materials (except for a little corrosion due to the salt air at the Cape).
You get a chance to fly into freaking space (ok LEO, but it's still space) and you're going to say no because the craft needs some maintenance? I'm going to guess you never bungie-jumped or sky dived.
If I was about to go bungy jumping or sky diving and 3 times they stopped me as I was preparing and told me there would be a delay while they fixed the gear so it was safe, I'd consider finding a different company to get my thrill from. Of course bungy chords and parachutes aren't as complex as the Shuttle, and no bungy or skydiving company has a monopoly so it's not a perfect analogy. However there's nothing wrong with placing a bit of value on your life and expecting gear to be safe when it's literally life or death.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The last 737 I flew on was delayed for a repair when it was fully loaded, with me sitting on it. Some warning light came on, and it needed some small repair or check (it was never complexly explained exactly what was wrong) before flying. Delayed the flight by about 45 minutes.
So it's definitely not uncommon.
And that is just a few. So, relax, they are coming. In fact, the nice thing is that we have a great deal of the infrastructure for doing the moon with these, combined with Bigelow, within 5-8 years. While Armadillo and Blue Origin does not really make sense for launching heavy cargo on earth, it DOES make LOTS of sense for a moon transporter.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Any guesses as to how many airline planes you have flown on that has a current, known defect resulting in an inoperative system. Hint - pretty much all of them.
Broken, old rockets combined with a hyper-cautious NASA means we wont be seeing shuttle launches again.
Sounds like a job for MCGruber
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