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Discovery Launch a No-Go, Again

Posted by timothy on from the but-they'll-miss-their-connections dept.

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.

30 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. If it can't be fixed with duct-tape by spyder-implee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It can't be fixed...

    --
    Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
    1. Re:If it can't be fixed with duct-tape by negRo_slim · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hence the need for a damn space elevator... We have to let go of our fixation on all things combustion. Let's just take that 800b and put it towards applied sciences and a golden age ye shall have!

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    2. Re:If it can't be fixed with duct-tape by MrKaos · · Score: 3, Funny

      Can we make the elevator out of duct tape?

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    3. Re:If it can't be fixed with duct-tape by MrKaos · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We might have the materials science on the cutting edge in 100 years.

      If we devoted proper resources to it we could do it in much less than that. With the focus of the coal industry on carbon sequestration, what better way to sequest some of the carbon? Unfortunately innovation within the coal industry is how best to burn it. Since CNT have to be produced in a hot vapour state what better place to have the industrial process to make them than when the carbon is already hot and burnt?

      If the worlds population is to expand any further then a new building material will be needed so we can colonise the oceans *and* space as well as improve our ability to create large land base structures. I would see uses for CNT beyond just a S.E.

      --
      My ism, it's full of beliefs.
    4. Re:If it can't be fixed with duct-tape by lennier · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Let's just take that 800b and put it towards applied sciences and a golden age ye shall have!"

      Because space is just teeming with exotic lands and spices, right?

      How do you construct a golden age from 1) vacuum and 2) rock when we're struggling to do it with a whole planet's worth of biosphere?

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  2. is that all? by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:is that all? by negRo_slim · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or just recalibrate the phasers and fire them for a 5 min burst upon the dilithium crystals. Should work!

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    2. Re:is that all? by MxTxL · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ah... well, hell. Why didn't you say so??

      *picard voice*
      COMPUTER! 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!
      *end picard vioce*

    3. Re:is that all? by Kell+Bengal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't forget to reverse the polarity.

      --
      Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
      altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
    4. Re:is that all? by Narishma · · Score: 2, Funny

      You forgot the most important thing: reverse the polarity. That seems to fix anything wrong with the ships in Star Trek.

      --
      Mada mada dane.
  3. What do you know, by pecosdave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
  4. Good News for People on the East Coast by longacre · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
    1. Re:Good News for People on the East Coast by ZankerH · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I believe they fly it for about half the launches to the ISS (the other half fly the opposite angle southward). The 51.6 degree orbit carries it pretty close to the angle of the coastline.

      Actually, all launches to ISS from Kennedy Space Center follow that course. For some reason, Cuba doesn't like American stuff in their airspace, so the descending node (southward) launch window is never used.

  5. "again"? by Cally · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:"again"? by iamlucky13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This mission was originally supposed to launch February 12. I know, because I bought tickets to go see it, and I ended up missing (KSC still makes for a great vacation though).

      They got within a week or two of launch, and decided they still weren't happy with the analysis that had been conducted for troubleshooting an issue with the propellant lines that cropped up during Endeavor's STS-126 launch. A valve on a secondary fuel handling line had failed, and while it didn't appear to affect that flight there was concern that it would either result in metal particles from the valve causing issues downstream, or lead to excess hydrogen venting that could cause a fire. They spent the last month testing and quantifying the probability of these concerns, and figuring out additional safeguards to implement for this flight, since making new valves would be an additional two months.

      The next possible launch window is about 23:30 after this one, but apparently the expected resolution for the leak is a multi-day process. The launch is now scheduled for no-earlier-than Mar 15 (19:43 EDT), but Mar 16 (19:21 EDT) sounds likely. As I understand it, re-installing the ground support hydrogen line on external tank requires a 30 hour waiting period before applying the final torque to allow the seals to compress...a typical factor when working with torque specs on plastic components. That 30 hours is on top of the time to demate and remate the hydrogen line, do leak checks, and reset to the proper point in the countdown.

      Anyway, because they're working against a launch window before the next Soyuz launches to the station, they're losing at least one mission day, and if it slips to the 16th, they'll be losing another day, plus one EVA. That will mean they can get the last solar array installed, but not fully hooked up. I'm not sure if that EVA would be handed off to a future shuttle mission, or if it could be fit into the station crew's schedule. If the launch happens after Mar. 16, they'll have to wait until after the Soyuz mission.

      There's a briefing going on regarding all this right now on NASA TV.

    2. Re:"again"? by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Informative

      They're probably going to move heaven and earth to avoid a rollback - with STS-125 (the Hubble mission) in the batter's box they are in a tight corner... 125 needs both pads, because there isn't a safe haven (as there is for ISS missions). The longer it takes to get 125 off the ground, the longer it is before they can hand over a pad to start conversion for Ares.

  6. Re:would u fly on that bird by confused+one · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Any guesses as to how many times that plane you last flew on was delayed because it needed a repair?

  7. Obligatory Onion by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

    NASA delays shuttle out of sheer habit

    --
    Monstar L
    1. Re:Obligatory Onion by Alotau · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not sure if it was habit or just because of this guy.

  8. Noone to blame by dvh.tosomja · · Score: 5, Funny

    This article is very poor, I can't manage the way how to blame Microsoft for that failure.

  9. Re:would u fly on that bird by Slumdog · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    FreeBSD bounties
  10. Re:would u fly on that bird by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    The space shuttle isn't even 30 years old yet. They still fly airline jets older than that.

    --
    My blog
  11. The race... by retech · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:The race... by jcnnghm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      Since they'd still be behind even if we wound the clock back to 1969, I don't think we've got a whole lot to worry about.

      --
      You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:The race... by jcnnghm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You honestly believe that in the next two years China can catch up on the last 40 years of NASA R&D? They would have to land a man on the moon, develop and launch a space telescope better than the JWST, they would have had to land and operate rovers on Mars 3 years ago, since we've already operated rovers on Mars for 5 years, construct a global satellite communications network, and a global satellite positioning system. They aren't even close to being near where the US is, nobody is. We've been miles and miles ahead for decades.

      Of the 5,736 satellites that had been launched by 2006, China was responsible for a whopping 99, while the US and Former Soviet Union have launched 5,043. The only way they're going to catch up in the next two years is if everyone but the Chinese begins traveling faster than the speed of light. With the relativistic effects, the Chinese may have a shot.

      Nice shot at the NASA budget by the way. Were you aware that it was over 10 times higher than the Chinese space budget in 2007? In 2008, the CSNA budget was $1.3B, whereas the NASA budget was over $17B, with another $21B going to the DoD Space Budget. I know that it's vastly easier to follow in the footsteps of somebody else who is actually doing all the tough, expensive research, without performing any real cutting edge research, but if they were to catch up to us, then pass us, wouldn't it require them to spend nearly as much money as us? Even assuming they can just steal all of our designs until they catch up, how are they going to pass us with less than 10% of the budget?

      What has you, and so many people like you, so convinced that we're going to be dominated in every field by other countries that are nowhere near catching us? Why do you hate this country so much? It's certainly not rational, we're so far ahead at this point even if we gave them the research and a couple of billion dollars a year, they'd still be dropping further back.

      Frankly, it would be great if some other countries stepped up and actually performed some notable space research of their own, rather than taking a free ride courtesy of our taxpayers. In 2009, the whole European Space Agency budget is only $4.85B, the Russian Federal Space Agency budget is only $2.2B, the official China National Space Administration budget is only $500M, and the Indian Space Research Organization budget is only $1.3B. Compared to the NASA budget of $17.3B, these sums are rather paltry. NASA is better funded than every other serious space agency in the world, combined, and you think they're going to catch us. We should seriously consider cutting back NASA funding until the rest of the world does have a chance to catch up, so we no longer have to pay to subsidize their space programs by performing all the hard R&D.

      --
      You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
  12. Re:would u fly on that bird by blagger99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:Flex hours... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you think that's bad, two weeks they had a single meeting that lasted 14 hours discussing an issue that cropped up during the STS-126 launch and whether it warranted a further delay for this launch to finish correcting it.

  14. Hydrogen leaks a real problem by lenehey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ..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.

  15. It's ready when it's ready. by synthesizerpatel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  16. "yet" considered harmful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.