Minor Damage Found On Space Shuttle

The BBC is reporting on minor damage to the space shuttle Atlantis revealed by a 10-hour inspection in orbit. On the shuttle's right side, near where the wing joins the body, inspection revealed a 21" (53cm) line of chips in the tiles that make up the vehicle's heat shield. "...more analysis by engineers would determine whether a 'focused inspection' was needed in that specific area. If so, astronauts would use sensors to determine the exact depth of the damage to the heat shield tiles. NASA has placed the space shuttle Endeavour on stand-by to rescue the crew of Atlantis if they are endangered." The crew couldn't shelter on the ISS in case of trouble, because their orbit is higher and on a different inclination.

Comments

doh.

[thhamm]

fingers crossed. :/

Re:doh.

[earlymon]

Roger that.

FWIW, you can get a lot of mission info while it happens, even if you don't have satellite TV - http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Re:doh.

[dotancohen]

fingers crossed. :/

Wings crossed. I think that they finally found their bat.

So what happens....

[zonky]

.. if they launch Endeavour to rescue Atlantis, and Endeavour suffers damage at launch?

Re:So what happens....

[operator_error]

The chances for success are reduced, presumably to acceptable levels. Someone has already thought about this a bit.

Re:So what happens....

[argent]

Right, we don't want to have excessive chances for success.

Re:So what happens....

[Anonymous Coward]

The astronauts pile into the less damaged orbiter and come home in it.

Then, they get home and buy Powerball tickets, because those kinds of odds are nearly as good as winning. The Shuttle has more or less always sustained some tile damage during launch; its heat shield is replaced after every launch as it wasn't designed to be perfect (well, it originally closer to perfect when it was to be built of solid titanium, but plans change...) The damage turned out to be a significant player in Columbia's loss, as it happened that the part of the shield that was damaged was extremely critical to the proper functioning of that area.

OTOH, here we see an almost pristine heat shield. The damage is long, but it's very narrow, likely caused by a single piece of falling debris striking in multiple locations. This isn't going to prevent them from coming home in Atlantis.

Re:So what happens....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they could chuck a few spare panels in the back of the otherwise-empty Endeavour.

Re:So what happens....

[dotancohen]

.. if they launch Endeavour to rescue Atlantis, and Endeavour suffers damage at launch?

Then they bring out the gimp.

Re:So what happens....

[alfal]

Do we roll Discovery out and hope third time is a charm? or do we just ride the less of the broken shuttles home, and scrap the program when they get home?

Re:So what happens....

[vjmurphy]

". if they launch Endeavour to rescue Atlantis, and Endeavour suffers damage at launch?"

Then you are obviously in a Michael Bay movie, where logic and physics are thrown out the door. Mayhem, shakycam and explosions usually follow.

Re:So what happens....

[bsane]

buy Powerball tickets, because those kinds of odds are nearly as good as winning

I wish that were true, but NASA's estimate on heat shield damage is 1 in 221. Two in a row are unlikely, but not unimaginable.

Re:So what happens....

[JasterBobaMereel]

Easy they do what they would have had to do in the past when they didn't have another shuttle ready -

Call the Russians and get them to send up a rescue Soyuz - they might only be able to save a few but that's better than none ....

Re:So what happens....

[dzfoo]

Can they use the clone tool to erase the damage?

        -dZ.

Re:So what happens....

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't actually know precisely how extensive Columbia's damage was, because no telescopes with sufficient resolving power were tasked with imaging it.

The argument apparently being that they couldn't do anything if they found a problem, so why bother spending money on trivial things like records that might have helped immensely in any kind of post-crash investigations...

Re:So what happens....

[Hynee]

They'd probably only get Discovery out if both of them had a wing off. And yeah, the whole program would be scrapped when they got home.

Re:So what happens....

[jellomizer]

"because no telescopes with sufficient resolving power were tasked with imaging it"

Too bad they couldn't be in an orbit of a Space telescope I bet that could get a good picture of it....

Re:So what happens....

[JustOK]

It's old and far-sighted.

Re:So what happens....

[djrok212]

Even more space debris...

Re:So what happens....

[hosecoat]

.. if they launch Endeavour to rescue Atlantis, and Endeavour suffers damage at launch?

then they bail out with their parachutes.

Re:So what happens....

[elrous0]

Then the shuttle program gets retired a little earlier than planned.

Re:So what happens....

[Anonymous Coward]

bring tile repair kits, repair both ships, fly both home.

Re:So what happens....

[ilikejam]

Gimp's sleepin.

Re:So what happens....

[nurb432]

We just call the Azgards for help.

Re:So what happens....

[jellomizer]

So they should have used a microscope vs. a telescope then.

Re:So what happens....

[Minwee]

Then you are obviously in a Michael Bay movie, where logic and physics are thrown out the door. Mayhem, shakycam and explosions usually follow.

But that's okay, because all of the NASA engineers will be replaced by supermodels. But they'll be wearing glasses so that you'll know they're very smart.

Re:So what happens....

[Lije Baley]

Darned Michael Bay haters. I loved "The Island". But then I liked "The Postman" and "Battlefield Earth" too.

Please help me.

Re:So what happens....

[afabbro]

The damage turned out to be a significant player in Columbia's loss, as it happened that the part of the shield that was damaged was extremely critical to the proper functioning of that area.

Launch damage to the heat tiles was a "significant player" in the loss of Columbia in the sense that John Wilkes Booth was a "significant player" in Abraham Lincoln's death.

In other words, caused it.

Re:So what happens....

[dotancohen]

Well then you better just wake him up!

Re:So what happens....

[counslr2002]

They can't....the gimp's sleeping.

Where's the U.S. news media?

[__aaclcg7560]

I first saw this mentioned on Twitter. Seems like only the BBC (Great Britain) is carrying the story. Haven't seen any stories on the U.S. news websites. Have the U.S. media decided that this isn't newsworthy and are waiting for a rescue mission with Space Shuttle Endeavour (a la Apollo 13)?

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's getting boring? There are so minor issue reports lately. A scratched tile here, some mysterious debris there, some animal clinging to the shuttle, etc. None resulted in a newsworthy tragedy, so why bother?

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's being covered by many US based media. You're denser than a neutron star!

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[EvanED]

It's been on the front page of CNN.com since the afternoon. Here's the story.

Searching "shuttle" on msnbc.com and foxnews.com shows that both of them are carrying the story too, though neither site has it "above the fold" right now.

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[dotancohen]

Haven't seen any stories on the U.S. news websites.

Then why all the bitching that /. is too US-centric? Or is "News for nerds" not a news website?

By the way, opening yahoo news it was right on top:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090513/ts_alt_afp/usspaceastronomyhubble;_ylt=Aj3NU3nOc4iB6txwGUCXG3wPLBIF

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're denser than a neutron star

No stories would have escaped the creimer, then.

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[CraftyJack]

Obviously the BBC is too US-centric.

Re:Where's the U.S. news media?

[__aaclcg7560]

Only BBC has a dedicated article to the subject with a nice picture. All the other web-based news articles have the details buried in their 24-hour summary of the space shuttle mission.

Getting to ISS

[biocute]

If something goes wrong on this mission, Atlantis's astronauts will not be able to shelter on the International Space Station (ISS). The station orbits at around 350km (220 miles) above Earth, while Hubble occupies an orbit about 560km (350 miles) up.

Can someone speculate the feasibility of "dropping" to meet ISS?

I mean, does NASA have equipments/knowledge/training to do such maneuver?

Re:Getting to ISS

[thhamm]

i guess it's not just dropping to another altitude. it's about changing the orbital plane, for which they don't have enough fuel.

Re:Getting to ISS

[earlymon]

Can someone speculate the feasibility of "dropping" to meet ISS?

I believe that it's a question of available fuel.

Re:Getting to ISS

[u38cg]

Just to expand on the other poster's comments - remember that something in orbit is falling. It isn't just a case of pointing in the right direction and giving it an impulse. You need to effectively lift it 350km - doing roughly the same amount of work you would need to lift something from ground level to 350km up. That's a lot of fuel.

Re:Getting to ISS

[daveime]

Failure is not an option, gentlemen.

So they managed to get Apollo 13 back from the moon 384,000 km away, but they didn't consider it "feasible" or even "sensible" to carry enough spare fuel on the shuttle to effect an orbit change to hook up with the ISS, a mere couple of hundred km away ?

Someone want's their balls kicked at NASA, seems like every mission is a suicide mission these days.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Maddog Batty]

So what makes you such an expert?

Nasa experts have looked into all of these issues and potential solutions.

A mere couple of hundred miles is not a problem (you do know how fast the shuttle flies don't you?) Orbital mechanics is the problem. The fuel required for the shuttle to change orbits would weigh too much for it to get off the ground in the first place.

The risks have been very carefully considered, with the mission ruled out of safety grounds for a long time. Yes, they are pushing the risks on this mission but having a back up shuttle on the pad ready to lift off in three days (you do know about this don't you?) mitigates some of the risks. That together with other changes they have made have kept the risks of a catastrophic failure below the limit set for every mission.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Maddog Batty]

Not quite right.

The ISS is below hubble so to get to it you need to drop in height. As there is no friction in space, this change takes just as much fuel to lose potential energy as it does to gain it so it doesn't make much difference. The shuttle would also have to increase in speed a bit (from 7500m/s to 7700m/s) so energy would be required for this too. However, these two requirements are insignificant compared to the change in orbit inclination required. HSS is 28.5 degrees, ISS is 51.6 degrees. That will take a lot of fuel.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Errm, you'd want to reduce the height of the orbit, not increase it. It's still fuel either way, but facing the other way.

That's not all though; It's not just the height of the orbit. Orbiting at the same height isn't enough, you also need to be at the same location and direction (something that'd be much harder to achieve).

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

The ISS and Hubble orbit in different orbital planes. It's this change that makes it impossible for Atlantis to dock with the Space Station. At the point where the two orbits cross, the Station and the Shuttle are doing many km/s relative speed. There just isn't enough fuel on the Shuttle to change velocity to match

Re:Getting to ISS

[EvanED]

Don't know much about orbital mechanics, do you?

Changing Apollo 13's course from what it was originally to a free-return course requires the merest nudge compared with the fuel required to change orbital planes like what would be required here.

Also, consider that the LEM had enough fuel in its descent engine to slow its descent and keep from smashing into the moon and an ascent engine to get it back up (though I don't know if the ascent engine fuel is usable by the descent engine).

Re:Getting to ISS

[slashbart]

God you're a dumb shit aren't you.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

If the two orbits were in the same inclination it would not take that much fuel to drop down to a lower orbit, however the great difference in inclination would require a very large amount of fuel, much more than the shuttle carries once it is in orbit. I recommend to anyone who is interested in these questions to play with the free Orbiter simulation: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html It teaches orbital mechanics in a very practical and hands-on way.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Altitude is not the issue. Inclination (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclination) is.
It takes a lot of energy to change inclinations because of hte angular momentum.

Take a bike wheel and spin it up.
Now try to flip it over.
Exactly the same thing, except the shuttle has a lot more mass and a much longer moment arm.

Re:Getting to ISS

[stjobe]

"dropping" means reducing velocity, which requires fuel. Remember, there's no (or next to no) drag up there at 350 miles altitude.

Also compounding the problem is that the ISS is in another orbit, so they would have to manuever to get into that orbit, again requiring fuel.

All in all, "dropping" and matching the orbit of the ISS is out of the question on account of them having too little fuel to do it.

Orbital mechanics, my friend - it's not like driving on the highway :)

Re:Getting to ISS

[Suzuran]

The descent engine and ascent engine were entirely separate, since the entire descent stage of the LM was discarded on the moon for return. There were no interconnections between the two. That does not mean they couldn't have burned the DPS to exhaustion, staged, and then burned the APS for as long as required.

In any event, the shuttle cannot carry enough fuel to make the orbit change required in this instance simply because the tanks aren't big enough. You can't put 500 gallons of gas in a tank that only holds 300. This is not a simple matter of flying in a line from point A to point B. Go download Orbiter and educate yourself.

Re:Getting to ISS

[daveime]

I might not be an expert, but at least I don't spout bullshit under the pretense of widsom.

The fuel required for the shuttle to change orbits would weigh too much for it to get off the ground in the first place

Correct me if I'm wrong (you probably will), but the shuttle (or any other rocket for that matter), does not just go straight up and then stop ... it spirals away from the earth and then levels out gradually at whatever oribital plane is desired.

Likewise, when they want to "come down" again, after a brief thrust, it gradually spirals back down to earth.

So obviously changing the orbit isn't the issue, the issue actually being able to stop the bloody thing so it doesn't smack into the ISS at thousands of miles per hour.

But it's not that NASA scientists "haven't thought about it". It's about beancounters deciding that their table of risk factors doesn't warrant the extra cost, and leaving no margin for error.

The fact this is the second shuttle to suffer tile damage close to the joint of the wing and the main body should tell somebody something ? Like perhaps, it MIGHT be a good idea to design safety factors i.e. extra fuel for contingencies, back into the next generation of space vehicles.

But hell, why let common sense get in the way of ad hominem attacks ... this is /. after all.

Re:Getting to ISS

[electroniceric]

Which also raises the question: why is this being done by the shuttle? Couldn't this repair be done robotically, therefore allowing a much smaller, less complicated and more expendable craft?

Re:Getting to ISS

[Mr2cents]

Erm.. Have you even heard about Newtons laws? If you do, could you quickly explain them to me so I can estimate your knowledge of physics? After that, I can explain further, but right now I'm a bit baffled.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Octorian]

Its worth reading up on just what sort of work is involved in these Hubble servicing missions. Heck, on the first one, Story Musgrave probably had to have nerves of steel. The Hubble was not really designed for on-orbit servicing, and the kind of tasks they had to do were things that would be hard enough on a workbench, let alone in a spacesuit. By the time you built a robotic vehicle that could do all the things a trained shuttle crew can, you might as well just build a new Hubble.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact this is the second shuttle to suffer tile damage close to the joint of the wing and the main body should tell somebody something?

The shuttle is an inherently flawed design, this isn't news. The crew-carrying module of any rocket should always be on the TOP, where it isn't going to be hit by debris. Also this configuration allows for a launch escape system, which every manned rocket ever made except the shuttle has. (All they have are parachutes which can only be used in level gliding flight, i.e. they're virtually useless.)

Re:Getting to ISS

[EvanED]

The descent engine and ascent engine were entirely separate, since the entire descent stage of the LM was discarded on the moon for return. There were no interconnections between the two.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Nevertheless, I thought that maybe they kept a hookup in case they needed to burn a little longer on descent or something like that.

Thanks for the info.

That does not mean they couldn't have burned the DPS to exhaustion, staged, and then burned the APS for as long as required.

Since you seem to know something about this, was there anything else critical in the stage that was to be left on the moon? Any O2 tanks or anything like that, or was it just fuel?

Re:Getting to ISS

[bsane]

Couldn't this repair be done robotically

I don't know the difficulty of whats being replaced on this mission, but it does include several modules that were never intended to be serviced in space. These servicing missions are carried out by mechanical superstars. For an interesting read on how difficult it is find some of the interviews with Story Musgrave.

Humans are unmatched in their ability to do the work required. You could build a new hubble and launch it easier than you could built a robot to perform the services (which probably isn't even possible with todays tech).

Re:Getting to ISS

[Hynee]

There's certainly enough orbital energy (KE+PE) in the HST orbit to match the ISS orbit, in fact one at the ISS height but at a different plane has just the right amount. The trouble is you have to do the plane change, you have to expend energy to increase the velocity perpendicular to the plane, but also expend energy to reduce the velocity along the orbit and in the up/down direction. You can't get paid back for the KE you're losing, and you can't transfer the KE from one axis to another.

It's partly to do with lack of external forces--there's really only gravity from the earth, and all that does is keep your orbit. All the shuttle has is a little internal energy (the RMS pods, a little compared to the energy needed), and to mother nature, it doesn't matter if this energy is used to speed up or slow down, because it's all relative to the shuttle. If you want a 1km/s increase, that's 1 km/s in one direction. If you want a decrease, it's 1 km/s in the opposite direction, but both those directions are same as far as the shuttle is concerned (in its frame of reference).

(When the shuttle de-orbits, the OMS gives it a little nudge so its periapsis is in the atmosphere, and from there it gets all its de-orbit engergy from friction. Basically the friction energy created during de-orbit is about the same as the energy used to put it up there. Hence they need really good heat shields!)

Quick calculations, for a plane change of 20 degs @ 30 km/s, you need to lose 1.8 km/s in the orbit direction (new vel = 30*cos(20)), and gain 10km/s at right angles to the orbit plane (30*sin(20)), which is about 11.5% of the KE for a 30 km/s orbit...

... and maybe 5% of the total energy to achieve that orbit. I haven't done the maths on that last one (it's just GMm*(1/r2-1/r1)), but apparently it's not doable. Seems so close though. Anyone know how much PE is in the OMS fuel compared to the launch fuel?

Re:Getting to ISS

[Maddog Batty]

Thanks for that, Mr $0.02, that made me smile :-)

Daveime, no I'm not an expert but I do understand the laws of physics and have read up on this. Some of what you say is correct, but a lot isn't.

A small amount of fuel could be used to get the shuttle to visit the ISS. Unfortunately, this would be in a very elliptical orbit so they would only be able to (very) briefly wave through the window as they flew past each other at a very large differential speed before ploughing into the Earth in an unfortunately bright fireball.

To get to the same altitude as the ISS (keeping the orbit circular) requires dropping by 210km and speeding up by 200m/s. Not in itself a great requirement on fuel. The problem is that the orbit inclinations are so different (HST is 28.5 degrees, ISS is 51.6 degrees). To make this change requires something like a 3000m/s speed change sideways (this calc is only order of magnitude accurate). This requires a lot of fuel.

As others have stated, the current design of the shuttle has some major faults. Not being on the top of the rocket being one of them. This is not news and has been known for a long time and yes it has been taken into account in the next design (which isn't a shuttle at all).

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing orbital inclination requires surprisingly large amounts of delta V (and therefore fuel) For orbits reasonabley close to the Earth, changeing inclination 90deg would require much more delta V than escape velocity.

Re:Getting to ISS

[FatAlb3rt]

The shuttle actually has several ascent abort scenarios

Re:Getting to ISS

[Maddog Batty]

"dropping" means reducing velocity, which requires fuel.

Actually, "dropping" (210km in this case) means increasing velocity (by 200m/s). Not obvious but true.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Shakrai]

By the time you built a robotic vehicle that could do all the things a trained shuttle crew can, you might as well just build a new Hubble.

Which begs the question, why aren't we building a new Hubble? My understanding is that the JWST won't have capabilities in the visual spectrum. We can spend hundreds of billions on a war and entitlements but can't find money for NASA while we fall further and further behind (soon to lose manned spaceflight capability altogether) our competitors in space? WTF is wrong with this picture?

Re:Getting to ISS

[mortonda]

Uhhh. No.

Re:Getting to ISS

[dotancohen]

Go download Orbiter and educate yourself.

When it runs on Ubuntu I will.

Re:Getting to ISS

[holmstar]

As a gather, ground-based optical telescopes are getting very large and very good at correcting atmospheric distortion.

Also, the mirror that is used in the Hubble is already about the max that we can reasonably get into orbit. We could probably go a bit bigger, but why should we if we can just build a land based scope that can achieve similar results?

Re:Getting to ISS

[icebrain]

Essentially, the development of adaptive optics and better control algorithms has allowed ground-based telescopes to catch up on Hubble. Plus, they have larger mirrors for more light-gathering ability, all at substantially less cost.

What ground-based scopes can't do is analyze spectra that don't penetrate the atmosphere very well. Infrared and UV light, for example, are hard or impossible to read from the ground. Space-based telescopes are more useful there.

Hubble development was started when we were still fooling ourselves into believing that shuttle operations would be cheap. That turned out not to be the case, and the costs of servicing launches will almost pay for a new telescope anyways. Don't expect to see any new servicable ones built until we have a truly economical manned launch vehicle.

Re:Getting to ISS

[pnewhook]

But it's not that NASA scientists "haven't thought about it". It's about beancounters deciding that their table of risk factors doesn't warrant the extra cost, and leaving no margin for error.

No. If you work out the fuel required to move the shuttle from a docking position at Hubble to a docking position at ISS, it requires an amount of fuel that is almost equal to the weight of the entire shuttle itself. It is physically impossible and has nothing to do with the bean counters.

But hell, why let common sense get in the way of ad hominem attacks ... this is /. after all.

Or why let science get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Work is being done on it, but it won't be ready for some years.

a nice starter is ATLAS-Telescope or AT-LAST

Re:Getting to ISS

[Sheafification]

It's been a while since I've done any physics, but I'm fairly confident that your orbital height is determined by your orbital speed. If we think of an orbit as a circle parameterized by (R*cos t, R*sin t), then the velocity is (-R*sin t, R*cos t) which has length (i.e. speed) sqrt(2)*R. So if the height R gets smaller, then so does the speed; or vice versa.

There's no extra fuel used to change speeds after you've changed orbital heights: you change height by changing your speed. This is why geosychronous orbits are so valuable: not only is there only one plane in which it is possible (above the equator), but only one orbit in that plane actually works (the one that matches the speed of earth's rotation).

Re:Getting to ISS

[icebrain]

A better statement would have been "reducing energy", perhaps, because although your final velocity for the new lower orbit is higher, you do slow down twice to get there.

First, you burn retrograde from the higher orbit, reducing your overall energy and your instantaneous velocity, and resulting in an eccentric orbit with a perigee coinciding with a new, lower orbit. On the way "down", you trade gravitational potential energy for additional kinetic. You then burn retrograde again, further reducing your energy and once again reducing instantaneous velocity, to circularize. It's true that your earth-relative velocity in the lower orbit is higher, but getting there does require slowing down.

Yeah, orbital mechanics is quite fun and counterintuitive, at first.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a job interview with Lockheed Martin in Houston about 4 years ago to work on a robotic repair mission for the Hubble, so it was an option they considered. They offered me a job, but apparently the mission was canceled and the site was closed before my reply could get back to them. I'm not sure what all factors went into the decision, but it sounds like fairly complicated repairs to do robotically.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the mirror that is used in the Hubble is already about the max that we can reasonably get into orbit. We could probably go a bit bigger, but why should we if we can just build a land based scope that can achieve similar results?

Actually Herschel is quite a bit bigger: http://astro.ic.ac.uk/research/herschel/outreach/mission.shtml

(the schedule on that page is a bit off though - it's launching tomorrow)

Re:Getting to ISS

[JWSmythe]

    It's the same reason the American shuttle has a crew and the Russian shuttle didn't. Americans take a lot of pride in sending people into space. There's fame, glory, and feeding the PR machine. NASA has to keep the taxpayers satisfied that the missions are worth something. Sending up robotic missions don't have the same awe value. This was decided years ago.

    Russia on the other hand, didn't have to satisfy the taxpayers. They did their mission to compete with the Americans. Why do you think the Russian shuttle looked so much like the American shuttle? Unfortunately for the Russians, their budget went away (like a lot of things there), and the program was scrapped.

    Unfortunately for us (Americans), the NASA budget is big, but eaten by lots of bureaucracy. Every step is so wrapped in politics that it makes it almost impossible to do the newer better things that they'd like to do. "Secret" private operations like Lockheed Skunk Works and Boeing Phantom Works make some really neat stuff that people usually only get to find out parts of years after they've been developed and tested. I hate bursting bubbles, but Area 51 (among quite a few other places) doesn't house alien spaceships, but they do house really cool aircraft that the companies and our government won't tell us about.

    If they could have left the bureaucracy out of NASA (good luck with that), all of our existing shuttles would be in museums not because they're flawed or old, but because newer better stuff would already be in use. Why fly a shuttle, when you can fly the STS Mark 14? Without the government red tape tying everything up, the existing budget would be enough to do all kinds of things. We wouldn't be looking at Mars now through the eyes of a robot stuck in the dirt. We'd have a tech in an EV suit pushing it out of the dirt, and waving as the next extra-solar system flight was passing by. "See you guys in a week. Pick me up some cool rocks from the far side of the termination shock"

Re:Getting to ISS

[sjames]

Equipment, knowledge, and training? Yes, they have that. What they DON'T have is sufficient fuel. That's a real show stopper for that option :-)

Re:Getting to ISS

[YrWrstNtmr]

It's the same reason the American shuttle has a crew and the Russian shuttle didn't.

They Buran flew unmanned, because it wasn't quite finished. No software for the cockpit displays, and life support only partially complete.
"Screw it...fly it anyway."

Re:Getting to ISS

[CrimsonAvenger]

Correct me if I'm wrong (you probably will), but the shuttle (or any other rocket for that matter), does not just go straight up and then stop ... it spirals away from the earth and then levels out gradually at whatever oribital plane is desired.

You're wrong. The shuttle goes straight up, then begins to tilt over to enter an orbit that is tangential to the desired orbit. When it reaches that tangential point, it makes a very small burn to circularize the orbit.

Likewise, when they want to "come down" again, after a brief thrust, it gradually spirals back down to earth.

It makes a short burn which puts it into an orbit that will intersect the Earth.

So obviously changing the orbit isn't the issue, the issue actually being able to stop the bloody thing so it doesn't smack into the ISS at thousands of miles per hour.

Which is to say that changing the orbit is the issue. It's got to be in the same orbit as the ISS in order to rendezvous with same.

Now, let's look at the deltaV required for some of these manuevers.

Deorbitting from the orbit is it currently in: in the vicinity of 115 m/s.

Rendezvous with the ISS, from the orbit the Shuttle is currently in:

This one is a bit more complicated. Shuttle is in an orbit about 394 km high, ISS is in an orbit about 357 km high. DeltaV to change from a 394 km orbit to a 357 km orbit is about 25 m/s.

But (there's always a but), that leaves the Shuttle in an orbit with an inclination of 28.3 degrees, as opposed to the ISS orbital inclination of 51.9 degrees. So an additional burn of 3150 m/s is required to match orbits with the ISS.

Note that this makes the assumption that a point in Shuttle's orbit from which such a burn could be made will conveniently happen within the next few days. That's not as likely as you think. So more deltaV would be required.

Note that the difference between deorbitting (no more than 115 m/s required) and rendezvous with ISS (no less than 3175 m/s required) is quite large.

Now, for some rough figures on fuel requirements. Very rough.

Shuttle masses in the vicinity of 100t. Assuming 316 Isp (that's what the OMS is rated at - it might be a touch higher or lower in practice)...

Deorbit manuever: 3.8t fuel. Maximum.

Rendezvous with ISS: 179t fuel. Minimum.

Note again that Shuttle mass - 100t....

Re:Getting to ISS

[nitehawk214]

More importantly, the Webb wont be serviceable at all, so we had better get it right the first time.

Re:Getting to ISS

[R3d M3rcury]

In any event, the shuttle cannot carry enough fuel to make the orbit change required in this instance simply because the tanks aren't big enough. You can't put 500 gallons of gas in a tank that only holds 300.

...but I wonder. What would be involved in adding an extra gas tank?

I mean, the shuttles have a huge cargo bay. I'd be curious to see if they could put an extra fuel tank in there (with appropriate connections, of course). I don't know how much room it would take up and they still have to have room to service the Hubble.

Of course, doing that kind of engineering on a bird that is being retired probably isn't worth the time and effort.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Kagura]

NONE of those abort scenarios are as good as a launch escape system. Russians had one go off once with astronauts on the pad... those were some pretty bruised, beat up, angry, but alive astronauts...

Re:Getting to ISS

[Kagura]

Correct me if I'm wrong (you probably will), but the shuttle (or any other rocket for that matter), does not just go straight up and then stop ... it spirals away from the earth and then levels out gradually at whatever oribital plane is desired.

You're wrong. The shuttle goes straight up, then begins to tilt over to enter an orbit that is tangential to the desired orbit. When it reaches that tangential point, it makes a very small burn to circularize the orbit.

Likewise, when they want to "come down" again, after a brief thrust, it gradually spirals back down to earth.

It makes a short burn which puts it into an orbit that will intersect the Earth.

You just quoted him twice and said the same thing as he did, twice... all while saying he was wrong. I guess you just misunderstood what he wrote.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Suzuran]

Life support and equipment cooling was entirely in the ascent stage. Other than that, the entire descent stage was self-sufficient. It had its own batteries, fuel, and so on. The only interconnections between the ascent and descent stages were electrical. When staging occurred a set of explosive bolts were detonated for physical separation and a set of explosive-driven guillotines severed the electrical connections, leaving the ascent stage disconnected from but sitting on top of the ascent stage. Then the APS fired and pushed the ascent stage away.

Anything that wasn't needed during or after the ascent was left behind in the descent stage. They did this to save weight. During the descent and lunar stay, the LM consumed resources from the descent stage. After that, the ascent stage was on its own.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Suzuran]

It doesn't work in wine?

Re:Getting to ISS

[CrimsonAvenger]

You just quoted him twice and said the same thing as he did, twice... all while saying he was wrong. I guess you just misunderstood what he wrote.

No, I just understand the difference between a "spiral" and an "ellipse". Trust me on this, nothing in free flight "spirals" anywhere.

Orbits do NOT (in spite of what you may have seen in the movies or read in bad science fiction) "spiral".

What orbits do is follow elliptical paths. An ellipse, in case you're wondering, goes down a bit, then back up to the same point that it started from. Or up a bit, and back down to the same point in started from.

Absent perturbing forces, of course.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Carnildo]

A better comparison would be putting 50,000 gallons of gas into a 30-gallon tank. Yes, you could put a fuel tank into the cargo bay, but it would hold less than half the fuel you need. The shuttle can carry about 60,000 pounds of fuel, while the orbit change to go from Hubble to the ISS takes about 150,000 pounds.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Kagura]

You just quoted him twice and said the same thing as he did, twice... all while saying he was wrong. I guess you just misunderstood what he wrote.

No, I just understand the difference between a "spiral" and an "ellipse". Trust me on this, nothing in free flight "spirals" anywhere.

Orbits do NOT (in spite of what you may have seen in the movies or read in bad science fiction) "spiral".

What orbits do is follow elliptical paths. An ellipse, in case you're wondering, goes down a bit, then back up to the same point that it started from. Or up a bit, and back down to the same point in started from.

Absent perturbing forces, of course.

http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/images/moontrajectoryjpg_1.jpg -- This picture shows the spiral he was talking about. Nobody said anything about "spiral orbits". Reread his comment, and you'll see he was talking about the launch--which does, indeed, "spiral" away from the earth until the orbit is made circular. The "spiral" portion is from the launch at the surface of the earth until the line hits the red circular orbit. You are wrong and after reading another your reply, I think your reading comprehension is a little low.

If you need another example, check out http://www.satcom.co.uk/images/Presentations/rpcstl3s7a.gif -- Although the entire orbit shows up as a spiral, it's just coincidental to how the burns are shown one after the other. The actual spiral that we are all discussing in this thread is from Launch (at "Boost Phase" point) until the "Perigee Burn" point. In any common, everyday terms, this is a spiral shape. Go back and reread your original parent's post with a more open mind.

Re:Getting to ISS

[Mr2cents]

Nobody said anything about "spiral orbits".

Really? Then how do you interpret this:

Likewise, when they want to "come down" again, after a brief thrust, it gradually spirals back down to earth.

I read it like this: a short push is followed by a gradual change in orbit. I can only see this as a fundamental lack of understanding of highschool physics, or alternatively as a confused mind unable to speak unambiguously.

I really want to be open minded about this, but at the same time my BS detector is telling me otherwise.

Re:Getting to ISS

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Adaptive optics still have a long way to go and like anonymous said, we can make a bigger space telescope. Also, there is a lot you just can't see period with ground based telescopes so it's definitely worth it to put up a new one (JWST) once Hubble is done. Heck, there might even be a case to keep Hubble running even after JWST gets up there whenever that might be. They are still using 30+ year old telescopes on the ground from what I've read since there is so much demand for time on them.

Not a concern - More info here

[Maddog Batty]

More info here: http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts125/090512fd2/index5.html

"And Scooter, also I've got some good news about the tile damage that we saw on the starboard chine area earlier today," astronaut Alan Poindexter radioed from mission control shortly after 8 p.m.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to that. Go ahead," replied shuttle commander Scott "Scooter" Altman.

"It turns out that a focussed inspection of that area on the starboard chine is not going to be required," Poindexter reported.

"All right, you've got some happy EVA campers on that," Altman said.

Re:Not a concern - More info here

[dzfoo]

"And Scooter, also I've got some good news about the tile damage that we saw on the starboard chine area earlier today," astronaut Alan Poindexter radioed from mission control shortly after 8 p.m.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to that. Go ahead," replied shuttle commander Scott "Scooter" Altman.

"It turns out that a focussed inspection of that area on the starboard chine is not going to be required," Poindexter reported.

"All right, you've got some happy EVA campers on that," Altman said.

"Yeah, don't worry about the inspection, you don't have to go out, really.", Poindexter continued, "and, uh, whatever you guys do, don't look out the window."

"Copy tha--er what??" replied Commander Altman.

"Right, just... focus on the mission. Oh hey, Altam, your wife is here, she'd like to say goodb--uh, hello."

Re:Not a concern - More info here

[Anonymous Coward]

You're shitting me, right?

Scooter and Poindexter? REALLY?

Re:Not a concern - More info here

[TheoMurpse]

Were Ensigns Booger and Takashi aboard as well? I'll bet Ogre did a number of the tiles.

Re:Not a concern - More info here

[Verdatum]

Rick and Willie,

You guys are doing a fantastic job staying on the timeline and accomplishing great science. Keep up the good work and let us know if there is anything that we can do better from an MCC/POCC standpoint.

There is one item that I would like to make you aware of for the upcoming PAO event ... This item is not even worth mentioning other than wanting to make sure that you are not surprised by it in a question from a reporter. . . .

Experts have reviewed the high speed photography and there is no concern for RCC or tile damage. We have seen this same phenomenon on several other flights and there is absolutely no concern for entry. That is all for now. It's a pleasure working with you every day.

-email written by one of the lead flight controllers to the Columbia shuttle pilots. It was their only notice about the ground concerns regarding the foam strike. Sent on day 8 of the mission, 23 January 2003.

Re:Not a concern - More info here

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Yeah, this is why they do in-flight inspections every flight now.

I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Space parachutes!

Really, put one under each seat and in case of emergency, like ditching in space, each crewmember is to don a 'chute, wait for the go, then JUMP! Wha? No, these are SPACE parachutes, made for use in SPACE!

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[xp]

This is going to hurt its blue book value though.
--
Feeling slow today?

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

I know it was a joke, but it would work.

    They'd have to bring the orbital velocity down from the 17,000+mph to 0.

    The reason for the high heat is the extreme orbital velocity required to keep them up. If they reduced it to 0, when they dropped back into the atmosphere, the atmosphere itself would act like a cushion, and as they fell into the atmosphere, their own terminal velocity would slow them down gracefully.

    Search around for Joseph Kittinger (jump from 102,800 feet in 1960) and Roger Eugene Andreyev (jump from 80,325 in 1962)

    There are a few problems with it though.

    I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit. They have oms thrusters, good for changing altitude on a mission and maintaining their orbit, but not dropping so much speed.

    If they brought the whole shuttle in that way, assuming in a flat orientation (bottom down, top up, 0 ground speed), it would slow down very gracefully, but once in the atmosphere they would be in a stall, and I doubt the oms engines would be able to maintain it's attitude. It may be unrecoverable once it's in the air.

    If they rode the shuttle down to a low geosynchronous orbit and then jumped, they would be in very close proximity to the shuttle for a long time. There would be a huge risk of encountering the shuttle or debris as they re-entered in such close proximity to each other. Getting smacked in the head by a 2,000 ton airplane in a free fall can hurt. People would likely have a higher terminal velocity than the orbiter (the orbiter has a lot more surface area than an EVA suit), so the people would likely drop faster, but once their parachutes deployed, they'd slow dramatically, where the still falling orbiter wouldn't.

    It would take a lot of planning to avoid existing debris in orbit.

    It would take a lot of planning and luck to drop them anywhere close to where they'd want to land. Landing in Nevada or landing in the Atlantic or Pacific ocean would almost be a crap shoot. If they came down in just EVA suits, landing in the water wouldn't be practical.

    Dropping the orbiter out of the air, even aiming for Nevada, may land in an unpredictable area. Hitting a metro area within say 1000 miles would be a bad thing(tm).

    The crew don't have EVA suits with enough air to make the jump from orbit to breathable atmosphere (10k feet).

    I don't believe the EVA suits carry beacons that are trackable from the ground.

    Most importantly, they don't have parachutes.

    This would have been something excellent to test out years ago, and they've had plenty of chances to try it out with "crash dummies" and timed/altitude parachute deployments.

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[iluvcapra]

I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit.

Bring it UP to a geosynchronous orbit. The shuttle usually orbits at LEOs around 5200 miles (semi-major axis). Geosync is up around 26,200 miles . (In that chart, the little blue fuzz is LEO, and the black dashes are geostationary.)

The shuttle can't attain that high an orbit, and I dont' think the shuttle can survive outside the van allen belts. When it has to deliver satellites to geosynchronous orbit they use a second stage booster out of the cargo bay.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Enigma2175]

I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit.

If they rode the shuttle down to a low geosynchronous orbit

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Geosynchronous

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Cyberax]

"I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit. They have oms thrusters, good for changing altitude on a mission and maintaining their orbit, but not dropping so much speed."

WTF?????

Geosynchronous orbit is about 36000 kilometers, while Shuttle's orbit is about 300 kilomterers, AFAIR.

In any case, going UP won't help you a bit (you'll still be in an inertial orbit). You need to _reduce_ your speed essentially to zero.

That means you have to expend _the_ _same_ _amount_ of fuel that was required to lift the Shuttle in the first place.

And that's completely impossible with chemical fuels.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    No, I really meant down into a geosynchronous orbit. :)

    At a low orbit with 0 ground speed, the orbit will decay fast, which is what you'd want. If it went up to where it could maintain that orbit, well, it wouldn't come down very easily.

    Basically, do a burn similar to their deorbit burn. Spin it around backwards, fire the main engines for about 4 minutes, flip back around, and fly home. :)

    When they do the deorbit burn, they slow down by about 150mph, and the orbit decays rapidly.

    They don't carry enough fuel to bring that down to 0 though.

    I went looking around, and found that there was a proposal a long time ago for basically a bean bag that an astronaut could climb into. More like a big foam filled sleeping bag. It had minimal heat shielding, but if they were dropped geosynchronous, they could make it back. It'd take about 4 hours or so, trapped inside a little bag, with no light, no communications, nothing. They'd just lay in it and wonder if they were going to survive. It was dropped because of the potential psychological effects, and they never tested it from a real altitude. The only "test" was throwing a crash dummy in the bag from a bridge.

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[AeroIllini]

I don't know that there's enough fuel on the shuttle to bring it down to a geosynchronous orbit. They have oms thrusters, good for changing altitude on a mission and maintaining their orbit, but not dropping so much speed.

Low Earth Orbit velocity is approximately 7.8 km/s. The Hubble's orbit is slightly higher, with a slower velocity of 7.5 km/s.

The delta-v capability of a space shuttle after successfully completing a launch is approximately 600 mph (0.27 km/s), depending on the weight of the payload it's carrying. Dumping all their non-essential items out the airlock before the burn might gain them something, but not nearly enough. Remember that it takes two extra rockets and a full bolt-on fuel tank to achieve that 7.8 km/s in the first place (actually 9.3 km/s with atmospheric effects).

Even if a second rocket with a payload of nothing but fuel was launched to rendezvous with the shuttle, it would still not be enough to slow down the shuttle to zero tangential velocity. Nothing as big as the Stage 1 tank has ever been boosted into orbit in a single launch. It would take many launches and lots of complicated orbital rendezvous maneuvers to refuel the shuttle enough on-orbit to achieve a 7.5 km/s burn.

And even then, Main Engine Cutoff (MECO) during launch is at T+8 minutes; the shuttle engines can't burn a full tank of fuel much faster than that (they throttle down right at the end to keep the acceleration to 3g or less, but before that it's balls-to-the-wall). I'm not sure how long it would take the orbiter to reach the atmosphere during the deorbit maneuver--the shuttle would start to fall to the Earth immediately, in an arc that would end up perfectly vertical with respect to the ground--but 8 minutes seems like a long time. If the shuttle hit the atmosphere before the full 7.5 km/s delta-v was achieved, it would still have some tangential velocity, making for a bumpy ride, and the possibility of heating effects on unprotected surfaces.

In any case, there isn't nearly enough fuel up there to do this, and any secondary launch to bring them fuel may as well just bring a rescue capsule for the astronauts.

Thanks for the fun thought experiment, though.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    More as in geosynchronous - traveling synchronous with the geo (ground/earth). It would just fail to maintain it's orbit, but that's the idea. :)

    0 forward velocity means less friction against the air. Zinging anything across the atmosphere really quickly will ... well ... make a lot of friction, and as it flies through the thinner parts of the atmosphere, it will get hot and not slow very well.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    Think about what I was explaining, don't get stuck on one word.

    Take a nice fast space shuttle, and bring it to 0 ground speed. Not fly up to a stable geosynchronous orbit. If you go UP, you're going the wrong way to come DOWN. As it falls and the air thickens, it'll slow down. The shuttle wasn't exactly made for it, which is why I said the other parts. It's not exactly a practical plan, but it could have been used as a contingency plan. Now their contingency plan is to launch another shuttle which at the odds will likely have a fault too.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    Maybe they'll cocnsider it in the future.

    They could save a lot of weight if they're just riding it down.

    Cargo bay doors? Ejected.
    Nav computers (only 3 of 5 required for normal missions)? Ejected.
    Extra seats? Ejected.
    Storage lockers? Ejected.
    2 basket balls? Ejected.
    Canada Robotic Arm? Ejected.
    Post flight checklist? Nah don't need that any more. Ejected.
    Landing gear? Ejected. :)

    Parachutes? Nah, I'm taking those along. Ride it down to 20k feet, and jump out of the cargo bay.

    Hmmm.. They DO have parachutes now, don't they? They're used in case of low altitude failure, where they can jump out the lower door.
 

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[pnewhook]

Hmmm.. They DO have parachutes now, don't they? They're used in case of low altitude failure, where they can jump out the lower door.

No, the astronauts no NOT have parachutes.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[pnewhook]

When they do the deorbit burn, they slow down by about 150mph, and the orbit decays rapidly. They don't carry enough fuel to bring that down to 0 though.

Actually, no where near 0. In a three minute burn they reduce the speed by ~300 km/h but they are still flying at around 30000 km/h.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[pnewhook]

The reason for the high heat is the extreme orbital velocity required to keep them up. If they reduced it to 0, when they dropped back into the atmosphere, the atmosphere itself would act like a cushion, and as they fell into the atmosphere, their own terminal velocity would slow them down gracefully.

Actually the extreme heat is the friction against the atmosphere that is slowing them down. If you maintain orbit outside the atmosphere, there is no heat from the velocity.

If they brought the whole shuttle in that way, assuming in a flat orientation (bottom down, top up, 0 ground speed), it would slow down very gracefully

In reality it would very likely burn up due to extreme friction against the atmosphere.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Cyberax]

WTF#2 ????

"Take a nice fast space shuttle, and bring it to 0 ground speed."

One more time. To slow down the Shuttle to zero speed need to expend at least EXACTLY the same amount of fuel that you use now to lift up the Shuttle.

This mode is called 'powered descent' we used it on the Moon. But it's impossible to do it to land chemical-rocket based ship on the Earth. It might be possible with nuclear rockets, though.

"As it falls and the air thickens, it'll slow down. The shuttle wasn't exactly made for it, which is why I said the other parts."

The Shuttle was made EXACTLY for this mode. It uses air friction to dissipate orbital energy.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[ultranova]

Take a nice fast space shuttle, and bring it to 0 ground speed. Not fly up to a stable geosynchronous orbit. If you go UP, you're going the wrong way to come DOWN. As it falls and the air thickens, it'll slow down.

If you have enough engine capacity to stop at orbit relative to ground (which I presume you meant), you have enough engine capacity to simply do a powered landing. Simply turn the engines down where they just barely keep you afloat, and then turn them a bit further down, so you'll descend in a gentle and controlled way. Of course it would take a nuclear rocket, at the very least, to do that.

The shuttle wasn't exactly made for it, which is why I said the other parts.

The shuttle was made for a lot rougher landing. That part is not a problem.

It's not exactly a practical plan, but it could have been used as a contingency plan.

No, it isn't a practical plan, and it can't be used as a contingency plan for that exact reason.

You've seen a shuttle prior to launch, right? Ever notice that huge cylinder which the shuttle is attached to, which in fact dwarfs the shuttle itself? That's the fuel tank for the main engine, needed to bring the shuttle up to orbital speed. It's not quite enough either, but requires the help of two boosters. In order to stop from orbital speed would require just as much fuel (minus the amount used to fight air resistance and gravity at the beginning of the flight). The shuttle simply doesn't have it. In order to have it, the initial launch vehicle would need to carry all that fuel to the orbit too. We do not have the ability to send that much mass to space at a price we could afford.

Now their contingency plan is to launch another shuttle which at the odds will likely have a fault too.

Well, the alternative your proposing would require them to magically generate a tankerful of fuel and a tank to hold it from nothing.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Geostationary - Above the equator, Satellite remains stationary above a point on the earth. Geosynchronous - satellite is regularly above the same spot on the earth's surface (e.g. a polar orbit)

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    Yes they do. :)

    It's the ICES Inflight Crew Escape System (ICES)

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    That sounds an awful lot like what I said. :)

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[pnewhook]

Interesting. Thanks!

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    You didn't reference my first post, did you? Follow the parents up to it.

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    The shuttle is made to glide in with a nose up attitude until it encountered enough atmosphere to fly normally.

    What I was suggesting was a flat drop until it reached enough air to fly in, then going to a nose down attitude to build up some forward air speed so the control surfaces could work.

    Big big difference. One is flying in. One is taking a stalled glider (a really big one) and hoping to get up some airspeed to fly with.

    The first one has a lot of speed to burn off in the atmosphere. The second could have a lot less if done properly.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    It takes an awful lot more fuel to make the entire space shuttle (EFT, SRB, and orbiter) lift from the ground to orbit and gain enough speed. You're working against gravity and the atmosphere. You have to reach escape velocity.

    What I was suggesting was just to slow it down. That wouldn't require anywhere near the fuel for the launch. It would just burn off some speed without dragging across the atmosphere.

    But yes, they don't carry enough. If it was tested and worked, they could engineer it into future plans. It's not an impossible task, and even a rendezvous with pre-launched fuel tank would be doable. Well, if they engineered for it. They don't exactly have an easy gas door to open and refuel anything with, and an EVA to attach a fresh tank isn't in the current plans.

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Cyberax]

"The shuttle is made to glide in with a nose up attitude until it encountered enough atmosphere to fly normally."

No. The Shuttle is made to move nose up to dissipate most of its energy on heatshield. It's more like 'continuously slamming against a wall' than flying.

And the main failure mode is not stalling, but heatshield failure.

"What I was suggesting was a flat drop until it reached enough air to fly in, then going to a nose down attitude to build up some forward air speed so the control surfaces could work."

Let me repeat one more time: YOU CAN'T MAKE SHUTTLE 'FALL' UNLESS YOU EXPEND TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF ROCKET FUEL. You _HAVE_ to dissipate orbital energy _somehow_ - by air friction or by firing a rocket.

What exactly is not clear to you?

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[AeroIllini]

    Maybe they'll cocnsider it in the future.

    They could save a lot of weight if they're just riding it down.

    Cargo bay doors? Ejected.

    Nav computers (only 3 of 5 required for normal missions)? Ejected.

    Extra seats? Ejected.

    Storage lockers? Ejected.

    2 basket balls? Ejected.

    Canada Robotic Arm? Ejected.

    Post flight checklist? Nah don't need that any more. Ejected.

    Landing gear? Ejected. :)

    Parachutes? Nah, I'm taking those along. Ride it down to 20k feet, and jump out of the cargo bay.

    Hmmm.. They DO have parachutes now, don't they? They're used in case of low altitude failure, where they can jump out the lower door.

Yeah, even with all that ejected, they still wouldn't be able to get to 7.5 km/s delta-v.

The fuel required to do that weighs about the same as 4 fully loaded shuttle orbiters.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    You don't have to yell. I'm not suggesting it can be done on this mission, or even with this shuttle. It would be interesting to test, and possibly use on future craft as a contingency method for reentry.

    I don't think the current shuttle design has ever run into a stall scenario. Reentry is so well planned, they can read it off the card, and if they do it right, they'll be stopped on the mark at the end of the runway.

    What I was suggesting would be bringing it in, in an effective stall, which would need to be recovered from. The forward airspeed wouldn't be there, so they'd have to get it to get the control surfaces working for landing. Well, assuming something else hadn't gone wrong.

    We're talking about a shuttle that has potentially failed heat shields, so I'm throwing ideas out there that could work, but as I noted in my original post, they couldn't work due to lack of planning for the scenario and lack of available fuel.

    I suspect they'll simply patch the crack and land normally. If they can't, they'll send the standby shuttle up to collect everyone, and give the broken one an impossible reentry trajectory. Something like flip for the deorbit burn with the cargo bay doors open, gear down, and hatches open, and never flip back over. Make it as dirty as possible, with as many induced heat shielding failures as possible. It would come down in a blaze of glory with any surviving parts hopefully landing in the Pacific ocean. That would be a terrible shame though, but much better than the thought of a crew of astronauts being on it when it happened.

    They can't just leave it up there. It's orbit will decay, and it'll come down in an unpredictable location. That's all we need is for a crippled shuttle to come down clean, nose first, into Los Angeles or New York. Well, maybe LA wouldn't a;l that be bad. :)

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[TheGavster]

A powered descent like you describe would take exactly as much energy as the power ascent that brought them to their current orbit. That is, 2 giagantic solid boosters and a supply of fuel larger in volume than the craft itself. There's a good reason that we've always used aerobraking to recover spacecraft: it's flipping expensive to do a powered recovery.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    I did a little reading....

    The rear OMS engines if both fired can reduce the speed by 2 ft/s/s

    A deorbit burn is a change of about 100f/s to 500f/s

    They carry enough fuel for 14h of OMS thrust. This is essential, since they are automatically fired constantly during flight. They are rated for 1000 on/off cycles.

    Since they say their deorbit burn is approx 3 to 4 minutes, that's just about right.

    A full sustained burn, with full tanks for the OMS could change the orbital velocity by 100,800f/s in 14 hours.

    Assuming your number is right, and they need to bleed off 7.5km/s, that would be 24,606 feet/second,
or a 12,303 second burn,
or a 205.5 minute burn,
or a 3.4 hour burn.

    I'm really glad you bothered to post it, because ... well ... I bothered to research it, and found that it's perfectly likely that they *DO* have enough fuel on board to bring their orbital velocity down to 0, and drop like a very expensive airplane shaped rock. :)

   

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[metaforest]

They'd have to bring the orbital velocity down from the 17,000+mph to 0.

You might want to run the maths....

If they had enough energy to do a full-stop de-orbit they'd have more than enough to alter their orbit to reach the ISS... a MUCH SAFER solution...

As it is they only have enough fuel to change their inertial vector ~800 - 1200 meters/sec no where near enough for even a 2 degree orbital plane alteration let alone a full-stop de-orbit....

You need to stop watching SciFi.... it's rotting your brain.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They carry enough fuel for 14h of OMS thrust.

[citation needed]

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[Cyberax]

"You don't have to yell. I'm not suggesting it can be done on this mission, or even with this shuttle. It would be interesting to test, and possibly use on future craft as a contingency method for reentry."

It will never be used as a 'contingency'. If we ever learn how to build vehicles capable of powered descent, then it will be used as the primary method of landing (because it's so much nicer than aerobraking).

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    How about (pdf), pg 3.

"Each of the two OMS engines produces 6,000
pounds of thrust. For a typical orbiter weight,
both engines together create an acceleration of
approximately 2 ft/sec2 or 0.06 g's." ...

"Each OMS engine is capable of 1,000 starts and
15 hours of cumulative firing. The minimum
duration of an OMS engine firing is 2 seconds."

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JimFive]

"Each OMS engine is capable of 1,000 starts and 15 hours of cumulative firing. The minimum duration of an OMS engine firing is 2 seconds."

While this says that the engine is capable of a 15 hour burn it gives no indication of whether there is enough fuel on board to achieve a 15 hour burn.
--
JimFive

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    Yup. I'd have to assume that if they can do a 15 hour burn, that would imply that they carry enough for a 15 hour burn at launch.

    But, I don't work for NASA either, so I don't have those juicy little tidbits. I can't exactly check on their fuel status. :)

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Wonderful. You quote

"Each of the two OMS engines produces 6,000 pounds of thrust. For a typical orbiter weight, both engines together create an acceleration of approximately 2 ft/sec2 or 0.06 g's."

and then you go in ignoring the very next sentence:

Using up a fully loaded tank, the OMS can provide a total velocity change of approximately 1,000 ft/sec.

14 hours of acceleration of 2 ft/s^2 and only 1,000 ft/s of delta V? Something does not match, huh? Perhaps it's because when they are talking about the engine, they are ignoring the fact that you need to stop at a gas pump from time to time.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[K. S. Kyosuke]

(...go on ignoring..., ...of acceleration at..., damn those typos.)

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[AeroIllini]

Assuming your number is right, and they need to bleed off 7.5km/s, that would be 24,606 feet/second,
or a 12,303 second burn,
or a 205.5 minute burn,
or a 3.4 hour burn.

I'm really glad you bothered to post it, because ... well ... I bothered to research it, and found that it's perfectly likely that they *DO* have enough fuel on board to bring their orbital velocity down to 0, and drop like a very expensive airplane shaped rock. :)

That may be true, but 3.4 hours is much more time than a standard deorbit, and they are decelerating that entire time.

So let's see...

Hubble's orbit is at 560 km (approx).
Height of the atmosphere is 100 km, officially recognized. It actually tapers off asymptotically to nothingness; there may be a stray nitrogen molecule or two even at the Hubble's height.

The standard deorbit maneuver (to take off that tiny 500 ft/s) is performed about an hour before landing. They hit the atmosphere about 30 minutes before landing, so a very tiny deorbit burn will drop them 460 km (on a shallow parabolic path) in a mere 30 minutes. The remaining 30 minutes is filled with hellfire and gliding to the runway.

30 minutes into your proposed 2 ft/s/s OMS burn, they will have only removed about 1100 ft/s. Of course, since that's over double their deorbit burn, they will be falling much faster (steeper parabola), and it will take less than the 30 minutes to hit the atmosphere, at which point they will still have a tangential velocity of 23,506 ft/s = 7.1 km/s.

The hideous numerical integration calculation required to find out exactly when they encounter atmospheric effects with a constant burn is left as an exercise for the reader.

So yes, they might have enough OMS fuel on board to slowly burn away 7.5 km/s, if they were way out in the middle of the solar system somewhere. At 560 km off the surface, though, they need a whole lot more thrust to remove all that in the short time before they hit atmo.

"We dinnae have the POW'R, Captain!"

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    A fully loaded tank.

    How many tanks of fuel do they carry?

    Being that everything is extremely redundantly redundantly redundant on the shuttle, I can't suspect that they'd just have one for something essential like maneuvering.

Re:I have the fail-safe solution to these problems

[JWSmythe]

    The right way to do it would be up to the folks at NASA to figure out.

    I believe a deorbit burn not only decelerates them, but pushes them down too. And that burn is only 3 to 4 minutes long.

    It would probably work if they were put on the upside of a curve, rather than the downside. So, they'd be gaining altitude and losing ground speed, and as they start getting pulled back down, the deceleration burn could continue pretty far down towards the atmosphere.

    That calculation is way beyond my skills. Back in the day, I'm sure someone at NASA could have it figured out in less than 5 minutes with a slide rule, but now I'm sure they can just plug it into the computer, and get it back in seconds.

    Doesn't anyone at NASA carry a slide rule with them any more? :)

Minor Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn those pesky kids.

What would happen to Atlantis?

[yogibaer]

So in case of any real damage, Endeavor blasts off (piloted by a 2 Astronaut crew?), all the Astronauts on board Atlantis pack their bags and take a seat in the other shutlle and live happily ever after, which is most important of all. But what would happen to Atlantis in that case? You obviously can't tow it or land it by remote, but leaving such a large object in a (decaying) orbit could cause a lot of trouble. So what would they do? Send it to the moon à la "Space Cowboys" or give it a gentle but controlled kick, letting it crash and burn up in the atmosphere?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Anonymous Coward]

leave it up there until they can send another crew to repair it

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[EvanED]

I read some article that said it was the latter -- putting it into a suicide path into the ocean.

See this AP article:

In the event of an abandoned ship, Atlantis would be given self-destruct instructions, to ensure it would not fall back to Earth in a populous area.

NASA, said Jeffs, would direct it into landing maneuvers to crash somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[TapeCutter]

What, there's no self-destruct mechanisim? No robotic countdown? No strobe lights? - NOTHING?

What kind of spaceship is that?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Zoxed]

> But what would happen to Atlantis in that case? You obviously can't tow it or land it by remote

Why can they not land on remote ?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[phayes]

Because, unlike what the russians did with Buran, NASA never installed a fully automated landing system on the shuttle, due in large part to the astronaut corps not wanting to be obsoleted.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[vlm]

Why can they not land on remote ?

Because the whole point of the exercise is to land something that might disintegrate.

Disintegrated parts always land short.

When the last one blew up, the parts luckily did not land in downtown Houston. Next time they may not be so lucky.

Why not pick a site where it won't fly over anyone? Well, if you fire the OMS retros on the opposite side of the planet from the landing site, and draw a line from there to the landing site at this orbital inclination, it probably passes over something sensitive. There's not many sites, and based on consumables there are not many orbits to try. Maybe one of them is least dangerous, but still too dangerous.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[ColaMan]

..... and it would really suck afterwards to see it survive re-entry.

Watching it proceed on a textbook glidepath, gear down, descending into the water.....

But seriously, you could leave it up there. It's in a pretty high orbit.... the hubble telescope's been there for plenty of years now with only a small station-keeping rocket. Send up a nice inflatable pod that fits into the cargo bay like Bigelow aerospace's designs, tack on a couple of solar panels and ta-da! Another space station.

I know, it's not really that feasible (or useful), just seems a waste to burn it up.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[icebrain]

There's also a Rube-Goldberg-esque rig they can fit that allows the orbiter to land completely on autopilot (because currently some steps are manual-only, undocking, lowering the gear, popping the drag chute, etc). It involves removing a couple control panels, slipping a special wire harness in between the mid-deck and the flight deck, and uploading a special softare rev. I'm sure if they did that it would be targeted to land somewhere like Edwards.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[meringuoid]

You obviously can't tow it or land it by remote

I'm surprised at that. Buran was able to fly to orbit and return entirely automatically in 1988. The American shuttles were not capable of the same at the time, but in the intervening twenty years they've not been upgraded to have that ability?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure. Like that wouldn't void the warranty.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of spaceship is that?

A real spaceship!

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

Have two shuttles ever been in space at the same time? Docked together?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[YrWrstNtmr]

IIRC, the only consideration on the Shuttle is the landing gear. It is a one shot deal, which can only be done after reentry, and its slowed down to below ~300 mph. Anywhere else, and you have broken gear and a crashed Shuttle. Everything else can be done remotely, but a 'deploy' signal to the gear anytime before it slows down enough is a crash.

This was a deliberate design decision, not a case of 'we don't know how'.

Since STS-121 in 2006, there is now a remote cable to allow ground control of the normally manual functions. Obviously, only in an emergency.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[holmstar]

...reminds me of the opening sequence of "Dead like me" where the main character gets killed by a space toilet.

Ha ha... ok it wouldn't be funny it it happened in real life, but her reaction to seeing the flaming toilet approaching is great.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Anonymous Coward]

they have insane man in the loop requirements. basically the idiots in NASA removed the ability to deploy landing gear automatically in an effort to preserve manned space flight. brainlessness has always been a hallmark at nasa.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[GargamelSpaceman]

Not true, a young woman of eighteen was fatally crushed by the ship s toilet. This has been documented in a television show.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[GargamelSpaceman]

And were they NAKED?

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[JWSmythe]

    I'm 99% positive that they don't even need the 2 man crew to do it. But, I'm sure they would. How many seats are there on the Endeavor, and how many folks are up in the Atlantis? Gotta have somewhere to tie everyone down. I wouldn't want to make a re-entry standing in the back holding on tight. :)

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Endeavour would have a 4-person crew that would meet up with Atlantis and accept the crew. Since this mission would be a contingency and the details are rather sketchy, it's difficult to tell what exactly the fate of the orbiters would be, but one would hope NASA would do its best to save both orbiters (including the damaged one) if at all possible, especially since "the Shuttle program could not be sustainably run with fewer than three Orbiters."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-3xx#Remote_Control_Orbiter

You CAN land Atlantis by remote, as the above article indicates. What's uncertain, though, is if there are two of the Remote Control Orbiter cables--one is already on the ISS, which is presumably unreachable by either orbiter (different orbital inclinations with Atlantis already detailed; doubtful that Endeavour would have the fuel to go to the ISS before or after rescuing the Atlantis crew and before de-orbit).

If NASA has a second RCO cable, I would like to think they would put it onboard Endeavour and transfer that over to Atlantis at least to give remote landing a shot, even with a damaged heat shield. If that were to happen, they would attempt to land at Edwards AFB "on a trajectory such that if it should break up, it would do so with debris landing in the South Pacific Ocean." The payload bay does would obviously be kept closed in this event, whereas without the RCO cable they would have been left open since the orbiter was completely unpiloted and doomed.

However, all of the above contingency is very unlikely since the orbiter is very likely in good shape and will probably survive re-entry, just as all but one mission beforehand have.

What's amazing is that the Shuttle program *didn't* have any disasters relating to the heat shield until the loss of the Columbia. Regarding STS-1, "Bob Crippen reported that all through the first stage of the launch up to SRB separation, he saw 'white stuff' coming off the External Tank and splattering the windows, which was probably the white paint covering the ET thermal foam." It's amazing that the paint or debris didn't hit the heat shield in a vulnerable spot and cause orbiter loss on either of the first 2 Shuttle missions (the heat shield was pretty seriously damaged still--re-entry nearly destroyed the right main landing gear on the first mission; had they realized the damage, the mission would have been abandoned and the orbiter lost).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1#Mission_anomalies

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[Ernesto Alvarez]

And the ironic thing is that shuttle Buran did an unmanned automated landing in 1988. And that feature was part of the original design.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[icebrain]

Standard Soviet design philosophy: don't trust the user, centralize control.

Re:What would happen to Atlantis?

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

They can land it by remote. However, since the Shuttle program is nearing the end, they would just re-enter it over the Pacific instead. The Shuttle can't make it to the moon by a longshot.

Sounds like more than surface damage

[brentonboy]

That's really scary! A line of cracks sounds like the entire wing is bent, not just surface damage caused by hitting a bird or something. How are they going to be able to tell if the inside of the wing is fractured? The tiles could be in perfect condition, but the wing could snap off during re-entry!

Re:Sounds like more than surface damage

[holmstar]

Wow... there's a great example of jumping to conclusions.

Re:Sounds like more than surface damage

[brentonboy]

No, it's an example of speculation. Jumping to conclusions would be if I said:

"The wing is bent. They wont be able to tell that the wing is fractured. It is going to snap off during re-entry!"

What I wonder...

[Angstroem]

Is this really a new development that the Shuttle gets increasingly fragile or is it just the fact that since Columbia it gets checked extra carefully and therefore revealing what before just went unnoticed?

Re:What I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Extra careful checks... The Columbia disaster was due to comparatively huge damages to the shuttle, and this time they even report "scratches". There's no reason to worry about this, and NASA won't even inspect it more closely.

In comparison, the foam that struck Columbia was the size of a briefcase of 1.2 pounds (0.54 kg) and hit the wing at 800 feet per second (240 m/s), causing a 6-10 inch (15-25 cm) diameter hole in a critical section allowing hot gases to enter the wing.

This scratch is in addition to the much lower severity, also not in such a critical section.

Re:What I wonder...

[Maddog Batty]

The latter. The photos and laser scans made of the chips have been made with an inspection boom which is now carried on the shuttle to make these inspections post Columbia.

Normally (again post Columbia) the shuttle does a back flip when arriving at the ISS so that dinks can be photographed by the ISS. On this trip, this obviously isn't possible.

Oh and past shuttle flights have had far far worse damage than this which is minor.

Re:What I wonder...

[infalliable]

The shuttle is very fragile compared to the Apollo spacecraft. I would call it a poor design as far as safety goes.

In general, ice forms on the fuel tanks as they sit waiting for launch. On launch, the entire thing shakes and the ice falls off. On Apollo, the spacecraft was at the top so nothing could fall onto it. The shuttle has all the "sensitive" parts in the middle, so there is plenty that can fall on it.

This sort of damage has always happened. NASA has just become very concerned over it lately and does massive checks once in orbit.

Re:What I wonder...

[Hynee]

Hardly any ice has every come off the external tank--it's always foam, forced off by ice growing between the foam and the internal tank structure. One of the big changes since Columbia has been to stop ice getting between the structure and the foam, and get rid of unnecessary foam.

The chunk of foam that doomed Columbia was designed as an aero device--it cleaned the airflow around the struts that attached the external tank to the nose of the shuttle. They simply got rid of it, it did little and posed a significant risk to all shuttle flights.

Ice did come off Apollo, it had no insulation on the outside.

Speculation

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe NASA could build a capsule small enough to put into the shuttle through the side hatch. One crew member initiates re-entry then rides out aero braking inside the capsule. If the spacecraft burns up the capsule falls into the air. Parachutes open automatically.

As far as I know the pilot is only needed to manually deploy landing gear. Everything else can be automatic or remotely operated.

Re:Speculation

[maxume]

That would make for an exciting scene in a movie, but this guy points out at article:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1231115&cid=27935049

that implies it is quite a bit easier than that (the initiation can probably be done remotely, or on a timer).

Re:Speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding was that they fixed this with a cable, wasn't there an article about it on here a few months ago, so that the shuttle could land entirely autonomously.

Re:Speculation

[holmstar]

It's kind of funny that the Buran (Russian space shuttle, presumably built using stolen blueprints) could and did fly completely autonomously (no crew even on board) 21 years ago, yet for the shuttle to do it today requires a bit of hardware hacking.

Re:Speculation

[sznupi]

Buran might have very similar layout, but that's like with current commercial airliners - they too look virtually the same (can you distinguish easily every Boeing from Airbus in the sky?).

It just so happens that there aren't many sensible aerodynamic arrangements, especially given very precise (if pointless, in the case of both shuttles) requirements and extreme flight conditions. And if, while contructing you shuttle, you see that the other team has settled on one layout which seems best also to you - why would you try to be different?

You would be different only where it makes sense - Buran doesn't share with the Shuttle internal construction or engine layout, and has quite a bit different/better heat shield for example.

Now, sure, there might have been some stolen blueprints. But Buran wasn't built as a copy.

PS. Or you could argue that what NASA is currently doing with Ares V is a copy of Energia rocket ;p

Re:Speculation

[sjames]

Alas, the more likely answer is that the shuttle breaks up badly enough to crash hard, but not enough to free the capsule in time for a safe landing. You can't deploy a parachute at mach speeds!

If it was worth it (but it isn't), the better option would be to refit for a fully remote/automated landing.

Since it's not worth it (considering that the shuttle program is end of life), they'd just fire up the OMS engines remotely to put it on course for a burnup and crash in the ocean.

Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[wisebabo]

I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.

The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability. The astronauts may have lobbied to keep NASA from giving the shuttles the ability to land themselves (or via ground control) in an attempt to keep pilots from being made irrelevant. (Throwback to test-pilot days I guess). Does anyone know if the shuttle can be landed without a human crew?

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[vlm]

I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.

Won't work. The landing spots are generally near the takeoff spots. The takeoff spots were located so if it blows up on takeoff, the parts rain down on the dolphins and whales. Unfortunately (?) when it comes in to land, it arrives from the opposite direction, and no one selected landing sites that are empty to the west. Unfortunately gets a ? mark because back in the 70s when the shuttle was going to do everything for everyone, everywhere, it was occasionally claimed it would be able to land on commercial runways... so if you're coming in a bit short, just land at colorado international airport. That, along with most of the vehicles abilities, was all cut during development to save money.

The astronauts may have lobbied to keep NASA from giving the shuttles the ability to land themselves (or via ground control) in an attempt to keep pilots from being made irrelevant. (Throwback to test-pilot days I guess).

Based on the faulty assumption that all pilots do is keep it straight and level and wait as patiently as the plane lands. The whole point of decades of training for airline pilots and astronauts is for them to fully understand each little bit of the A/C and how to work when it breaks. They know their vehicle like a kernel hacker knows his kernel.

So, say the exhaust temperature of one APU is fluctuating. If the computer could "do something" to fix it, it would. The humans job is to invent new ideas of troubleshooting and fixing. Flip that switch see what happens, try this maneuver. The stuff the Apollo 13 guys did is not amazing or unlikely or lucky, despite what the general public thinks, it is in fact exactly what they were supposed to do...

Think of that Canadian pilot whom invented a way to put a jetliner in a slip to lose altitude to land at an abandoned military field when the plane ran out of gas because of metric/imperial issues.

Thats why you have humans onsite, in the loop.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[Anonymous Coward]

... no one selected landing sites that are empty to the west

except for Palmdale, CA and White Sands Missile Range in NM

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[RSCruiser]

Discovery was capable of automatic landing back in 2006 when they were still treading a fine line after Columbia. It appears it was a nasty hack at the time and would be manually plugged in if needed so it may not be included on current flights, but it was available.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/30/0458246

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[dpilot]

Last I heard, the shuttles had full autolanding capability, with one exception. There is no computer control for lowering the landing gear - the controls for that are fully and only manual. That dates back to way-back-when days, when they didn't fully trust the computers. There are no provisions inside the shuttle whatsoever for raising the landing gear, that can only be one at the processing facilities on the ground. Therefore they wanted no chance whatsoever that the landing gear could be accidentally deployed, because if that happened, there would be 3 giant holes in the heat shield, and nothing they could do about it.

So everything from de-orbit through final approach and landing could be done automatically, they'd just have to do it on the belly.

This isn't necessarily bad, either. One of the big fears right now is that there is more space junk in the higher orbit where Atlantis and Hubble currently are. Even if Atlantis is damaged, we want it to come down, so it doesn't add to the space junk problem, itself. For the current situation, self-destruct is a really bad option, unless carried out during reentry. Short of complete success, I would think that a belly landing at Edwards would be the best option, since it would likely yield a whole bunch of either spare parts or museum fodder.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[huge]

Think of that Canadian pilot whom invented a way to put a jetliner in a slip to lose altitude to land at an abandoned military field when the plane ran out of gas because of metric/imperial issues.

I take that as an reference to Gimli Glider, a story that anybody interested about aviation should read. Another good example of having a human in the loop was 2003 shootdown in Baghdad.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[Sausage Nibblets]

Have you ever tried to land even a small Cessna 152? It's fucking hard, and those are the most user friendly planes on the planet. I couldn't imagine an autopilot, which essentially just maintains a heading and trim level, would be able to land the most complex glider humanity has ever constructed.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[DerekLyons]

The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability.

Yes, the Shuttle does have autolanding capability. This was added after the loss of Columbia to cover exactly the scenario you postulate.
 
In the even of an autolanding, the primary recovery site is White Sand NM, with Edwards AFB as backup. They'll use a landing trajectory that minimizes the number of people underneath the landing path.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[the_other_chewey]

I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.

Won't work. The landing spots are generally near the takeoff spots. The takeoff spots were located so if it blows up on takeoff, the parts rain down on the dolphins and whales. Unfortunately (?) when it comes in to land, it arrives from the opposite direction, and no one selected landing sites that are empty to the west.

Bullshit. Primary sites: Shuttle Landing Facility. Edwards AFB. White Sands Space Harbor.
None of which looks problematic in case of an early touchdown or an overshoot. WSSH especially.

In case you mean the risk of debris from a high-altitude breakup a la Columbia, have a look at the list of emergency landing sites, including such highly populated areas as Diego Garcia, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Lots of dolphins and whales, but pretty much nothing else. It might lack the facilities (transponders and stuff) for an automatic landing, but that would be a minor problem to solve in advance of a high-risk mission. And I'd actually bet on them being there already, it being an ETOPS site for civil aviation too.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[the_other_chewey]

Diego Garcia, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

Damn. I meant the Indian Ocean obviously. The rest still stands.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[molo]

I had to look up the Canadian pilot and his landing. Interesting story, thanks for the info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

-molo

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[icebrain]

The Russians did it--their space shuttle's only flight was completely unmanned, with an automatic landing. The US shuttle's autopilot could easily do it too, with the exception of a few deliberately-left-out manual steps like lowering the landing gear.

Autolanding has been around for a relatively long time; airliners have been doing it for decades. The starting conditions are different, and energy management is more of a factor, but that's just an engineering task.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[GodfatherofSoul]

NASA has designated contingency landing strips all across the planet. They only use the most convenient strips because it's, well, conveninet.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[pnewhook]

I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.

The problem is safety protocol. If they think that the shuttle is damaged, they will command it to deorbit in such a way that it burns up on reentry and lands in the pacific, instead of risking a crash on the US mainland. Such a trajectory makes it impossible to land.

Think of it this way. If they choose an re-entry path so that can land on the Pacific side if it survives reentry, then they've also chosen a path so that it will crash onto land if it doesn't survive. The two goals are incompatible, so they choose the safer and fry the shuttle.

The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability.

The shuttles are capable of landing without a crew.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[Civil_Disobedient]

The GP could also be referring to Air Transat Flight 236, which ran out of fuel in-flight above the Atlantic Ocean while heading from Toronto to Lisbon. Due to a lucky minor course correction prior to running out of fuel and some excellent piloting, the plane landed safely on the island of Terceira with no injuries (the plane is apparently still in service). There was a pretty good dramatization done for TV (link).

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[GargamelSpaceman]

That dang Astronaughts Union. Always with their fingers in politics! Congress listens to them since so many of their constituents are Asstronaughts

Why don't they just put an auto pilot on it, then some remote control robots in the cargo bay to do repairs to the Hubble? Any experiments they do up there could be done by robots too, or otherwise automated - I mean telesurgury has been performed, what else do they want? Robots can do it. This is LEO, not Mars. Drones work fine by remote control, there's subsecond delay which is to say negligable. The future is in old fashioned penis shaped rockets and robots. No humans in space! It serves no purpose whatsoever. The space shuttle would make a great flowerpot, or theme diner, and would be worth quite a bit on eBay either whole or in parts.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[brkello]

The whole point of decades of training for airline pilots and astronauts is for them to fully understand each little bit of the A/C and how to work when it breaks.

You really show your ignorance here. Everyone knows it is really cold in space. It is much more important for the astronauts know how to fix the HEATER, not the A/C, if it breaks.

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[sjames]

It cannot auto-land but that's not because of lobbying by astronauts. There was no point to developing that very expensive feature. Keep in mind that the shuttle was designed in the early '70s. It's also worth keeping in mind that while a few commercial jetliners CAN autoland, they are absolutely not trusted to do so without a pilot present to oversee and take over if required. Just imagine if it does it wrong and plows through a major metro area at mach 12!

Re:Why can't you land it by remote/autopilot?

[Anonymous Coward]

So am I the only one who was expecting the "Gimli Glider" to have been invented by a short, stocky, bearded pilot?

This begs the question

[blind biker]

"Have Rockets Run Their Course?"

Re:This begs the question

[Hynee]

No, this begged the question "Has the reentry-vehicle-not-above-the-cryogenic-launch-vehicle configuration run its course". This was answered by the investigation into the 2003 Columbia accicdent, which concluded that the shuttle, the only vehicle to use this configuration, was flawed and experimental. It is vulnerable to the type of damage seen in STS-125, which is unnaceptable, so they are retiring the shuttles.

Rockets are fine, but the reentry vehicle must be above the rocket, because (a) the rocket is likely to throw off either frozen water or insulation at speeds that could damage the orbiter, and (b) you need to be able to pull away from the rocket at any time during launch in case of emergency.

Re:This begs the question

[dzfoo]

No. But they have flown their trajectory.

Re:This begs the question

[holmstar]

(b) you need to be able to pull away from the rocket at any time during launch in case of emergency.

As I understand it, this part is quite uncomfortable if you have to experience it. The astronauts are already experiencing 4-5 Gs of acceleration on the rocket. If you need to use the escape system, you have to exceed that to pull away... something like 15 Gs = not fun, but hey, it's better than dieing.

Re:This begs the question

[blind biker]

they have flown their trajectory

Nice one!

Rescue Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain the logic of a hypothetical rescue mission to me?

The reason a rescue mission is on standby is there are "higher amounts of space debris in Hubble's orbit". Of course in the articles I could find there are not specifics and I don't know if it was the language used by NASA or something that's been dumbed down. So the logic of sending another shuttle into the same orbital debris environment is far from apparent to me.

Re:Rescue Logic

[petermgreen]

The reason a rescue mission is on standby is there are "higher amounts of space debris in Hubble's orbit".
I doubt it. Afaict the shuttle on standby plan was being developed long before the "higher ammount of space debris" issue came up.

NASA is paranoid about a repeat of columbia. As such they have put in place an inspection routine for all shuttle missions and a plan for what to do if the inspection finds damage too big to safely land with.

For most missions they just plan to stay on the ISS until evacuation can be arranged but that isn't practical for a hubble servicing mission so a standby is needed.

Re:Rescue Logic

[Maddog Batty]

http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts125/090508sts400/

"When we made the decision, the odds were 1-in-473 that we would have a problem on the shuttle for which a rescue shuttle was the solution," Griffin said. "Now, there are a lot of problems you can have on the shuttle, right? There are a lot of ways you can die on the shuttle, which is what gives you the overall shuttle PRA (probabilistic risk assessment) of about 1-in-75 or so. So you're roughly five-and-a-half, six times likelier to die on the shuttle for some reason that the backup shuttle can't save you from than you are to die from one the backup shuttle can save you from. ... From a statistical point of view, it makes no real sense to have a backup shuttle.

"However, here's the flip side. ... Those numbers cannot be explained to politicians or the general public. And should we have a failure with those 1-in-473 or whatever odds it was, should we have a failure that the rescue shuttle could have saved you from and we had not done it, the consequence to NASA would have been incalculable. We would appear to have been cavalier with human life, we would appear to have not taken every possible precaution, we would appear to have been coldly calculating the odds and rolling the dice with people's lives. And the appearance of behaving that way, in my judgment, was unacceptable. I could not risk that for NASA."

While the overall risk of impact damage is about three times higher for a Hubble mission than a flight to the International Space Station, it is not as bad as flight planners initially feared.

"We know we're accepting a little higher risk for this flight," Steve Stich, manager of the orbiter project office at the Johnson Space Center, said in an interview. "That's why we've tracked it very carefully."

Even factoring in debris from a satellite collision in February between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium telephone relay station, the mean odds of a catastrophic impact during the Hubble mission are on the order of 1-in-229, which is well below the 1-in-200 threshold that requires an executive-level decision by NASA's leadership.

A preliminary analysis put the odds at 1-in-185, but the numbers improved after recent radar observations and consideration of the shuttle's orientation in space during the Hubble mission. The planned orientation, or attitude timeline, reduces the crew's exposure to impacts that could damage critical areas of the ship's heat shield, the coolant loops in the shuttle's cargo bay door radiators and cockpit windows.

Re:Rescue Logic

[mea37]

This is interesting background, but I'd say the statistical calculation is either not fully stated, or incorrect.

He says that, of the scenarios where there could be loss-of-life on the shuttle, about 1/7 of the time a rescue mission could be used to prevent that loss of life. Interesting, but two things: First, a 1/7 reduction in the death rate for an activity sounds significant to me. Second, this really says nothing about the statistical sense of having a shuttle on standby.

The real question is, what is the cost of having a shuttle on standby 472 times when it isn't needed and useful, vs. the cost of not having it on-hand the one time it is? Anyone trying to evaluate this formula may well get demonized for putting a "price" on loss of human life, but if you want to know what makes "statistical sense", that's the approach to use.

Now I don't know which way these numbers work out for a stand-by shuttle; but if a standby shuttle were free, you'd always have one, so why try to talk about the statistical sense of having one without accounting for the cost?

Re:Rescue Logic

[GargamelSpaceman]

I thought their usual backup was to go to the ISS in case of damage, but they can't because they are in the wrong orbit for that in order to service Hubble.

Re:Rescue Logic

[petermgreen]

I thought their usual backup was to go to the ISS in case of damage
Afaict other than this hubble mission all the shuttle missions since columbia have been going to the ISS anyway. I think the plan is to stay docked with the ISS until just before the rescue mission arrives, then move everyone to the space station and dump the damaged orbiter so the rescue mission can dock.

but they can't because they are in the wrong orbit for that in order to service Hubble.
Right, hubble and the ISS are in totally different orbits, moving from one to the other would take far more delta-v than is availible.

Re:Rescue Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

They appear to be coldly calculating the odds and rolling the dice with people's lives.

Re:Rescue Logic

[DNS-and-BIND]

So. What are all the ways you can die on the Space Shuttle?

Re:Rescue Logic

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

1. heart attack ...

Well, we're borked....

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks to me like the Shuttle design was always incompetent, and we just tried to pretend it wasn't.

When we used captured German scientists we had good rocket kit. I suggest we ask Mercedes or BMW for some help in building the next one. We're already asking Rolls-Royce for help because we can't make VTOL aircraft.

Perhaps, while we're over in Europe, we could ask the French how to build a successful supersonic passenger jet, and the British how to build supersonic cars. I hear they're making a 1000 mph one......

Re:Well, we're borked....

[stjobe]

You'd be better off asking the Russians for rocketry help, they're the experts these days.

Re:Well, we're borked....

[clickclickdrone]

>we could ask the French how to build a successful supersonic passenger jet,
If you mean Concord, that was Anglo/French.

Re:Well, we're borked....

[smoker2]

Don't you mean Concorde ?

Re:Well, we're borked....

[FatAlb3rt]

While you're at it, get some tips from the Amish - they seem to have transportation nailed down.

Re:Well, we're borked....

[stjobe]

Huh. You're comparing the well-renowned Russian rocketry competence with the technology-adverse Amish?

What a strange world you must live in...

Re:Well, we're borked....

[dwye]

> Looks to me like the Shuttle design was always
> incompetent, and we just tried to pretend it wasn't.

It wasn't incompetent, but it WAS badly proxmired.

> When we used captured German scientists we had good rocket kit.

No, when we devoted 4% of the total US Government budget to NASA. Since Nixon canceled half the remaining Apollo flights (after the hardware was bought and paid for), the Space Station, and let the Shuttle be proxmired down from a geostationary orbit capable craft to what we now have, things haven't gone as well.

> Perhaps, while we're over in Europe, we could ask the
> French how to build a successful supersonic passenger jet,

Why? They never had one. Just something that required huge subsidies to keep flying, until losing one of the birds let them ground the rest permanently, rather then restart the subsidies. Boeing didn't drop out of the competition because they couldn't figure out how to make one, but because they couldn't figure out how to make money from building one (or even five), or how any airline could make a profit operating one. As it happens, neither could AirFrance, British Airlines (now Airways), or the consortium that built the Concordes.

Hubble's Revenge

[srussia]

They could have repaired the damage using the asbestos fiber filling they ripped out of Hubble's old basketball.

Re:Remote Pilot

[yogibaer]

I am sorry, I should read Slashdot more often. There obviously is a possiblity to remote pilot ths shuttle since STS-121: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/30/0458246.

mo3 down

[Anonymous Coward]

website Third, yoOu NIGGER ASSOCIATION

True American Heroes

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to be first to salute the courage of commander Altman and the crew of Atlantis on mission STS-125.

When call was made they stepped up to the plate and were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of human knowledge.

When those they left behind look up they shall see their name written in the heavens forever, even though their lives were cut cruelly short.

God bless them all and God bless America.

Re:True American Heroes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry,

scratch that, apparently they're not dead yet.

It is called an orbit transfer

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called an orbit transfer and probably takes a bunch of fuel to accomplish. Altitude is just 1 of the issues, there's the difference in orbit declination too. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I believe the ISS is in a very high declination orbit - probably to help Russian launches reach it easier. It is sorta like making a sharp right turn followed by a sharp left turn which is extremely fuel costly. Newton's laws are king here.

I think the shuttle needs to be nearly completely topped off with fuel to reach the ISS on a direct shot, planned.

This also explains to all the people that think we just add fuel to get the shuttle to the moon. Can't work. "Shuttle Orbiter" is the name for a reason. It isn't "Shuttle Deep Spaceship".

Remember the 10 day turnaround?

[tjstork]

its heat shield is replaced after every launch as it wasn't designed to be perfect

The replacing the tiles after every launch was actually not part of the original program. Originally the Shuttle was supposed to have a 10 day turnaround time. Like, it lands, they clean it up a bit, and send it off to orbit, almost like an aircraft. You know, it is a -spaceplane-. I still have the Rockwell literature from when I was a kid on it.

Anyway, I think the first cracked or damaged tiles showed up on the first flight. Then the Challenger accident introduced even more procedures. Had we stuck to the original plans for the shuttle, and had a fleet of 10 or so, we would have had a much better STS.

I was actually pretty anti-shuttle for a while but I've come to really appreciate it. I'm actually secretly hoping that Congress will do the politically nutty thing and keep the shuttle, with incremental improvements, to sustain LEO development and recovery of in space objects, and also have the Constellation for long range missions.

Re:Remember the 10 day turnaround?

[JWSmythe]

    Actually, I remember the advertising and planning on it. I also remember all the nifty artists concept drawings showing multiple shuttles in orbit, servicing various space stations, ferrying passengers to and from places, etc, etc. It was either said or implied that there would be multiple shuttles both ready to launch and docked at space stations all the time, so a pickup mission for a defective unit wasn't that inconceivable.

    I believe it was after the first manned shuttle mission, that they had tile problems. Several fell out, but that was more or less ok. There's plenty of surface area, what are just a few tiles missing. :)

    It will be interesting if they send a second mission up. I believe it will be the first (and probably last) time we have two orbiters up at the same time. I'm almost positive if we did have a dual mission already, that they never docked together. That'll be a cool trick. :) I wonder if they'd try to bring them down in formation. :) Nah, they'd probably bring the crippled one down by computer (no one on board) at a different landing site on a different day.

Re:Remember the 10 day turnaround?

[iluvcapra]

Nah, they'd probably bring the crippled one down by computer (no one on board) at a different landing site on a different day.

Can they actually do that? My understanding is that the landing gear are still not remotely deployable.

It's nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Tis but a scratch.

Human error

[mangu]

Think of that Canadian pilot whom invented a way to put a jetliner in a slip to lose altitude to land at an abandoned military field when the plane ran out of gas because of metric/imperial issues.

But it's also important to note that this happened because it was the pilot who miscalculated the fuel to begin with. His flying licence was suspended as a result.

Another example of a pilot who ran out of fuel due to his own error was Varig flight 254 in 1989, when the pilot made a decimal point mistake and entered a 270 degrees heading instead of 27.0 in the autopilot, and ran out of fuel over the Amazon jungle.

Who'll rescue the rescuers?

[grikdog]

Shouldn't there be escape pods on that sucker? They wouldn't have to do re-entry or nuthin, just skip off the atmosphere once to burn off a little velocity, then maintain low orbit until the Rooskies come.

ShouldnÂt we tag this as Wolowitz?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it was not in a bug in the toilet system.

Standard remedy lacking

[oldhack]

Too bad duct tape is not so good with heat.

They need a bug deflector...

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA should just stick one of these suckers on all the leading edges, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/q8domj

Hey, it worked for the Camaro circa 1980s, and the Shuttle is the same vintage.

1. Create giant bug deflector for Shuttle.
2. Sell giant bug deflector to NASA.
3. ?
4. Profit!

Oh Buran!

[tjstork]

Can they actually do that? My understanding is that the landing gear are still not remotely deployable.

I think not. I actually met one of the programmers that did the flight control software for the Buran. He used to joke, Americans put astronauts in spaceships because their remote control is not as good as ours.

Re:Oh Buran!

[JWSmythe]

    Hehe.

    That's about all the Buran had. It was my understanding that they only had a partially assembled life support system and the onboard displays were nonfunctional on it's flight.

Re:Oh Buran!

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

They can do this since 2006. I think the astronauts have been actually doing things on every space shuttle mission so far but it is cool to have that capability for whatever reason it might be needed. I don't know at what point building a bunch of sophisticated robots becomes cheaper then sending people (safety requirements and all that) but I think employing and training people is cheaper at the moment and will be for quite a while yet for certain things. There are roles for both.

Re:Oh Buran!

[iluvcapra]

I think not. I actually met one of the programmers that did the flight control software for the Buran. He used to joke, Americans put astronauts in spaceships because their remote control is not as good as ours.

The Soviets had a sort of cultural issue with autonomy to begin with, so they tended to have pretty elaborate telemetry tech, and a much more open technological culture to remote-controlled spaceflight-- They didn't have to deal with astronauts running around demanding glory. These are the same people that were able to get us color pictures of the effing surface of Venus(!)

In the case of the shuttle, though, the gear aren't remotely deployable for the very good reason that if they're opened too early in reentry, everyone dies, so the switch is strictly in the hands of the, uh, "vital stakeholders."