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Endeavour's Launch Once More Delayed
schleprock63 writes "NASA has delayed the launch of Endeavour due to inclement weather, mostly lightning. According to NASA, 'Cumulus clouds and lightning violated rules for launching Endeavour because of weather near the Shuttle Landing Facility. The runway would be needed in the unlikely event that Endeavour would have to make an emergency landing back at Kennedy. Endeavour's next launch attempt is 6:51 p.m. EDT Monday. NASA TV coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m.'"
I think it's only news when a shuttle launch isn't delayed.
I've seen it before, the Endeavour can land even in an unused riverbed in LA! Just have to have the right pilots...
Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?
your average laptop has considerably more computing power than the first shuttles had, and while the electronics have been updated, the engineering behind the overall superstructure, propulsion, etc are equally dated.
When last I heard, the proposals being considered represented a potential 30% cost reduction, and they were looking for better.
What happened to those?
Building those would create jobs across the board across the entire income and skill spread of the american populace, and it would dramatically reduce the risk of mortality for those we send into space for research and save us money in the future which we will need to balance out the tremendous spending currently underway*
*(yes.. yes.. feel free to giggle or outright guffaw at this last point, but there is still a very slim chance we'll have some fiscally responsible politician elected some time)
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I bet that the delay flight switch is a lot more sensitive now after the Challenger explosion 73 seconds after launching. Remember back then we had learned that there was a lot of pressure on NASA staff to launch.
Columbia breaking apart on re-entry in 2003 might also have raised the delay flight switch sensitivity a bit.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
"They need to fix the gay British spelling."
Maybe if you actually took your head out of your ass and did some research you would learn why it's spelled the way it is.
your average laptop has considerably more computing power than the first shuttles had
Unless the talented Mr Cheney has yet again kept something from us, the shuttles aren't expected to run MS Office, Photoshop, World of Warcraft, Conficker, etc under Vista. So perhaps they have enough oomph as it is.
When last I heard, the proposals being considered represented a potential 30% cost reduction, and they were looking for better.
The DIRECT team has presented their Jupiter design before the Augustine panel and the Aerospace Corporation who are going to do an "apples to apples" comparison of the various launch vehicles. Hopefully these panels will choose the Jupiter launch vehicle as the most practical way forward.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?
I'm sorry, we're just fresh out of cash! First we gave a lot of our money to Iraq/Afganistan in the form of bombs and bullets. Then we gave the rest to our incompetent banks and car companies.
Our government (both sides!) have decided it is better to pour money into losers instead of trying to innovate.
Blowing people up into space is not spaceflight. It's hard to do and it's dangerous yea - that's my point. It is not by any means spaceflight. The vehicles always have some problem, they are incredibly delicate for something that gets mashed around with such vibrations and g forces. What if your car needed to be 80% gastank and you could only drive for a few minutes? The vehicles are so laughable in their usefulness. Now it's not like we have any alternatives, what I am saying is there needs to be some. Rockets sure as hell are not going to be the answer to a space age. Does any space agency take this fact seriously? Do they try to come up with new stuff? It would be a primary mission I would think. NASA and co should be the ones operating colliders trying to come up with basic research and answers to the physical problems.
Who's bright idea was it to put the main launch facility in *Florida*. Okay, virtually no snow to worry about, yeah, but in the summer months, it storms, especially on the coastal areas, almost *daily* in the evenings. I'm sure there's a reason why they can't launch it earlier or they would, but this is getting a little ridiculous...
The technology NASA uses for human-based space exploration is never the latest-and-greatest. The risk to the on-board human crew can be reduced by knowing the most likely failure modes of all the technology involved. Remember, it took some years before the effects of cosmic rays on dynamic RAM were proven. That's why NASA stuck with magnetic core memory for so long.
The autonomous vehicles, like the Spirit and Opportunity probes on Mars, can use newer technology, and can even give us demonstrations of how the newer tech behaves when exposed to the harsh conditions of outer space. But when human lives are involved, the older, well-understood technology gives the best odds of a successful mission.
they were all cancelled. Until the Columbia accident, Congress didn't seem too interested in funding a program to replace the shuttles. Right now, it's still not clear, with the funding for the Constellation program being in question.
Whatever happened to the considerable R&D projects to replace the shuttle with a new model?
Off the top of my head, here's a quick summary of the various serious efforts into creating new manned spacecraft over the past 10-15 years:
Now, the currently ongoing projects and contenders:
your average laptop has considerably more computing power than the first shuttles had
So? Did they need more? Despite their lack of computer power, the first shuttles worked out pretty well.
Umm... So what? The computing horsepower available then was sufficient to perform the job needed. The Shuttle's systems and the equations behind orbital dynamics haven't changed greatly, so the Shuttle's software isn't going to behave like the typical marketplace driven software you are familiar with and suffer from feature creep and code bloat.
Not to mention that commercial PC's (Windows, Mac, and Linux alike) badly mislead you as to how much computing power is really needed.
Again, so what? This isn't your average piece of hardware where upgrades and 'improvements' are driven more by marketing (which equates old with useless) rather than by requirements.
It's very, very easy to implement cost reductions in Power Point. It's rather more difficult in the real world.
Not really. Ten thousand jobs, maybe twenty, virtually all of them concentrated in a handful of specialized companies and skilled engineers and tradesmen.
They used and still use older model CPU's because they are much easier to radiation harden. I'm sure you can appreciate that when you're traveling thousands of miles an hour you would prefer your flight controls to display correct alpha-numeric properties. Radiation hardening is much more important than processing power, it's not like they're playing Crysis up there or anything (that I know of anyway).
We were interviewing Buzz Aldrin on Friday and he brought up the fact that everyone mentions how his cell phone has more processing power than the computer they had on Apollo 11. He said something to the effect that he'd still take that Apollo computer over a newer off-the-shelf computer because it was built specifically for the job and they knew every little thing about it. (I was taking photos not conducting the interview so that isn't exact but is pretty close.)
...Hopefully these panels will choose the Jupiter launch vehicle as the most practical way forward.
Terrible idea. Jupiter 2 is certain to be lost in space
it's not like they're playing Crysis up there or anything (that I know of anyway).
Crysis! They can't even watch DVDs up there, remember?
Who's bright idea was it to put the main launch facility in *Florida*.
I think the deal is that the closer to the equator you launch from, the cheaper it is. That's why the French launch Ariane from a complex in French Guyana.
This is my sig.
Thats how things are spelled when spelled properly.
It's Endeavour not Endeavor!!
Modern designs are amazingly reliable given their complexity but, as you say, you want to be very sure once out of the stratosphere that you know exactly what your little thinking machine is thinking.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
They should have called it Ennever.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is not a case of LMGTFY rather a case of LMWTFY - 'Let me Wiki that for you' - no that doesn't sound right. How about 'Let me wank that for you' - so much more accurate.
I am in Orlando next week and am sincerely hoping everyday they delay until late July - this would be my only chance in life to see a shuttle launch.
then nothing like this would happen.
Are you saying STS-127 is the Duke Nukem Forever of launches? :)
What's wrong in being exta-safe? We're talking here about human life and about the space exploration program's future. If something good came out of the Challenger and Columbia lessons is that you cannot hurry or cheat mother nature and hope everything will magically go fine somehow. The shuttles are not as young as they use to be and we have no replacement for them yet, thanks to latest years budget cuts.
And they've chosen Florida for launch because being close to the Equator will help preserve fuel for launching the spacecrafts, due to a great deal of help from Earth's rotation. Ever wonder why Baikonur is not on Russian soil?
I agree with your other points, and I'm all in favour of improved space exploration, but:
Building those would create jobs across the board across the entire income and skill spread of the american populace
That's just the broken window fallacy. The money that would have been spent on improving the shuttles is still available to create jobs elsewhere.
Well, I heard the control system runs on the Hurd...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Huh?
I agree with your other points, and I'm all in favour of improved space exploration, but:
Building those would create jobs across the board across the entire income and skill spread of the american populace
That's just the broken window fallacy. The money that would have been spent on improving the shuttles is still available to create jobs elsewhere.
because the private sector is just JUMPING at the chance to employ people right?
It's not a fallacy when nobody else is willing to do it.
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