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Another Leak Delays Final Discovery Launch
vsolepr writes "Today's scheduled launch was scrubbed because of a gaseous hydrogen leak near the spacecraft's external tank. This is the fourth time in the past week that Discovery's launch was delayed due to various leaks and electrical issues. NASA now is aiming for a launch date no earlier than Nov. 30."
Blasted WikiLeaks!!!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
That shuttle leaks more than:
* Most diapers
* FireFox memory
* [insert government agency name here]
* A guy with an enlarged prostate
It's the 2010 External tank that is leaking not the 1970's Orbiter.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"Another Dalek Lays Final Discovery Launch"
About $1.3 billion per launch, counting total program cost divided by number of launches. Good news is an extra flight will lower the costs per flight to a bargain $1.288 billion.
My UID is prime. Hah!
You forgot about R2. This *IS* the droid you're looking for:
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/default.asp
I would rather waste money on this than some of the other crazy things that the government wastes money on. Have you ever seen a shuttle launch. It lights up the sky from 90 miles away. It is kind of impressive what humans kind can do when they are not fighting against each other.
1.3 Billion?
Ignoring the total cost of the shuttle program, and considering only the marginal cost per mission, I wonder if you could work out a better budget.
Hey, my UID is also prime!
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I think I'd be shaking in my boots if I was a Discovery bound astronaut. Although, I think it's a good thing their exhaustive checkout is finding more issues, it's a real drag to see NASA struggling to get one last launch of the Discovery and having such showstopper flaws. I understand that no amount of engineering or preparation can substitute the small amount of pure luck it is to have a successful space launch with all things considered, but you can't help but wonder if there wasn't such drastic funding cutbacks for NASA in space exploration and aeronautics if we'd be seeing a different, more positive outcome from the same reporting.
More important than the abstract idea of what it costs to launch the shuttle, is "who gets the money?" and "for what?"
I have a feeling that if we actually *had* to put a shuttle up, and managed to keep things like corporate profits, individual compensation, and natural resource market costs out of the equation, it would be a lot less.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
well fuck me
Pass...
maybe they made a few mistakes to get some last bit of overtime
It always puzzles me why folks imagine saying a given piece of tech is old is axiomatically equivalent to saying it's been mightily improved upon since then.
Has the pencil been improved on yet? How about the wheel? Are we still burning gasoline in cylinders with pistons to power cars, like we started doing in the 1880s? Do we still use propellors to make boats move? Et cetera.
I'm not suggesting it's not possible to improve the Shuttle -- but that case has to be made in detail, not tossed off with an assumption that because it was designed in the 60s and built in the 70s there must be a far better idea. After all, the biggest advances since the 70s have mostly been in stuff like electronics or avionics, and besides the fact that this doesn't do squat for things like thermal protection and reliability of very high energy rocket systems under very heavy load (the two weaknesses that killed Columbia and Challenger, respectively) the best of these advances in electronics have in many cases been retrofitted into the Shuttle anyway.
Point me to a genuine major advance in airframe materials, thermal protection systems, or rocket engine design since the 1970s and maybe this contempt might be better supported by actual evidence.
HOTOL might have been more cost-effective. The Russian space shuttle almost certainly would have been. The problem with the space shuttle was that false economies were made. Sometimes to save money you have to spend it. The shuttle was under-sized, under-powered and was forced to have dangerous piecemeal boosters for political reasons. By spending the money up-front, you'd have a cheaper, safer, more reliable shuttle which would doubtless still be in production, not scrapped.
It'll be interesting to see how first-stage alternatives go. One option is to use turbine-assisted ramjets, another is to use a ski-jump-assisted ramjet. These would replace some, but not all, of the current first rocket stage. The idea is the same in both cases - provided you can break 400 mph, the ramjet is capable of self-sustained acceleration. Break the sound barrier and it becomes a highly efficient device. Hydrogen-powered ramjets are good up to about mach 6. Not great, sure, but not bad either. Since the weight should be about 1/5th that required by a rocket to reach the same speed, that's a lot more payload you can suddenly carry. Ideally, you'd use a mix of a ramjet and a scramjet to completely replace the first rocket stage, again reducing weight and increasing the payload you can push into orbit.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Witnesses' Waltz is a filk song commemorating the shuttle (and manned space flight in general).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You are aware that the space race was a fight against other humans, to be the first to achieve it right ?
aww =(
Even I start to leak more as I get older.
Levar Burton has offered his assistance to NASA:
http://twitter.com/levarburton/status/541379696533505
Air-breathing engines are heavy and require you to fly... in air... which means very high drag and very high fuel consumption. Unless you can build some kind of dual-mode jet/rocket like Skylon, or build a jet-powered first stage and a rocket-powered second stage, you're better off just forgetting about them.
There's a reason why rockets go pretty much straight up at the beginning of a launch: they want to spend as little time as possible at high speed in the atmosphere to eliminate drag losses and make the engines more efficient.
Have you ever seen a shuttle launch. It lights up the sky from 90 miles away. It is kind of impressive what humans kind can do when they are not fighting against each other.
Have you ever seen a nuke go off? That lights up the sky impressively too.
Absolutely. But there is a world of difference between competing in a noble competition to be the first in space, vs the competition for wealth and power that is unconstrained by any sort of moral compass.
I am all for competition, but thing there should be some like drawn between just and unjust competition. Competing by creating a better product is good. Competing by creating a patent pool and suing anyone that makes a better product is unacceptable and cowardly.
Yes, I am way too idealistic.
-Obedience to the rule of law is obedience to the rule of tyrants.
Hell Yea!
That is why we need nuclear powered rockets. Think of project Orion (the original), and Timberwolf.
If we can harness the best minds of the planet who designed nuclear weapons for war to make nukes for space, that would be the best of worlds.
So far cooler heads have prevailed and kept us out another nuclear war. That gives me some hope for humanity.
Energia would be probably nice, yes, in launches without Buran (but still probably not very cost effective due to scale and rarity of the launches). HOTOL was apparently dropped when it became clear that a rocket using the same technological advances would be at least equally effective (but much less complex). And you would want to up the size of the Shuttle?
An orbital launcher flies most of its mission outside the atmosphere. Most of its mass is reaction mass. That, together with what the rocket equation is, probably means a pure rocket will be able, for a long time, to better use technological advances necessary to make a true spaceplane even barely possible.
But perhaps such advances are not even the best way, perhaps simple mass-production would be better. We had a test run, with the first widely used rocket; too bad the orbital effort in such style was killed.
One that hath name thou can not otter
This was the last external tank made at Michoud. As it rolled down the assembly line, everyone who worked on it did their particular task and then was laid off as soon as they were done.
And people are shocked it's not particularly well made? Frankly, I think the astronauts taking this tank into orbit have to be nuts.
The vehicles are getting too old to fly, despite the overhauls they get after every mission. Even the disposable parts (like the tank) because of attrition in the skilled workforce that built them.
Not that we haven't known this was coming for longer than it took to go from a standing start to men walking on the Moon, but too many managers have been more concerned with protecting their turf than ensuring continued manned access to space.
-- Alastair
It is kind of impressive what humans kind can do when they are not fighting against each other.
Funny, considering the entire space program was a spending war against the Russians to see who could build the best ICBMs and Spy Sats.
I'm not in disagreement with you, but I still am really interested in knowing how much of the "cost" of launching a shuttle is amortized into the space program's sunk costs, how much is in the market value of natural resources, how much is in salaries and real estate expenses and stuff, and how much is marginal costs... Not just "how much", but "who gets the money" and "for what?"
I have no doubt the program could have been far more efficient. But given the non-negotiable parameters of the shuttle as it will launch, how much of that price we're quoted is "real?"
If we *had to* launch the shuttle one last time in order to save The American Way Of Life or something, and everyone involved chose not to profit from it, all resources were applied at cost or whatever, what would the price tag be? Less than $1.3 billion or $450 million or whatever, I am sure.
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At least this time... earlier it was a hydrazine leak.
I guess thats all I have to say.
I'm not in disagreement with you, but I still am really interested in knowing how much of the "cost" of launching a shuttle is amortized into the space program's sunk costs, how much is in the market value of natural resources, how much is in salaries and real estate expenses and stuff, and how much is marginal costs...
It's a few years since I looked into this, but I believe at the time the variable cost of a shuttle flight was around $250,000,000 and the fixed costs of the program were over $3,000,000,000 a year. A lot of those fixed costs go into maintaining KSC and other NASA facilities; imagine how much an airline ticket would cost if you flew a mere six times a year and did so from your own multi-runway international airport with a staff of thousands.
So, how much is this costing us to duct tape this 1970's clunker back together for 1 last hoo-ra and for what scientific gain?
Average cost of a Shuttle Launch: $450,000,000.
Population of the United States: 307,006,550
Therefore, it's costing us an average of $1.47 per person.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Just take one look at the thing. Great big rockets strapped onto the SIDE. That was the highly undesirable outcome of having to meet a variety of constraints that were not there when the original plans were made. They could have built a far better shuttle for specific tasks in the 1970s, but the compromises produced what we have. It shows how amazing the NASA guys are that it managed to work at all.
The main factors that made it like this were a requirement to be able to get into orbits that require a lot of fuel if you are going from Florida and the problems associated with making the thing taller than it is to have enough fuel to get into those orbits. I don't know how many missions it was used for that actually needed that, they were apparently classified military missions but it's not as if you can hide the thing up there so some astronomers would known how many times it went into polar orbits. I can't say if the compromise was worth it and the seven lives lost due to a chain that started with the compromise, only somebody that knows the worth of the polar orbit missions and if they really had to be manned anyway could say.
A shuttle designed to get to equatorial orbits would look very different and have better lifting capacity than rockets that have to handle great bit weights strapped to the side and the extra mass required to make it strong enough to do so.
Personally I think it was wasted sometimes on "space truck" missions that didn't need to be manned in the first place and could just have been done with a larger conventional rocket than our current satellite launchers, but every mission probably did something useful since there's a few crew working on things even if the primary goal is just to deliver stuff.
Here we have yet another example of the Eloi hate of the greasy Moorlocks that actually do stuff other than lounge around in a garden waiting to be eaten. Have you considered that the workers in question would actually be proud of their work and watch the launch with the joy of seeing the results of a job well done?
I love the flamebait status
when the entire right party is bitching and moaning about spending 2 billion on a who's who party going to Indonesia and India over 10 days, we are PISSING away 1.3 billion a day over 30 days for what? (fuck be real they ARE visiting the American workforce)
to install a SHED on an international space station and a pissing ceremony
I am so sorry, but is there not more important things in the USA right now than installing a shed "IN SPACE" (echo) ?
with a significant amount of real, hard working blue blood Americans out of work and the best being a 5$ an hour part time no insurance job at mc donalds, do we REALLY need to be pissing away BILLIONS of dollars away on a pride issue from an agency that has not produced a SINGLE practical result AS PROMISED since the 1960's ????
these fuckwits are still using 386's in their systems 23 years after the release, they are out dated and arrogant
and before that it was electrical problems in the 1970's buick
yep per day that would gain me a 20 oz beer a day, something I cant afford right now, in a single income household, where I am reminded every single day by management that I am privileged to hold my pissant box monkey job even though I hold a masters in CS
nope dont help me, lets spend 1.47$ a day for over a month to what? install a storage shed so we can watch cockroaches mate in zero grav? ... fuck that
project orion wasnt really a good idea. what you really need is something more like NERVA for the upper stage, or some sort of nuclear reactor powered ion engine. like a scaled up VASIMR for in space travel.
Come on, people, this isn't brain surgery...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
One estimate in 2007 put the cost of the Iraq war as high as $720M a day. Watching cockroaches mate in zero gravity, or "bringing democracy" to a region that isn't culturally ready for it and is costing thousands of lives on top of that... I know what I'd cut first.
(Yes I know focus has shifted to Afghanistan and doesn't cost as much money, the point remains)
Have you ever seen a shuttle launch. It lights up the sky from 90 miles away. It is kind of impressive what humans kind can do when they are not fighting against each other.
Have you ever seen a nuke go off? That lights up the sky impressively too.
Have you ever seen a supernova? It lights up the sky from millions of miles away.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Thanks for this. You have upped your nerd credits
Looks like the old jalopy is well and truly falling apart!
Though I sometimes wonder what attaching, say, two large turbofans could give; as a "zero" stage of sorts. Widely available (though not with afterburners, which would be good here), well understood, reliable, many rockets use the same fuel (though, considering the complexity & weight of plumbing plus small amount the turbofan would use, it's most likely better to integrate small tank in "booster module"), large thrust-to-mass of such module...
Of course would be good only to ~20km max, but considering that's the most tough range for rocket engines? Oh well, I guess since nobody is doing it, the calculations don't add up / complexity of additional staging is not worth it.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Proving once again that nothing bad ever came out of the 70's.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
NASA is investigating the use of turbine-assisted ramjets to do exactly what you're describing, and essentially what you are describing is what White Knight is for Space Ship 1. So it is being done and it is being discussed for much larger systems.
You are correct that the top altitude is 20km, but you must consider that rocket nozzles above a relatively small diameter become unstable (with a nasty propensity to explode), that you don't need to carry oxygen with you (which is bloody heavy) and that jets are much more fuel-efficient than rockets even if you do carry your own O2. (Rockets have a HORRIBLE level of efficiency.)
What you'd really want is a more-or-less horizontal launch using jets, ramping your way up to scramjets (which max out at about mach 20), slowly arcing upwards such that you hit top speed at the altitude jets would no longer be more effective than rockets.
The unit cost per launch would be lower for this, because whilst rockets do not work well at low altitude, jets do. And if you use the best fuel-to-speed conversion possible, you gain. The fact that it takes longer to reach a high altitude won't matter. All that matters is that you spend the least fuel before reaching escape velocity.
Sure, this doesn't seem "common-sensical", but you've got to consider that "common sense" in the 1930s was that rockets wouldn't work in space as there was nothing to push against. Rocket science isn't difficult, the only reason it has its reputation is because physics is not "common sense" and rockets make this more obvious than other fields.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
HOTOL was dropped by Government orders and classified. If it were really that inefficient, I don't thing Maggie's minions would have gone to such lengths.
NASA's spaceplane designs in the 1990s followed essentially the same design and was abandoned through sharp funding cuts. NASA would have had access to BaE's work on HOTOL - if the design didn't work, they would not have followed the same approach.
HOTOL may well have had insurmountable technical problems. (The last time Britain tried to develop space technology was the Blue Streak rocket, which was an unmitigated disaster.) However, the manner of abandoning it indicates that there were political and/or economic concerns that went far beyond technical issues.
The Russian shuttle followed a similar plan to the original shuttle design, including the larger size. The best information anyone seems to have is that it would have been far more efficient, per unit mass of payload, than the American shuttle.
On the basis that the Russians had nothing like the advanced, lightweight materials available to the Americans, and that the Americans had vastly superior supercomputers for CFD work, the Americans should have been able to rival or better the Russian project.
What ended up happening is that by cutting back on development costs, we ended up with a launch system that actually had more dead-weight than the original shuttle design, less space for cargo and (because of the extra weight) less spare lifting capacity.
That saved money right there and then, but cost vastly more money in the longer-term.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)