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NASA Readies Discovery Shuttle For Final Flight

Posted by samzenpus on from the fare-thee-well dept.

gabbo529 writes "After 38 trips, 352 days in orbit and more than 5,600 trips around the Earth, the space shuttle Discovery is preparing for its final launch. Since its creation, it has flown to orbit more than any other craft. It has set a number of precedents including first craft to feature a female shuttle pilot and female shuttle commander (Eileen Collins), the first African American spacewalker (Bernard Harris) and the first sitting member of congress to fly in space (Jake Garn). In its final foray into space, the Discovery will set another precedent when it flies the first humanoid robot to fly in space, Robonaut2."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Can I have it now you are finished with it? by ASDFnz · · Score: 4, Funny

    I would give it a good home!

    1. Re:Can I have it now you are finished with it? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      The shuttles are not reusable in any real cost saving sense. They have to have many tiles replaced, the main engines replaced, and numerous other little odds and ends. The SRBs are one of the shuttles main failings, SRBs are cheap but notice that no one else uses them for a man rated launcher.

      The Shuttle will not find a buyer, it is not cost effective and never was.

    2. Re:Can I have it now you are finished with it? by Frangible · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's just not true.

      Orion: 1.5bn per flight, $50bn spent on development before cancellation.
      Shuttle: 450m per flight, 1.5bn per shuttle to build
      Soyuz seats: $45 million each
      SpaceX Dragon: $300-$400m (est.) per flight

      For the amount we wasted on the ostensibly "cheaper" Orion program, with disposable components similar to the Apollo program, we could've built *11* new shuttles. The Shuttle also is far more capable, able to transfer a tremendous amount of cargo (the Orion / Soyuz fit in the cargo bay...) and hold nearly twice the number of astronauts for rescue missions.

      The SpaceX Dragon isn't significantly cheaper than the shuttle, and is again, far less capable than the Shuttle, and is still an unproven design. (the SpaceShipOne/SpaceShipTwo are just X-15 / X-20 ripoffs and can only get 10% of the altitude needed to reach the ISS, they don't even count)

      The Soyuz seats are probably the most cost-effective and time-tested design, but the Soyuz holds three people max, and in the past, two of those have always been cosmonauts.

      The Russians developed a pretty nice shuttle of their own -- the Buran -- though the end of the Soviet Union doomed it.

      I'm sorry it doesn't have a warp drive, subspace communicator, artificial gravity, or "inertial dampening" (whatever that is)... but the space shuttle is the most advanced spacecraft ever developed, and a very economical one at that. And we let it die. The canceled Orion program was a failure that was uneconomical, and the amount of money we blew on that could've gotten a lot more shuttle flights, or a great many Soyuz seats.

      I hope we maintain good ties to Russia, because as of this June, the only way an American is getting into space -- or to the ISS -- is if they let us. Ironically, it will be on a rocket originally intended to deliver a nuclear warhead as an ICBM to us.

    3. Re:Can I have it now you are finished with it? by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the figures you have for the Shuttle are low. Endeavor cost $ 1.7B to build from spare components. That does not include the cost to acquire those components, and it assumes the design has been paid for already.

      From Wikipedia: Roger Pielke has estimated that the Space Shuttle program has cost about US$170 billion (2008 dollars) through early 2008. This works out to an average cost per flight of about US$1.5 billion.

  2. Re:We're Broke! by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While I agree that austerity measures make sense, let's be honest about the numbers. NASA is such a tiny percentage of the budget that canceling their program isn't a realistic way to save money or pay down our debts.

    Realistically, the mandatory budget and the defense budget are what will have to be (painfully) trimmed down if we want to stabilize the deficit.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  3. Re:Still unclear what will replace the shuttle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Working for a DoD contractor that did work for Orion, I can say for certain it was cancelled (even if they do not call it that). There's no more work being done for a very critical portion of the capsule right now that our company was responsible for, and that stuff is now sitting in the corner of the lab, the responsible engineers are off working on other things.

    The two words that are a death knell for any project are: "Stop Work"

    Gotta post AC, simply because I cannot speak for my company, but I have eyes and can plainly see what is going (or not going) on.