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A Bittersweet Finale For Discovery Space Shuttle
Julie188 writes "The shuttle Discovery re-entered the Earth's atmosphere for the last time Wednesday to close out the space plane's 39th and final voyage. And so marks the beginning of the end for America's shuttle program. Everything about the last flight felt epic, from how it overcame a down-to-the-last-second problem to launch on its final mission in February, to its sunny final landing this week. As it coasted to a stop, Discovery's odometer stood at some 5,750 orbits covering nearly 150 million miles, during 39 flights spanning a full year in space — a record unrivaled in the history of manned rockets."
Only 2:30, but here is NASA's landing video from their Youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/a/724782A8B8BE3EE5/0/Drv0SS1rCpk
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
yeah, just watch, the odometer'll read 750 orbits when they trade it in!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If only we knew what comes next.
It seems every 4-8 years a new 20 year plan is given to NASA that may or may not have anything to do with the last 20 year plan. Between politics and NASA's own bureacracy, it seems that the US manned space program is stalled. Thank goodness we still have JPL and its hardy unmanned probes.
While we are getting rides from Russia to install experiments from the EU and Japan, perhaps our private sector will advance enough to pick up where NASA left off. Here's to you, Burt Rutan.
As someone who was there watching the launch in person, it was definitely a nail biter. Forty seconds left in the launch window, though I suppose they could have waited a day and gone up then.
It almost got delayed a day anyway. There's a minimum separation time between when one ship leaves ISS and another one docks, and if they had held fast to that schedule, it would have been delayed until Friday because of the late departure of... I think it was a Soyuz mission. They decided to override that and go on Thursday anyway. Either way, there presumably was an alternate launch window already planned for Friday.
The best part was how many people reacted to the original mission schedule in the same way. NASA's banners said that it would be up for 10 days and spend 363 days in orbit. Immediately, my reaction was, "Wait... you're within two days of being up there for a year, and you're not going to do it?" Well, they extended the mission by two days.
And just to anthropomorphize the shuttle a bit, I don't think general purpose computer 5 was ready to go to a museum. It failed to shut off. I particularly liked the controller's comment when he said that they'd be sure not to use that switch on the next flight. Hilarious.
Wow. Just... wow.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I have been feeling that the shuttle program was a big mistake for NASA. It's had too many problems, never flew as often as it was supposed to, and couldn't get out of low orbit, and has been shut down too many times, and cost more than it should have per launch. It might have been ok if they could have flown monthly as was originally planned, but it never even approached that ideal.
What would have happened if they dropped the shuttle program early on, and did anything different for manned flight. The shuttle program is known more for its problems than for its successes. It never grabbed much public attention, and became more of a "another shuttle launched? when did that happen?". It didn't have a plan to evolve, so we have been stuck with the same technology for these long years. A non-reusable program would, at least, give us more chances to evolve the design.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I hope you die with a meteorite in your head for making me remember this crappy movie (and this crappy song).
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Don't be ridiculous. NASA rocket scientists will be able to get very well-paid jobs with the Chinese and Indian space programs.
If it hadn't been for all their schizophrenic dipshit specifications (polar orbit launches from Vandenburg, etc.) the Shuttle might have been designed to live up to the hype, instead of the camel-by-committee it turned out to be. As it is, we're retiring a 27 year-old vehicle which spent 365 days on orbit. The "space pickup truck" flew 39 missions - that's not even close to two a year. Still, a decent ship we learned a lot from. Maybe the commercial people will learn to stick to a single mission criteria envelope.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
who occupy the White House and Congress. Who are more concerned with staying in power and therefor buying off friends, family, and supporters, with our money instead of keeping America great. America has become their second priority behind themselves. Where we have such a convoluted tax system that the IRS's budget is two thirds of NASA's.
While I was not a fan of the shuttle program for many years it is the image people most associate with the American space program. They were big, bold, and beautiful, compared to simple rockets. Each launch was impressive. Unfortunately tragedy and money being directed at buying off people for votes will keep us from getting back to the good days of NASA. Sure we still fly the occasional probe and such but they don't inspire me at least, not like seeing men do something up "there".
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not if your mind will neither let you give it up, nor let it go. You ought to be careful, such memories could come around to hurt you.
To be fair, the Shuttles had proven to be somewhat accident prone (about 1 flight in 100 ends in disaster) so shutting down the project isn't that crazy. What is crazy is that they're being shut down before any sort of replacement is even close to ready. Then just go "well, I guess the private sector can do it, right?"
I read the internet for the articles.
Are you kidding? We can hire a team of a dozen rocket scientists in India or China for the price of ONE NASA scientist.
And it should be obvious that a dozen people can get the job done quicker and better than one.
NASA are boring.
Yep. They're also chamfering, planing, adhering, and vibration-testing. Among about 10,000 other things.
A bulk of NASA funding was tied up in the shuttle program and ISS commitments. Money that could be better spent on robotic space exploration and other exciting satellite missions.
Not that all that money won't still go towards contractually mandated corporate welfare. But restructuring NASA's budget is now a possibility.
We have lost our ambitions for spaceflight.
That seems like a bizarre claim when there's probably more commercial interest in spaceflight today than ever before in the history of the human race. Dozens of groups are building suborbital rockets, SpaceX has built and flown two new orbital launchers with new engines for less than the cost of NASA putting a dummy upper stage on top of a shuttle SRB, and at least some of those groups will come up with innovative ways of reducing the cost of spaceflight as a result.
" Exciting satellite missions".
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If it was America's alone, no doubt. However, many countries have put a lot of time and money into the ISS, and will keep it running. It isn't scheduled to be splashed until 2020.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
He'll be remembered as the anti-Kennedy for shutting down the US manned space program.
The Columbia investigation committee decided that the shuttle should be recertified if NASA wanted it to fly past 2010. No-one thought that going through that process made any sense, so that was the end of the program. Bush just happened to be President at the time.
The shuttles were only 35% through their rated lifespan.
There are concerns about aging of a number of parts which were never designed to be replaced because the shuttles weren't supposed to fly for thirty years; you'd have to take the airframe apart to replace them and then you might as well build a new vehicle instead.
Obama didnt help much by shutting down its successor.
That's probably the best thing Obama has ever done. If NASA replaces expensive NASA-only launchers with launch services purchased on the open market, they can concentrate on developing new technologies and travel to places beyond Earth orbit which commercial organisations won't be doing any time soon.
US Government's Plan for Nasa - 2011 to 2031:
-Gradually close down the US space program and subcontract all spaceflight to private sector companies
-Sell off the shuttles so we can finally pay off our pawn loan and get that sweet guitar back
-Lose edge on space-based achievements and discoveries to other more honest nations that don't have need to over-fund stealing oil from the middle east
-Divert all space funding to an illegitimate war for control of a doomed source of fuel
-Gradually divert all science, math, reading, arts, and education funding to the same false war
-Lose all respect from your citizens
(Present)
-Give up once China, the UK, and various other countries with their shit together own our giant slab of faux democracy, only to be turned into a hovercar parking lot by the Japanese
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So you'd use it as somewhat leaky storage and a source of spares and raw materials.
There's little commonality between shuttle parts and ISS parts, no-one is going to be melting down the shuttle's aluminum for raw materials to build new space station parts, and you'd need to bring more supplies into space to keep the atmosphere from leaking out (plus more fuel to raise the orbit since you'd have another hundred tons of mass). It's simply a lose-lose proposition.
My three year old is fanatical about space, planets, the moon, astronauts, everything. How am I supposed to explain to him that our "great" country doesn't do any of that stuff any more? What sort of answer can I give him that doesn't sound a complete fucking cop-out? I have yet to think of one.
What is with all this nationalism? I thought we were all supposed to be global now? Welcome to reality, where you can't outsource all your factories and then get enough tax money to blow on things like shuttles, which BTW was supposed to be a "space truck" which never actually fulfilled its mission.
We went from 80% factory jobs at the birth of NASA to now 80% service industry (with a severe cut in pay to boot!) and the simple fact is we're broke. We're the guy writing hot checks at the Walmart to pay for Chinese goods because the national bank account is nothing but red ink. Hell if we spent within our means we probably wouldn't even have a military as big as Brazil, and we sure as hell wouldn't be fighting two endless wars.
I personally wish China and India luck, as they will eventually find what we are gonna have to wake up and accept...capitalism doesn't work with technology. There was a good reason why nobody in Star Trek was waving money around, that is because as you reach a certain technical level you don't really need human labor anymore. You think we are in bad shape now? Wait until automation hits the service industry.
Despite our brilliant leader's idea that piling ever more debt to get ever more degrees (what are we up to now, a Bachelors is the new HS diploma?) to chase ever fewer jobs the simple fact is the way we've done things for the past 4000+ years is coming to an end. The machines are faster, smarter,more accurate, and they never tire or make mistakes.
We can't all be CxOs, doctors, or IP lawyers, so you either make up BS "make work" programs to give you an excuse to cut all these people a check, you have massive unemployment and underemployment like we have now, or you find a new way. The only question is whether that new way will come peacefully or with massive riots and destruction.
So don't look at the shuttle as the end, look at it as a scary and exciting new world beginning. The old ways of doing things have failed, as evidenced by 22%+ unemployment and the fed drowning in red ink while the presses smoke from all the money being cranked out, the odds of giving the huge masses of poor jobs they can actually do is virtually nil since the machines can do them better, and outsourcing has taken most of the rest. Now the question becomes, what to do next? Do we stay on the failing road of capitalism, where the top 1% get fatter until we have another revolution, or do we try something else?
Because like it or not folks we're broke, and whether the talking heads want to admit it or not for huge masses of your fellow Americans this IS another depression. Only as we have seen we can't use war production to get us out of this one, since nothing is built here anymore.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A thousand years from now the American space program will be a historical footnote, like the Viking discovery of North America. A few hundred years from now, some other country will do a space program right. Probably by using nuclear propulsion instead of chemical rockets. And that will be the real space age.
Good. That means we can focus our resources on real space science, while the Chinese discover for themselves that there's no valid reason to send humans into space for the foreseeable future.
I roll my eyes whenever I hear phrases like "real space science". Nobody in the world does it or has done it with a space program.
For example, there have been a number of robotic missions to Mars which have uncovered something interesting within a short period of the start of the mission, but which the mission did not have the tools to follow up on. For example, the Viking missions attempted to test for life with mixed (though thought to be negative due to the high risk of false positives) results. In particular, it's taken us about four decades to repeat the "labeled release" experiment.
Similarly, the Phoenix mission imaged some sort of white deposit on the legs of the vehicle which appeared to sublimate like water ice. But no means was available to figure out what the substance was. We'd have to duplicate the landing of Phoenix with instruments positioned to take that measurement. Who knows when that will happen?
Where are all the space telescopes? On Earth there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of research quality scopes, just in visible light, and a significant number of instruments in radio frequency. According to Wikipedia, there are something like 35 active observatories (I count probes with multiple instruments in difference frequencies such as Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, as many times as they appear in the list) throughout the spectrum, many operating past their expected life times and another 15 planned for the next ten or so years.
For my final example, consider the remarkable lack of space science on or around the Moon since the end of Apollo. It was twenty years before anyone tried to image the Moon again. Back in 1961, they first hypothesized there might be water in the polar regions of the Moon. Even now, fifty years later, we don't know the extent or accessibility of this water (and other volative compounds). And it's only now that any missions to investigate the polar regions of the Moon have been proposed (which I note will be the first sample return missions in forty years).
This is the problem with so-called "real" space science. We have simple questions which can't be addressed for decades or longer, because the probe doesn't have the capability to do more than a few little things. The investigators will die of old age before resolving some of these issues. We have small numbers of orbital instruments working in any given spectrum or role, so there is intense competition for access.
What humanity really has here, is minimal space science. This is what you'd expect to see, if space science were being managed almost solely for appearance's sake.
I see it as like most recent space related activities as being remarkably lacking both in ambition and sense. In the long term, you need to shorten decision cycles from decades to minutes or hours. If you have instruments with huge pent up demand, you need to provide more of those instruments.
Economic sense is lacking. Building one-off objects just makes a series of very expensive projects. Generally, if the scientific purpose was important enough to make one probe or observatory, it's important enough to make half a dozen. You can split development costs across a larger number of missions.
Some probes such as the Europa Astrobiology Lander or Hayabusa Sample Return, could literally be repurposed for dozens, perhaps hundreds of icy moons, asteroids, and comets throughout the Solar System. Imaging satellites could be used almost anywhere. There's no real reason we couldn't have dozens of small space probes voyaging forth to image every major space body in the Solar System out to say the orbit of Neptune, right now. The first probe might cost a lot, but the 50th pro
Ignoring the rest of your post - there is no more government cheese... it stopped in the 90's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
I do agree with much of what you're saying. IMO, the last 40 years of NASA human space expenditures has been totally wasted. If it had instead been spent on producing standardized probe designs in larger quantities, we probably could have had 10X the number of unmanned missions by now on the same space budget.
I don't agree that humans are the best decision makers in deep space missions. 99% of the resources of any such mission will be dedicated to simply keeping the humans alive, and such missions will always be rushed due to supply, radiation and psychological issues. Even pulling off a single human mission to mars would probably suck dry NASA's funding for two decades, just to pull off little more than a flag planting stunt.
People tend to assume that robotic missions can't achieve much because they always think in terms of a solitary self-contained lander or rover. However, on Mars for example, what if a complete robotic base station were built up over time, including a nuclear power generator, general-purpose lab/maintenance robots, and a fleet of exploratory rovers. Without the time constraints of human missions, you wouldn't even need that much AI. Everything could happen in slow motion like the current mars rovers. The time to real results would still probably be faster than trying ramp up a human mission, and the science could go on continuously for decades.
I don't agree that humans are the best decision makers in deep space missions. 99% of the resources of any such mission will be dedicated to simply keeping the humans alive, and such missions will always be rushed due to supply, radiation and psychological issues. Even pulling off a single human mission to mars would probably suck dry NASA's funding for two decades, just to pull off little more than a flag planting stunt.
Even if we assume the best case, that 100% of a robotic mission is devoted to space science while 1% of a manned mission would be, the humans still only need to outperform robotic missions in scientific output by two orders of magnitude. It's not that hard, especially given that you vastly shorten the question/answer cycle from decades to anywhere from minutes to weeks.
Sure, I'm being a bit glib. But if you look at the moment to moment activities of lunar excursions during Apollo missions and compare them to Mars missions, such as Phoenix or MER, you see that a vast amount of work was crammed into a few days while the probes simply are snail-slow.
My view is that if we tried to duplicate the successes of Apollo with robots, we'd end up spending a similar amount of money, perhaps a third to half as much. Despite the program not being very focused on science and astronauts lingering at most a few days, these missions still accomplished a remarkable amount of science.
People tend to assume that robotic missions can't achieve much because they always think in terms of a solitary self-contained lander or rover. However, on Mars for example, what if a complete robotic base station were built up over time, including a nuclear power generator, general-purpose lab/maintenance robots, and a fleet of exploratory rovers. Without the time constraints of human missions, you wouldn't even need that much AI. Everything could happen in slow motion like the current mars rovers. The time to real results would still probably be faster than trying ramp up a human mission, and the science could go on continuously for decades.
It's also sexy from a human-oriented point of view because it establishes a base and infrastructure in advance of any human presence. I see it as a very useful intermediate step along with sample return missions.
But in summary, I strongly disagree that any type of unmanned missions, even robotic bases with good infrastructure, can accomplish what a dedicated sequence of manned missions (especially a manned settlement) can accomplish. While a lot of places won't be sufficiently interesting to warrant a nearby human presence, Mars and the Moon are sufficiently high value to justify human investigation this century.
Hubble, Chandra, Fermi, Kepler, SWIFT.
They're all satellites (though Kepler orbits the sun, not Earth) that are producing exciting science.
And when The James Webb Space telescope goes online, we're expecting to be able to have access to even more exciting data that we simply can't collect with the instruments already up there.
I like the Princess Bride as much as the next guy, but satellites can be exciting too.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Because like it or not folks we're broke
I'll believe we're broke after I see Congress vote to rescind Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and/or cut the defense budget by double digits. Until then, I can only interpret the constant refrain of "we're broke" as meaning "we're going to use the deficit as an excuse to stick it to poor people; but not we're not SO worried as to consider doing anything that might anger our valued campaign contributors".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Tens of billions? The current mars rovers cost less than $1B each, and lunar rovers would be vastly simpler: far smaller launch vehicle, no deceleration from interplanetary speeds, 1 second control delay vs. 20 minutes (which allows direct interactive remote control like a kid's toy). Even the USSR was able to operate rudimentary rovers on the moon back in the 1970s (which also traveled dozens of kilometers) after their manned moon project tanked.
long-windedly, tl;dr-ingly stumping for the time-tested, well-proven system known as Communism. GoodLuckWithThat.
The USSR managed to land their tank-like lunar rovers on the moon with a Proton rocket. That rocket is still available for < $100M per launch. Six identical copies of a probe system just aren't going to cost massive amounts of money, considering that almost everything in the mission has been done before.
The US Surveyor program, which landed 5 probes on the moon, cost less than $500M ($3.5B today). Considering that almost nothing of what they did had ever been done before by the US, that kind of puts an upper limit on the cost.
In stark contrast, any manned return to the moon would have severe new political constraints. The cold war is over: The public will no longer tolerate the incredible risk levels associated with the Apollo program just to collect some rocks. Sending people to the moon *safely* will require starting from scratch to develop a new manned spacecraft system, and will costs hundreds of billions of dollars (see Constellation program).