Endeavour Launch Delayed For At Least 48 Hours

shuz writes "At 10:15 am Eastern time the launch of Endeavour has been scrubbed for a minimum of 48 hours. The scrub is due to two failed Auxiliary Power Unit heaters." The delay is surely a disappointment to the biggest crowds since the Apollo days; let's hope it gets back on track more quickly than Discovery did for its final launch.

Comments

Shoestring budget

[gilesjuk]

Since NASA is on a shoestring budget and the US government doesn't see space exploration as a priority then I suppose delays and failures are inevitable?

China on the other hand can blow huge amounts of cash just like the USSR could before it split up, even more so given China is the workshop of the world.

Re:Shoestring budget

[FTL]

Sorry, your facts are reversed. NASA's budget is $17 billion. China's space budget is $1.3 billion. Russia's space budget is $2.4 billion.

For eight times the money, the US manages to reach approximate parity with the Russians. This is the result of the badly designed Space Shuttle program which over its lifetime has cost $1.5 billion per launch.

Looking forward, SpaceX is on track to cut US launch costs by a factor of ten. That will make the US the #1 place to launch rockets -- for the first time since the 1970s.

Re:Shoestring budget

[khallow]

Since NASA is on a shoestring budget and the US government doesn't see space exploration as a priority then I suppose delays and failures are inevitable?

China on the other hand can blow huge amounts of cash just like the USSR could before it split up, even more so given China is the workshop of the world.

The chasm between your understanding and the reality of current space activities is vast. NASA's budget ($19 billion per year) is more than triple the combined budgets of the Russian ($3.8 billion per year) and Chinese ($1.3 billion estimated per year) space agencies.

But that doesn't get at the scale of squandering going on in government space programs. SpaceX (a much abused example on these forums) developed in the US (a country not known for its cheap manufacturing costs) three engines (Merlin, Draco, and Kestrel) and progress towards another (Merlin 2), two rocket vehicles (the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9), 7 rocket launches (4 successful) and a current unmanned space vehicle (the Dragon, flown once). And all that was developed for less than a year of Chinese space program (roughly $800-$1 billion spent in total) and nine years of time.

So nobody increased NASA's budget very much? I can't imagine why they would. It doesn't actually do that much space exploration for the money spent. Meanwhile a small private corporation based in LA is shaming the best government space programs on the planet.

Re:Shoestring budget

[DerekLyons]

For eight times the money, the US manages to reach approximate parity with the Russians.

How many probes do the Russians have one the surface of Mars? How many in orbit around it? Or Mercury? How many of the station components have the Russian's delivered?
 
For our budget we do a hell of a lot more than Russians - whose space program consists mostly of a taxi and FedEx service to the station, the GLONASS navigation constellation, and power points outlining their brave new future.
 

This is the result of the badly designed Space Shuttle program which over its lifetime has cost $1.5 billion per launch.

Actually, the Shuttle only costs $250 million to launch (that is, the cost to add a Shuttle mission to the manifest.), the balance is the individual flight's portion of the fixed costs. The funny thing is when you add up the costs of the Soyuz and Proton boosters needed to replace a single Shuttle launch... you come in around $300 million dollars. (Mostly because of the horrible crew:passenger ratio of Soyuz.)

Lunch...Launch...what?

[OscarGunther]

Was I the only one who saw this right above the Spolsky-likes-group-lunch article and wondered why the Shuttle's afternoon meal had been delayed? Sick kid kept me up last night...

Typical Public Transport

[Farmer Tim]

Is there no government run transport system that runs to schedule?

Not The Largest Crowds

[cusco]

The largest crowd that I know of for a NASA launch was the third liftoff of Columbia, which I hitchiked across the state to view from Cocoa Beach. That was just over one million. This one is estimated at 500,000 to 750,000.