Inside the Mummification of Space Shuttle Discovery

longacre writes "When Space Shuttle Discovery goes on display at the Smithsonian next month, it will be a shell of its former self, with most of its critical systems removed. This article has a behind-the-scenes look at the removal of the engines and their replica replacements, as well as photos of the orbiter in various states of deconstruction. 'From the very beginning it was understood by all parties involved — including the orbiter recipients — that the orbiters will be made safe and inert prior to display, as was made clearly evident in NASA’s request for proposals to house the orbiters. Discovery’s preparation for display took a year and cost approximately $28 million. Since the Smithsonian is a federally owned institution, this cost was borne by the U.S. government, unlike the other institutions that have to foot the bill for the preparation and delivery of the orbiters. The price tag did not stop the frantic push to get one by an eager group of contenders. At stake was not only a piece of American history and the prestige of housing an orbiter but the potential draw for millions of new paying visitors to the recipient museums.'"

Comments

So, how much for one of the engines?

[crazyjj]

Let's see that wise-ass kid from next door beat me in his rice-burner once I drop one of *those* babies into my SUV.

BTW, does anyone know if consumer-grade tires can handle 420,000 lbs. of thrust?

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[Amouth]

well the beauty of using one of these engines on a car would be that you wouldn't have to worry about if the tires could handle the torque to transfer the energy into motion.. this thing just pushes you, so your limit on tires is going to be the overall weight of the car and the speed rating as they only have to roll and carry a load..

but something tells me that this sucker is going to be heavier and going to push you faster than "consumer-grade" tires can do as most tires have a 2k lbs and 110mph limit..

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[mhajicek]

If you get it off axis even a tiny bit you also have to worry about side loading, which at 1% would be 4200 pounds. Oh, NM, he said SUV, so it'll easily flip before the tires slip.

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[Robotbeat]

The propulsion systems of Discovery are being used for the initial flights of SLS, the next NASA rocket which is going beyond LEO (first flight will be around the Moon). Why the heck doesn't at least the summary mention that? That's a far better use than rotting in a museum.

"Durr, now that the Shuttles are retired, NASA is being shutdown, right?" Nope.

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[Teancum]

The sad thing is how those engines are going to be put back to work: As a component on the SLS rocket, where they will be shot into space and left to burn up in re-entry as yesterday's leftovers to be literally thrown away.

These engines are some of the most advanced rocket systems ever designed, and purpose built to be reusable, so the only design choice NASA has is to throw them away on expendable rockets?

Not only that, but when NASA runs out of SMEs for the SLS rocket, they will have to come up with a new engine at huge expense, put it through a testing regime, and more or less redesign the rest of the rocket as a whole new vehicle anyway. Even from a financial savings viewpoint I fail to see how that is going to save any money, much less how SpaceX (to give an example) will have spent less for its entire rocket program than NASA is going to spend on this "refit" after the SLS is used up. More like spend about 3x the amount of money that SpaceX has spent to date for everything they've done.

I don't know if I'll have the stomach to witness such waste when the SLS finally flies. Then again, I have significant doubts as to if that program is going to survive into the next presidential administration in America. It isn't even slated to fly until 2017 at the earliest, so it will be somebody other than Barack Obama as president and somebody other than Charles Bolden as administrator of NASA even if it does fly.

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[Mercano]

Not only that, but when NASA runs out of SMEs for the SLS rocket, they will have to come up with a new engine at huge expense, put it through a testing regime, and more or less redesign the rest of the rocket as a whole new vehicle anyway.

Not quite. Once the stock of RS-25D engines left over from the space shuttle program are used up, they'll be replaced by RS-25Es, a cheaper one-time-use version of the space shuttle main engine. They may need to produce two more sets of the 25Ds before the E's are ready, though. They're reusing the old shuttle engines on a disposable rocket for two reasons: they're already a man-rated design, and the engines themselves are already paid for.

Interesting note, Discovery's engines, at least, may make it to museum some day; looks like they're being earmarked for ground test structures, rather than flight.

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[Teancum]

Assuming the planned number of SLS launches uses up all of the available SSMEs then it is no real hardship to restart the production lines and make more of them as needed. They are not much more complex to build than any other fully-cryogenic motor currently constructed by various manufacturers especially with fifty years of experience since the first crude LOX/LH2 engines were built and flown.

Other than the fact that the assembly line which built these engines has been shut down for nearly three decades and many of the people who not just built the engines but also were involved with the engineering teams that designed them not only are retired but are pushing up daisies due to old age.... yeah, you might get that assembly line going again. It isn't going to get going again any time soon.

And "any other fully-cryogenic motor" won't fit the bill either. For engines of this size and magnitude, there hasn't been a new rocket motor built even designed for several decades besides the Merlin engines by SpaceX. Companies like Orbital and Lockheed-Martin are even using Russian engines because they don't have the engineers in-house to make them, It is a sad state of American aerospace engineering I'll admit, but the problem is that nobody is doing stuff like that because somebody somewhere thought that we had all of the missiles and rocket engines we would ever need for eternity. Commercial sales of American launchers is so pathetic that it might as well be non-existent as most non-government space launches have been done by either Russia, the ESA, or China (with India getting ready to enter the mix).

There is some hope for the future as there are dozens of much smaller engines (but still capable in theory of orbital spaceflight) that are under development in America, but nothing of the class or scale that would launch the SLS. I just don't see NASA willing to fly a rocket like the N1 that had over 40 rocket engines... which would again require a whole new rocket design.

BTW, as far as SpaceX and the "off the shelf components".... Elon Musk got so disgusted with the supply chain he could find that he brought most of the part production in-house and even purchased several sub-contractors outright and had them move their production facilities to El Segundo to be inside the plant or right next to it. My point is that the replacement of the SLS engine (aka replacing the SSMEs once they've all been used up) is going to need the same sort of effort... an effort that still has yet to be funded by the U.S. Congress no less. So we are talking about a hypothetical rocket engine that has yet to even receive funding much less have any engineers even be devoted to getting it built.

Perhaps instead they will simply purchase Merlin 2 engines for the SLS?

Regardless, I think it is a total waste of a valuable resource to throw away the SSMEs in such a fashion as is currently programmed to happen. This is the "official" path that NASA is taking for the manned spaceflight program, and the one thing that is being used to sacrifice nearly the rest of NASA's budget including deep space missions. The use of the SSMEs is done to "save money", but I fail to see how in the long term (aka 10-20 years) that is going to happen either. It will save over the short term (aka about 2-3 years) some money, but not much.

Re:So, how much for one of the engines?

[khallow]

And "any other fully-cryogenic motor" won't fit the bill either. For engines of this size and magnitude, there hasn't been a new rocket motor built even designed for several decades besides the Merlin engines by SpaceX. Companies like Orbital and Lockheed-Martin are even using Russian engines because they don't have the engineers in-house to make them, It is a sad state of American aerospace engineering I'll admit, but the problem is that nobody is doing stuff like that because somebody somewhere thought that we had all of the missiles and rocket engines we would ever need for eternity. Commercial sales of American launchers is so pathetic that it might as well be non-existent as most non-government space launches have been done by either Russia, the ESA, or China (with India getting ready to enter the mix).

The Pratt and Whitney RS-68, developed in the late 1990s, handles LOX/liquid hydrogen and has more thrust than the SSME.

The real reason...

[bmo]

for mummification and/or embalming, is to make sure the person is actually, really, dead. This isn't mothballing. It's making sure Discovery doesn't fly again.

--
BMO

Re:The real reason...

[khallow]

The real reason for mummification and/or embalming, is to make sure the person is actually, really, dead. This isn't mothballing. It's making sure Discovery doesn't fly again.

I don't know why that post got modded so high. NASA will reuse the engines that it yanks off and much of the gear that's on a Shuttle is either proprietary/secret (eg, TDRSS) or hazardous (toxic chemicals, can catch on fire, etc). There's no point to keep a Shuttle in operating condition since no one intends to fly it again.

Re:The real reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a reasonable theory. You wouldn't want someone filling the internal fuel tank then letting the engines rip.

Having said that, it IS a damn shame. A museum is about exhibiting the real past. (At least, in theory.) There's no difference between a shuttle shell and a replica shell. The thing that made the shuttle "The Shuttle" -was- the electronics, the heat shielding, the engines, etc.

Others have argued that there's a lot of top secret stuff on the Shuttle. First, the Russian Shuttle cloned most of the classified stuff so there's really nothing "secret" about it any more to any nation capable of building a shuttle. Second, most of the fundamental technology is from the 1970s/80s. It has long been superseded. It may still be classified, but it's no longer significant.

Then there's the argument about hazardous material. This is a popular complaint in America, that XYZ is hazardous. It always fascinates me. Let's face it - the US is packed with actual hazards (drugs and toxic metals in drinking water, overdosable vitamins in food/drink, antibacterial soap that kills the good bacteria on your skin and leaves you dangerously exposed to deadly kinds, the entire tobacco industry, Microsoft, etc). The heat shielding on the Shuttle is unlikely to be anything like as toxic, provided the tiles are undamaged. Paint the damn thing in a transparent resin if you're that worried, same as they do already with conserved archaeological finds.* It'll be cheaper and still leave you with a genuine Shuttle.

*The resin used is almost entirely chemically inert, so damage to artifacts is close to nil, has minimal impact on observation, and has well-defined properties so can be accounted for when running experiments.

Re:The real reason...

[idontgno]

There's no difference between a shuttle shell and a replica shell.

One who speaks so glibly hasn't considered the Ship of Theseus. The shell is no less the shuttle than the entire shuttle was; otherwise, the shuttle on the ground after a mission and before reconstitution wasn't a shuttle either. I mean, it lost TPS tiles! And burned up fuel!

Unless you're arguing for some arbitrary "feels right" distinction, some bright line that exists only in your mind between "still a shuttle" and "not a shuttle any more". And that's not a valid argument at all.

new paying visitors

[cpu6502]

Smithsonian doesn't charge. (But maybe they should start, to help fund their expenses.) Like other government-owned institutions charge.

Just to be accurate:

[rickb928]

"this cost was borne (sic) U.S. government"

should read:

"this cost was borne (sic) U.S. taxpayers"

A common mistake. Even when our government doesn't pay for it, they borrow on our good names. The buck won't stop in the Oval Office.

Re:Just to be accurate:

[Galestar]

"this cost was borne (sic) U.S. government" should read: "this cost was borne (sic) U.S. taxpayers' children"

FTFY... it was simply added to the national debt load you guys will pass on to your children.

Re:Just to be accurate:

[Cazekiel]

I'd rather have a few cents chopped from my paycheck for this than everything it's been used for so far. Education > War, in my book.

Re:Just to be accurate:

[operagost]

That's D.C. math right there! File that along with calling increasing funding by a smaller amount than you increased it last year as a "cut".

Frantic to buy?

[Lando]

The price tag did not stop the frantic push to get one by an eager group of contenders

Really? How come NASA had to drop its price to actually sell the shuttles if everyone was so eager to buy one?

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/17/1714204/lacking-buyers-nasa-cuts-prices-on-shuttles-and-old-engines

Re:LOL

[pavon]

Reading the article it sounds more like it was considered easier/cheaper/less risky to just discard all the components that had touched any toxic/caustic liquids rather than clean and preserve them.

At this location, the retired former Shuttle Program manager Wayne Hale encountered the extracted tanks that made up the innards of the systems, cut up and lying in the dirt.

There were a few exceptions like the engines which were scavenged for use with STS (like that will ever actually happen), and other deconstruction to learn about the effects of 15 years of space flight (that is worthwhile).

I has a sad.

[kheldan]

It's a very sad thought to me, that a once-great and powerful machine of such complexity is being reduced to little more than a static kiddie ride in a museum, even if it is the Smithsonian. I suppose part of this sadness comes from the fact that we don't have anything home-grown replacing it currently, and with the way things are going, we might not for many decades to come. As many of us did, I anticipated having reusable SSTO craft before now, driving the cost of the ride into orbit way down from what the shuttle cost. Instead we have essentially nothing.

Re:I has a sad.

[DigiShaman]

After the Cuban missile crisis, I don't want another cold war. There was so many bad ways that could have ended, but didn't. I understand the glory in innovation that came from the Cold War. But please, don't undermine the brinkmanship that came with it too. It's simply not worth it IMHO.

Seen one of the older ones already...

[SlideRuleGuy]

...and if it's been stripped like the one I saw, don't bother going. It isn't worth walking up the ramp to see it. Just an empty shell. They didn't even leave more than a few wires dangling around. And you couldn't walk into any of the crew areas. Nothing.

Re:Seen one of the older ones already...

[pavon]

The only older one available for viewing is the Enterprise*, which was never a functional shuttle. It never had any of the engine components, or thermal tiles. Much of the electronics and other interior finishing were never installed, and the few useful pieces of equipment that were installed were later removed as spare parts for the actual shuttle fleet. It truly was an empty shell.

These should be quite a bit better than that, even after removing much of the guts.

*Or it could have been one of the mockups, like Explorer.