You're referring to Pathfinder, a shape-and-structures clearance test article. And the only full-scale full-stack (ET and SRBs, not just the orbiter) on display anywhere.
The problem with the O-ring in the SRB had nothing to do with the heat shield of the orbiter. Challenger could very well have had a completely pristine thermal protection system and would still have been destroyed.
The post you replied to is correct -- while there have been problems with tile damage in the past, dating back to the very first mission (although the problematic area was later covered with thermal blankets rather than tiles, so the problem can't recur) -- there have been no cases of severe orbiter damage in the past due to tile/RCC damage.
No, I don't work for NASA, but let's cut through the bullshit. All those people are volunteers. They know the risks. They went willingly. And if something has yet to be proven, then yes, it is still being tested, Hence the phrase "test flight". Let's not forget about test pilots who test new aircraft. The test drivers who test new cars when it isn't known if they're going to work. The test crews who man the controls of new trains, ships, and so on when they've never been tried before.
Or are you so insulted from the idea of risk that anything that is labeled as "uncertain" or "risky" or "test" is anathema to you? News flash: sometimes risk is necessary. This is one of those times.
Re:Whatever happened to single-stage-to-orbit?
on
NASA's Shuttle Plans
·
· Score: 1
Repeatedly cancelled when funding was killed whenever the slightest problem came up. DC-X, X-33, NASP, Rotary Rocket all lost their funding and never reached flight status. It's not that it isn't being attempted; it certainly is, but isn't allowed to proceed due to bureaucratic stupidity.
Hey, I'm not attacking you, and I'm not whining. I can state my opinions if I wish and that doesn't make them any less valid than anyone else's.
I think it's more unfair for me to be called a "whiner" and looked at negatively because I don't feel that it is OK to treat me with suspicion without proof that I've done nothing wrong and because I would rather use different equipment than you do.
But hey, this is Slashdot, anyone who disagrees with you has to automatically be an idiot, a whiner, a hypocrite, or what-have-you, right?
I have wondered about that myself and I'm not sure. Likely it was seen as more expensive than other alternatives and it was decided that, for example, satellite captures could be done by having the orbiter pull up to the spacecraft in question and grab it with the RMS and something attached to it to fit the spacecraft in question. That's how it's been done in the years since, with the spectacular exception of an Intelsat satellite (when the original grapple plan failed).
Wouldn't you rather try rather than assume it won't work? I choose to try, as being passionate about something means you do your best to take care of it. I see advocacy as part of that. It does not cost a lot of time or money to write down your opinion and see that it gets where it counts. And it sometimes does work; look at all the safety laws enacted as a result of (and often named for) people who were hurt because of whatever the law is designed to prevent in the future. And bad decisions can and have been changed because of peoples' opinions; I've written in on an issue before and later heard that a bad idea didn't go through because opinion was against it.
The cameras used are Kodak dSLRs with Nikon F-mounts and/or Nikon dSLRs, and they are probably off-the shelf, so some non-hardening is likely (or none).
However, the kind of noise you see can be caused by a variety of things: "stuck" (hot) pixels, which can cause the white and other-colored flecks; a long exposure (not likely as the shots are taken hand held with very long lenses -- 400/800mm, and sometimes with teleconverters that add an additional f/stop or two of "slowness" -- and it is hard to get a sharp shot with a long zoom as it is) and high ISO settings (to enable a shorter exposure to be made with otherwise the same camera settings).
Unfortunately... the EXIF data is missing from that file, so I can't make a better guess as to which it is. It is quite likely a combination of all of those reasons. And it may not be a brand-new camera; imperfections appear over time.
I will check for you (I know just who to check with to get the info) and get back to you, but I have to head out for a family funeral today, so it won't be right away.
The US shuttle could in theory be modified to support unmanned flight, but can't lower its landing gear automatically -- the astronauts wanted there to always be a function that would require a human to be physically there. So the only switch that can lower the gear is the one on the pilot's side of the main control panel, right near the rotational hand controller.
I would actually like to see thought given toward modifying the shuttles for unmanned flight, although it appears that there may be a version of the CEV built that is basically the CEV placed on top of a shuttle-style payload canister. Sort of like a CEV/Shuttle-C hybrid.
This was back when the "it's routine" mentality toward manned spaceflight was still new, and it was still somewhat possible for it to be shaken.
And also there was then, and is now, the tendency for the media to run negative stories where something unexpected happens than if nothing unusual is going on. And it was known days in advance that something could go wrong and there was a sense of dread; in both losses so far (I refuse to call them disasters), it was over and done before anyone - literally anyone - had a clue. The loss had already occurred. There was no pending sense of dread.
This was also true for Apollo 1, Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11. There was no warning. Only after the individuals in question had died was there a real realization of a problem.
In all cases, however, analyses were done and things were done to correct those problems. Just as is done after an airliner crash or a major safety defect found in automobiles or trains.
Mr. Hale does not understand that there is never such a thing as an absolute. Yes, you can design something to be resistant to failure -- in all the ways of failing that you know about. There will always still be the possibility for something to go wrong, and this needs to be realized.
When you drive your car, there is the chance that you will be killed. Same is true for riding the train, bus, or boarding a plane. And we accept those risks every day and see these things as "routine" when in fact they are not; there is a non-zero probability of injury or death.
Space flight is no different. It is just that people want to see something wrong so they will have something to complain about because they do not understand it, and therefore fear it, and therefore want to stop it.
So you expect an engineer to know for sure that his or her design is going to work without testing it? There is no way to know whether something works as it should without testing! And this is a test flight. So it is not surprising at all that a TEST still has a few ISSUES to FIX.
That's exactly what I've said for a long time. Please, if you have an opinion, express it. You have the right to do so, the explicit right to petition for redress of grievances. There are way too many people here who don't understand what they're talking about and don't understand that it's a routine (maybe not the best word to use, but oh well) part of engineering to build something and test it and if it needs more refining, refine it, and so on. NASA has never made any pretense of this mission not being a test mission, and they have been more than willing to work to fix problems that are cropping up.
Foam fell? We knew it might so we did already-planned inspections to look for problems. We have made plans to fix the one thing we worry about at this point. We will figure out why the foam fell and fix that problem and then go try again to see if the problem was fixed.
At the same time we are looking at ways to continue current operations and at the same time look to the future.
What more do you, everyone at large, want? Everything to be perfect the first time, no risk, be dirt cheap, handed to you on a silver platter? Sorry, it's not going to happen.
*I* write to my officials in government expressing my views and I support current and future space programs as well as proper funding of them. How many people reading this go to the trouble? Or is it just easier to type up that gripe and post it?
The original final version of the orbiter design did include a titanium cover over the thermal protection system. It was deleted when Congress refused to pay for it. And now we are paying more than was saved to keep everything going. A classic example of bureaucratic lack of foresight.
The ice build-up on the ET which is referred is caused by moisture in the air condensing onto the extremely cold surface. Look at photos of Saturn 5 rocket launches that take place in the summer (the most famous one being right in the middle of July when it's hot hot hot) and you'll still see the ice falling away from the vehicle as it lifts off -- that's from the cryogenics used as propellant.
It wasn't a danger with the Saturn 5 because it was a vertical stack without a fragile crew module on the side of the stack where it could be hit by debris. As long as it kept going up, there wasn't anything to worry about because the entire rocket would either end up at the bottom of the ocean, circling the Sun, crashed into/left on the Moon, or burned up in the atmosphere. The only part that had to face reentry heat was protected throughout the entire mission and only exposed in the last hour or two before entry.
Have you ever seen footage of tiles being taken out of an oven and handled immediately afterward with bare hands? Notice the hot spot in the middle of the tile and that the outer parts of it are no longer glowing. This means that the outer part of the tile isn't that hot.
Had the titanium skin not been removed, there would have been allowances made for keeping it solid. Unfortunately, instead everything had to be re-engineered for flying without it.
It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Nevertheless, don't forget that the design that was finally built was a huge achievement on its own and things were done with it that also seemed impossible.
Titanium, that was what the final design (pre cut) included -- it is a huge shame that the pennypinchers deleted the feature that would have prevented this mess if it extended to the RCC panels.
Not too many people think about those cordless tools in that light, either. I even saw a cordless weed-whacker a few months ago in a garden shop, and I would have bought one had I not already had a conventional corded one (having to haul out the cord and plug it in to weed-whack the front yard is a huge hassle in my house). I got the most amusing image of an Apollo moonwalker with one of those in his hands!
In a very basic way. The SAFER packs only have less than 15 minutes' propellant in them, far less than is required for a spacewalk, which routinely lasts several hours. These are just for pointing yourself back at the station and propelling you toward it. They are nowhere near as capable as the MMU was. A shame, too; the MMU worked quite well on the missions it was flown on (perhaps most famously the 1984 repair and relaunch of the Solar Max satellite, whose designers had thought ahead and included a Shuttle grapple fixture).
Wouldn't the SR-71 burst into flames every time it goes on a flight? (the entire point of the silica tiles is to draw heat into the center of each tile, away from anything that would be damaged by it, so no)
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You're referring to Pathfinder, a shape-and-structures clearance test article. And the only full-scale full-stack (ET and SRBs, not just the orbiter) on display anywhere.
The problem with the O-ring in the SRB had nothing to do with the heat shield of the orbiter. Challenger could very well have had a completely pristine thermal protection system and would still have been destroyed.
The post you replied to is correct -- while there have been problems with tile damage in the past, dating back to the very first mission (although the problematic area was later covered with thermal blankets rather than tiles, so the problem can't recur) -- there have been no cases of severe orbiter damage in the past due to tile/RCC damage.
Actually, I come rather cheap. But not too terribly so. I have my limits.
No, I don't work for NASA, but let's cut through the bullshit. All those people are volunteers. They know the risks. They went willingly. And if something has yet to be proven, then yes, it is still being tested, Hence the phrase "test flight". Let's not forget about test pilots who test new aircraft. The test drivers who test new cars when it isn't known if they're going to work. The test crews who man the controls of new trains, ships, and so on when they've never been tried before.
Or are you so insulted from the idea of risk that anything that is labeled as "uncertain" or "risky" or "test" is anathema to you? News flash: sometimes risk is necessary. This is one of those times.
Funny you should mention the goverment running the railroads.
United States Railroad Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Repeatedly cancelled when funding was killed whenever the slightest problem came up. DC-X, X-33, NASP, Rotary Rocket all lost their funding and never reached flight status. It's not that it isn't being attempted; it certainly is, but isn't allowed to proceed due to bureaucratic stupidity.
Hey, I'm not attacking you, and I'm not whining. I can state my opinions if I wish and that doesn't make them any less valid than anyone else's.
I think it's more unfair for me to be called a "whiner" and looked at negatively because I don't feel that it is OK to treat me with suspicion without proof that I've done nothing wrong and because I would rather use different equipment than you do.
But hey, this is Slashdot, anyone who disagrees with you has to automatically be an idiot, a whiner, a hypocrite, or what-have-you, right?
I have wondered about that myself and I'm not sure. Likely it was seen as more expensive than other alternatives and it was decided that, for example, satellite captures could be done by having the orbiter pull up to the spacecraft in question and grab it with the RMS and something attached to it to fit the spacecraft in question. That's how it's been done in the years since, with the spectacular exception of an Intelsat satellite (when the original grapple plan failed).
Wouldn't you rather try rather than assume it won't work? I choose to try, as being passionate about something means you do your best to take care of it. I see advocacy as part of that. It does not cost a lot of time or money to write down your opinion and see that it gets where it counts. And it sometimes does work; look at all the safety laws enacted as a result of (and often named for) people who were hurt because of whatever the law is designed to prevent in the future. And bad decisions can and have been changed because of peoples' opinions; I've written in on an issue before and later heard that a bad idea didn't go through because opinion was against it.
The cameras used are Kodak dSLRs with Nikon F-mounts and/or Nikon dSLRs, and they are probably off-the shelf, so some non-hardening is likely (or none).
... the EXIF data is missing from that file, so I can't make a better guess as to which it is. It is quite likely a combination of all of those reasons. And it may not be a brand-new camera; imperfections appear over time.
However, the kind of noise you see can be caused by a variety of things: "stuck" (hot) pixels, which can cause the white and other-colored flecks; a long exposure (not likely as the shots are taken hand held with very long lenses -- 400/800mm, and sometimes with teleconverters that add an additional f/stop or two of "slowness" -- and it is hard to get a sharp shot with a long zoom as it is) and high ISO settings (to enable a shorter exposure to be made with otherwise the same camera settings).
Unfortunately
I will check for you (I know just who to check with to get the info) and get back to you, but I have to head out for a family funeral today, so it won't be right away.
How could they make noise? There's no air to transmit the sound! ;)
All about me.
Buran - In Depth History
The US shuttle could in theory be modified to support unmanned flight, but can't lower its landing gear automatically -- the astronauts wanted there to always be a function that would require a human to be physically there. So the only switch that can lower the gear is the one on the pilot's side of the main control panel, right near the rotational hand controller.
I would actually like to see thought given toward modifying the shuttles for unmanned flight, although it appears that there may be a version of the CEV built that is basically the CEV placed on top of a shuttle-style payload canister. Sort of like a CEV/Shuttle-C hybrid.
See SafeSimpleSoon.Com for more on some current proposals.
Yah? Whatcha need? :) Moon hoaxes debunked? Elton John lyrics recited? Nikon D70s, Volkswagens, or Macs raved about? Websites built? Voldemort vanquished?
This was back when the "it's routine" mentality toward manned spaceflight was still new, and it was still somewhat possible for it to be shaken.
And also there was then, and is now, the tendency for the media to run negative stories where something unexpected happens than if nothing unusual is going on. And it was known days in advance that something could go wrong and there was a sense of dread; in both losses so far (I refuse to call them disasters), it was over and done before anyone - literally anyone - had a clue. The loss had already occurred. There was no pending sense of dread.
This was also true for Apollo 1, Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11. There was no warning. Only after the individuals in question had died was there a real realization of a problem.
In all cases, however, analyses were done and things were done to correct those problems. Just as is done after an airliner crash or a major safety defect found in automobiles or trains.
Mr. Hale does not understand that there is never such a thing as an absolute. Yes, you can design something to be resistant to failure -- in all the ways of failing that you know about. There will always still be the possibility for something to go wrong, and this needs to be realized.
When you drive your car, there is the chance that you will be killed. Same is true for riding the train, bus, or boarding a plane. And we accept those risks every day and see these things as "routine" when in fact they are not; there is a non-zero probability of injury or death.
Space flight is no different. It is just that people want to see something wrong so they will have something to complain about because they do not understand it, and therefore fear it, and therefore want to stop it.
Rubbish.
So you expect an engineer to know for sure that his or her design is going to work without testing it? There is no way to know whether something works as it should without testing! And this is a test flight. So it is not surprising at all that a TEST still has a few ISSUES to FIX.
That's exactly what I've said for a long time. Please, if you have an opinion, express it. You have the right to do so, the explicit right to petition for redress of grievances. There are way too many people here who don't understand what they're talking about and don't understand that it's a routine (maybe not the best word to use, but oh well) part of engineering to build something and test it and if it needs more refining, refine it, and so on. NASA has never made any pretense of this mission not being a test mission, and they have been more than willing to work to fix problems that are cropping up.
Foam fell? We knew it might so we did already-planned inspections to look for problems. We have made plans to fix the one thing we worry about at this point. We will figure out why the foam fell and fix that problem and then go try again to see if the problem was fixed.
At the same time we are looking at ways to continue current operations and at the same time look to the future.
What more do you, everyone at large, want? Everything to be perfect the first time, no risk, be dirt cheap, handed to you on a silver platter? Sorry, it's not going to happen.
*I* write to my officials in government expressing my views and I support current and future space programs as well as proper funding of them. How many people reading this go to the trouble? Or is it just easier to type up that gripe and post it?
The original final version of the orbiter design did include a titanium cover over the thermal protection system. It was deleted when Congress refused to pay for it. And now we are paying more than was saved to keep everything going. A classic example of bureaucratic lack of foresight.
The ice build-up on the ET which is referred is caused by moisture in the air condensing onto the extremely cold surface. Look at photos of Saturn 5 rocket launches that take place in the summer (the most famous one being right in the middle of July when it's hot hot hot) and you'll still see the ice falling away from the vehicle as it lifts off -- that's from the cryogenics used as propellant.
It wasn't a danger with the Saturn 5 because it was a vertical stack without a fragile crew module on the side of the stack where it could be hit by debris. As long as it kept going up, there wasn't anything to worry about because the entire rocket would either end up at the bottom of the ocean, circling the Sun, crashed into/left on the Moon, or burned up in the atmosphere. The only part that had to face reentry heat was protected throughout the entire mission and only exposed in the last hour or two before entry.
Have you ever seen footage of tiles being taken out of an oven and handled immediately afterward with bare hands? Notice the hot spot in the middle of the tile and that the outer parts of it are no longer glowing. This means that the outer part of the tile isn't that hot.
Had the titanium skin not been removed, there would have been allowances made for keeping it solid. Unfortunately, instead everything had to be re-engineered for flying without it.
It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Nevertheless, don't forget that the design that was finally built was a huge achievement on its own and things were done with it that also seemed impossible.
Titanium, that was what the final design (pre cut) included -- it is a huge shame that the pennypinchers deleted the feature that would have prevented this mess if it extended to the RCC panels.
Not too many people think about those cordless tools in that light, either. I even saw a cordless weed-whacker a few months ago in a garden shop, and I would have bought one had I not already had a conventional corded one (having to haul out the cord and plug it in to weed-whack the front yard is a huge hassle in my house). I got the most amusing image of an Apollo moonwalker with one of those in his hands!
In a very basic way. The SAFER packs only have less than 15 minutes' propellant in them, far less than is required for a spacewalk, which routinely lasts several hours. These are just for pointing yourself back at the station and propelling you toward it. They are nowhere near as capable as the MMU was. A shame, too; the MMU worked quite well on the missions it was flown on (perhaps most famously the 1984 repair and relaunch of the Solar Max satellite, whose designers had thought ahead and included a Shuttle grapple fixture).
Wouldn't the SR-71 burst into flames every time it goes on a flight? (the entire point of the silica tiles is to draw heat into the center of each tile, away from anything that would be damaged by it, so no)
Been there, working on it.
SafeSimpleSoon.Com