Get defensive if you want. That's not what I'm advocating.
These decisions were driven by factors that you and I are not aware of. Me, I am inclined to give NASA the benefit of the doubt. You are not. Well and good...our opinions differ.
Neither of us are going to improve the space program by arguing this way.
It was NOT POSSIBLE for Columbia to get to ISS. You can't change orbital inclination with the power of positive thinking. Columbia never has serviced the ISS. Any shuttle with the mark II "lightweight" external tank does not go to the ISS. So get that idea out of your head.
Informed decision? WHAT alternatives? Scramble Atlantis? Crazy risky. Try to dock with Progress? Crazy risky. Try to drop a Soyuz capsule from ISS? Almost impossible, and only saves three lives. Try to come back through the atmosphere with a possibly damaged heat shield? Way less risky than the other alternatives.
Space travel is not simple. It's not safe, either.
Secondly, your entire critique is based on your (and the media's) assumption that the insulation pranged a bunch of tiles. At this moment, there is not any evidence that points that way. The imagery of the bottom of the shuttle doesn't show serious damage.
I'm just curious as to where this few percent was going to come from. NASA doesn't have money fairies. Their budget was occupied re-thinking their commitment to the ISS when the Russians started dropping the ball. For the record, I think money on Shuttle and ISS were misused, when we should have been building new tech launch systems, but that was not the route NASA chose to pursue. They were doing the best they could, considering their assigned mission.
Question the rocket scientists? Sure. You're asking questions. I'm providing (inaccurate and speculative) answers. NASA will come up with an even more detailed factual record and draw a conclusion, on a timescale that will drive the journos and the American public absolutely batty. But come up with good questions, and wait for answers before condemning them for not knowing what they're doing.
Shoulda woulda coulda. It's very easy for us to sit here and say how obvious it is that they should have some way to survey the damage on whatever thing might have gone wrong on takeoff. Thing is, there are probably 40 systems I can't name on Shuttle that would need the same sort of intensive inspection.
Bottom line is, sometimes you have to go with your best information. Their experience with previous launches said that the damage would not be hazardous to the mission. The Shuttle used to carry a tile repair caulking gun, apparently. However, it was not deemed feasible to do on-orbit repairs to the tile system.
Should there have been a backup? Shit, there should be a WHOLE NEW SPACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM. But there's not. Why? Well, there's no backup because a hell of a lot of smart engineers made the determination that it would not significantly increase the survivability of the Shuttle. They have data. We do not. There's no new space transportation system, because NASA bureaucrats and congresscritters like the expensive hard to service system we have today. It's nice and porky for everybody involved.
Yeah, there's lots of things we SHOULD be doing in space. But there's lots of reasons that those things aren't being done. Some for good reasons, some for bad reasons. But if you think for a second that anybody at NASA (the real NASA, where the steely eyed missile men work..not the dead NASA of bureaucrats and budgetary gerrymandering) wouldn't have traded places with those astronauts in a SECOND, wouldn't have given or done ANYTHING to get that crew down safely, even at the risk of their own lives and careers, I think you're nuts.
You say priceless. I say budget cuts. I wish NASA had the funding to do everything they want to, but they don't. I'd love to see a REAL space station, with the ability to service craft on orbit. I'd also like to see REAL reusable (or rapid-launch) vehicle systems. Both of those cost lots of money, and NASA can barely support their current (and, in my opinion, misguided) obligations.
The problems were assessed as non-mission-critical. This time, they were wrong. No malfeasance. No incompetence. They were just wrong.
And they'll probably never forgive themselves for it. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on that team that said the insulation damage wasn't going to be a problem.
My point isn't I'm right and you're wrong, my point is that NASA has some world-class people on both sides of this problem, and you don't have the expertise or experience to criticize. Neither do I, which is why I'm not.
The major issue with Russia's (jet, very different from rocket) engines was reliability and serviceability. The precision required to manufacture high-performance jet engines just didn't often happen in Soviet factories.
Rocket engines, by contrast, are a) simpler in terms of part count, b) produced in much smaller numbers, so QA can be better, and c) are disposable, so you don't worry about serviceability concerns.
Make sense?
I've been having a blast posting on this thread. Glad I'm not just entertaining myself. : )
Shuttle can not abort a landing. Once you do the de-orbit burn, you are coming down, period.
And, yes, the Columbia orbiter was also heavier than its fleet-mates, and therefore is not used to service ISS. Getting there was simply not an option. "Can do" attitude can get you a lot of places, but it doesn't make delta-vee when there's no fuel.
I sure enjoyed posting on that thread. Discussions like that here on/. make all the flamebait and trolling worth sorting through.
Re:Why is the debri contaminated?
on
Columbia Coverage
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My (uninformed) opinion is that it's also a really good, plausible reason to tell the hayseeds not to fool with the stuff, whether or not there's going to be a lot of hydrazine on the parts. Makes a great scare story to keep people away from the evidence.
DUDE! I just got a third-party cross-thread reference on Slashdot! My geek-o-meter just exploded. I am the master of all I survey. All lesser geeks must bow before me.
: )
I'm just glad other people are getting something out of my air-breathing propulsion class. Lord knows I got little enough out of it.
Well, except a degree, but that doesn't happen 'till May. w00t!
Because the jetpacks weigh about, what, 100lbs each? Remember that $10,000 per pound number you see bandied about? Right now, you don't take what you don't need.
No spare tiles are carried, because there was no way to get to the bottom of the shuttle safely, so they couldn't have even inspected the tiles, never mind the problem of "Umm, how do I push this tile in place to seat it? Whenever I push on the ship, I go flying the other direction!" No handles down there, bub.
Why weren't these problems anticipated and solved? Because they're absurdly hard to anticipate and really really difficult to solve.
Maybe something could have been done to get Columbia to ISS...maybe they could have rendezvoused with Progress...
Gee, maybe you should go offer NASA your crystalline clarity on how they should be doing their jobs. I'm sure they'd appreciate your opinion. What school is your master's in engineering from again?
No typo, no slipped decimal...in order to have a space elevator, you have to extend past the geostationary point, which is crazy far away.
Space elevators are not towers. They are tension members. The center of mass is located in geostationary orbit, so the whole thing is at rest relative to the surface of the Earth. In practice, you'd actually have the CM fractionally outside the geostationary point, so the whole structure would be operating only in tension.
Name me one country that could launch a man-rated rocket with a week's notice.
Hint: There aren't any.
"Scrambling" Atlantis would have been a really really risky maneuver.
Human factors ALWAYS miss deadly details. That's why they're deadly. They're hard to see because they're details. You have a better way to run a space program? I'm all ears. I'll bet you a quarter, however, that you don't.
I disagree with NASA on a whole lot of stuff, but not on how they care for their astronauts. If they thought that Columbia was in mortal danger, they probably would have launched Atlantis. If Columbia's crew couldn't have lasted until Atlantis got there, I bet they'd have drawn straws and some of them would have jumped out an airlock to extend their consumables. I'll bet you that they'd have launched it with two astronauts who were convinced they were going to die, putting their lives at terrible risk to try to save their comrades.
But, dammit, you don't take chances like that unless you KNOW for CERTAIN that if you don't, people WILL DIE.
But, NASA had no way of knowing at the time that the damage was potentially lethal. Well, no more lethal than sticking seven people in a big ceramic brick and dropping them into an atmosphere at Mach 20.
Ah, so the Shuttle (with its limited maneuvering ability) was supposed to rendezvous with a quickly replanned Progress launch, which we hope was inserted correctly into the trajectory we pulled out of our asses at midnight last night.
Look, space launches are a little more complicated than just popping over to the grocery store. Rendezvous missions are spectacularly difficult: akin to two riflemen sitting next to one another and trying to hit each others' bullets. Can you theoretically do it? Sure. In practice, it's WAY more complicated.
And, even if they did get near Progress, how do you get the stuff on board? No MMUs, no long ropes, no arm to grab the module...this would be the most dangerous space walk ever, and they'd have to do it dozens of times to get the stuff on board Columbia.
If the weather is bad in Florida, you know that it's bad half an hour before you land when you do your de-orbit burn. Once you're in orbit, you're pretty much the same distance to anywhere. Why would you want to try to maneuver on your descent phase? Carrying a propulsion system to be used on descent is hideously expensive in terms of launch fuel to prepare for somebody changing their mind on where they want to land.
And as far as SSTO, I don't believe it is the right way to go. Staged rocketry works good for a reason, and that reason is rooted deeply in the mathematics of orbital insertion. I don't care how good your design is, you're not going to be able to service an SSTO ship on a runway by throwing some more gas in it.
Well, you could, but there's no way I'd get on board.
Note that it also didn't have engines. The main engines were not reusable, and were located on the bottom of the external tank. Buran carried only a de-orbit burn system and orbital maneuvering thrusters. Its engines burned up on the way back into the atmosphere.
Second generation? I don't think that the addition of teleoperation is a big deal, even though it's a good idea. There wasn't a lot of innovation on Buran.
Which, by the way, is how the Soviets developed their early fighter aircraft program. Their first jets were direct copies of English designs they used to learn about how the things work. Then they started doing their own designs, and by the Korean War, they had world-class jet fighters. Their airframes have always been absolutely superb designs. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I guess), their propulsion and avionics have always been a long step behind the West.
See, I just don't see the scientific take as a compelling argument for continuing space flight. Space is a place where people should go to do stuff. I believe our species is programmed to be inquisitive and exploratory, and when we can scratch those itches (even vicariously through the courage of others) we are better off as a people.
So, which is better? Another Shuttle launch or color pictures from a Mars rover? For me, it's a wash. Now PEOPLE on Mars, that's something to get excited about.
We do need to do some preparatory work before going to Mars, but I don't believe we need to do much.
http://www.nw.net/mars/
Obligatory reference to Mars Direct plan I like a lot. : )
Flight controls, yes. But power? You've got all the speed you could possibly want...engines are not helpful.
Aerobraking is the simplest, lightest, most cost-effective way of returning to any planet with an atmosphere. Yes, it proved fatal to the Columbia astronauts, but I still believe it's the right solution.
Don't sell your country short, friend. Those fellows at University of Queensland have as much or more expertise flying scramjets as anybody else in the world.
Me, I'm an aerospace engineer who's a lot more interested in the aero part than the space part. Maybe when we both get jobs, we can trade. : )
I think the ISS is cool for its gee-whiz factor, but I've come to view it as a) too expensive for what it does and b) not useful to get us to Mars, which I believe should be our A-1 short term goal. The book that crystallized my thinking on this is called The Case for Mars, and I never let a discussion about space travel go by without harping on how really really clever this plan is.
NASA has stated that ISS is necessary for, and will be used for, space exploration. I just no longer believe them. It's not necessary to get us to Mars, and I believe it's soaking up the funding that WOULD get us there. That, in a nutshell, is why I don't support the ISS program.
As Iron Sun posts below, it's not without dangers, but I think it'd be worth looking into.
I think it would be better to re-design the internal tank to make it more suitable, once we have a proven on-orbit assembly and manufacturing facility. Right now, we don't have the expertise for major construction (precision welding stuff, installing airlocks, etc) in space, so I don't think they'd be useful right now.
And by the time we have developed that capacity, I really hope we've got something a little more clever than Shuttle. : )
Slashdot Mirror
Get defensive if you want. That's not what I'm advocating.
These decisions were driven by factors that you and I are not aware of. Me, I am inclined to give NASA the benefit of the doubt. You are not. Well and good...our opinions differ.
Neither of us are going to improve the space program by arguing this way.
All right, look.
It was NOT POSSIBLE for Columbia to get to ISS. You can't change orbital inclination with the power of positive thinking. Columbia never has serviced the ISS. Any shuttle with the mark II "lightweight" external tank does not go to the ISS. So get that idea out of your head.
Informed decision? WHAT alternatives? Scramble Atlantis? Crazy risky. Try to dock with Progress? Crazy risky. Try to drop a Soyuz capsule from ISS? Almost impossible, and only saves three lives. Try to come back through the atmosphere with a possibly damaged heat shield? Way less risky than the other alternatives.
Space travel is not simple. It's not safe, either.
Secondly, your entire critique is based on your (and the media's) assumption that the insulation pranged a bunch of tiles. At this moment, there is not any evidence that points that way. The imagery of the bottom of the shuttle doesn't show serious damage.
I'm just curious as to where this few percent was going to come from. NASA doesn't have money fairies. Their budget was occupied re-thinking their commitment to the ISS when the Russians started dropping the ball. For the record, I think money on Shuttle and ISS were misused, when we should have been building new tech launch systems, but that was not the route NASA chose to pursue. They were doing the best they could, considering their assigned mission.
Question the rocket scientists? Sure. You're asking questions. I'm providing (inaccurate and speculative) answers. NASA will come up with an even more detailed factual record and draw a conclusion, on a timescale that will drive the journos and the American public absolutely batty. But come up with good questions, and wait for answers before condemning them for not knowing what they're doing.
Shoulda woulda coulda. It's very easy for us to sit here and say how obvious it is that they should have some way to survey the damage on whatever thing might have gone wrong on takeoff. Thing is, there are probably 40 systems I can't name on Shuttle that would need the same sort of intensive inspection.
Bottom line is, sometimes you have to go with your best information. Their experience with previous launches said that the damage would not be hazardous to the mission. The Shuttle used to carry a tile repair caulking gun, apparently. However, it was not deemed feasible to do on-orbit repairs to the tile system.
Should there have been a backup? Shit, there should be a WHOLE NEW SPACE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM. But there's not. Why? Well, there's no backup because a hell of a lot of smart engineers made the determination that it would not significantly increase the survivability of the Shuttle. They have data. We do not. There's no new space transportation system, because NASA bureaucrats and congresscritters like the expensive hard to service system we have today. It's nice and porky for everybody involved.
Yeah, there's lots of things we SHOULD be doing in space. But there's lots of reasons that those things aren't being done. Some for good reasons, some for bad reasons. But if you think for a second that anybody at NASA (the real NASA, where the steely eyed missile men work..not the dead NASA of bureaucrats and budgetary gerrymandering) wouldn't have traded places with those astronauts in a SECOND, wouldn't have given or done ANYTHING to get that crew down safely, even at the risk of their own lives and careers, I think you're nuts.
What, blowing 'em up on the launch pad?
: )
OK, OK, that was uncalled for. Energiya's a great design. Hope they can get the glitches ironed out. It'll be a great heavy lifter.
You say priceless. I say budget cuts. I wish NASA had the funding to do everything they want to, but they don't. I'd love to see a REAL space station, with the ability to service craft on orbit. I'd also like to see REAL reusable (or rapid-launch) vehicle systems. Both of those cost lots of money, and NASA can barely support their current (and, in my opinion, misguided) obligations.
The problems were assessed as non-mission-critical. This time, they were wrong. No malfeasance. No incompetence. They were just wrong.
And they'll probably never forgive themselves for it. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on that team that said the insulation damage wasn't going to be a problem.
My point isn't I'm right and you're wrong, my point is that NASA has some world-class people on both sides of this problem, and you don't have the expertise or experience to criticize. Neither do I, which is why I'm not.
The major issue with Russia's (jet, very different from rocket) engines was reliability and serviceability. The precision required to manufacture high-performance jet engines just didn't often happen in Soviet factories.
Rocket engines, by contrast, are a) simpler in terms of part count, b) produced in much smaller numbers, so QA can be better, and c) are disposable, so you don't worry about serviceability concerns.
Make sense?
I've been having a blast posting on this thread. Glad I'm not just entertaining myself. : )
OK, my brain just exploded.
HPR: You once remarked that "VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
Jack Valenti: I wasn't opposed to the VCR.
*BOOM* There went my cranium.
Shuttle can not abort a landing. Once you do the de-orbit burn, you are coming down, period.
And, yes, the Columbia orbiter was also heavier than its fleet-mates, and therefore is not used to service ISS. Getting there was simply not an option. "Can do" attitude can get you a lot of places, but it doesn't make delta-vee when there's no fuel.
I sure enjoyed posting on that thread. Discussions like that here on /. make all the flamebait and trolling worth sorting through.
My (uninformed) opinion is that it's also a really good, plausible reason to tell the hayseeds not to fool with the stuff, whether or not there's going to be a lot of hydrazine on the parts. Makes a great scare story to keep people away from the evidence.
DUDE! I just got a third-party cross-thread reference on Slashdot! My geek-o-meter just exploded. I am the master of all I survey. All lesser geeks must bow before me.
: )
I'm just glad other people are getting something out of my air-breathing propulsion class. Lord knows I got little enough out of it.
Well, except a degree, but that doesn't happen 'till May. w00t!
Because the jetpacks weigh about, what, 100lbs each? Remember that $10,000 per pound number you see bandied about? Right now, you don't take what you don't need.
No spare tiles are carried, because there was no way to get to the bottom of the shuttle safely, so they couldn't have even inspected the tiles, never mind the problem of "Umm, how do I push this tile in place to seat it? Whenever I push on the ship, I go flying the other direction!" No handles down there, bub.
Why weren't these problems anticipated and solved? Because they're absurdly hard to anticipate and really really difficult to solve.
Maybe something could have been done to get Columbia to ISS...maybe they could have rendezvoused with Progress...
Gee, maybe you should go offer NASA your crystalline clarity on how they should be doing their jobs. I'm sure they'd appreciate your opinion. What school is your master's in engineering from again?
You're right, that would be a terrible error...
If it were an error.
No typo, no slipped decimal...in order to have a space elevator, you have to extend past the geostationary point, which is crazy far away.
Space elevators are not towers. They are tension members. The center of mass is located in geostationary orbit, so the whole thing is at rest relative to the surface of the Earth. In practice, you'd actually have the CM fractionally outside the geostationary point, so the whole structure would be operating only in tension.
Name me one country that could launch a man-rated rocket with a week's notice.
Hint: There aren't any.
"Scrambling" Atlantis would have been a really really risky maneuver.
Human factors ALWAYS miss deadly details. That's why they're deadly. They're hard to see because they're details. You have a better way to run a space program? I'm all ears. I'll bet you a quarter, however, that you don't.
I disagree with NASA on a whole lot of stuff, but not on how they care for their astronauts. If they thought that Columbia was in mortal danger, they probably would have launched Atlantis. If Columbia's crew couldn't have lasted until Atlantis got there, I bet they'd have drawn straws and some of them would have jumped out an airlock to extend their consumables. I'll bet you that they'd have launched it with two astronauts who were convinced they were going to die, putting their lives at terrible risk to try to save their comrades.
But, dammit, you don't take chances like that unless you KNOW for CERTAIN that if you don't, people WILL DIE.
But, NASA had no way of knowing at the time that the damage was potentially lethal. Well, no more lethal than sticking seven people in a big ceramic brick and dropping them into an atmosphere at Mach 20.
Ah, so the Shuttle (with its limited maneuvering ability) was supposed to rendezvous with a quickly replanned Progress launch, which we hope was inserted correctly into the trajectory we pulled out of our asses at midnight last night.
Look, space launches are a little more complicated than just popping over to the grocery store. Rendezvous missions are spectacularly difficult: akin to two riflemen sitting next to one another and trying to hit each others' bullets. Can you theoretically do it? Sure. In practice, it's WAY more complicated.
And, even if they did get near Progress, how do you get the stuff on board? No MMUs, no long ropes, no arm to grab the module...this would be the most dangerous space walk ever, and they'd have to do it dozens of times to get the stuff on board Columbia.
Not a viable option.
If the weather is bad in Florida, you know that it's bad half an hour before you land when you do your de-orbit burn. Once you're in orbit, you're pretty much the same distance to anywhere. Why would you want to try to maneuver on your descent phase? Carrying a propulsion system to be used on descent is hideously expensive in terms of launch fuel to prepare for somebody changing their mind on where they want to land.
And as far as SSTO, I don't believe it is the right way to go. Staged rocketry works good for a reason, and that reason is rooted deeply in the mathematics of orbital insertion. I don't care how good your design is, you're not going to be able to service an SSTO ship on a runway by throwing some more gas in it.
Well, you could, but there's no way I'd get on board.
It hasn't captured MY imagination because it doesn't DO anything.
Yeah, they promise to assemble a Mars ship there. Here's me, not holding my breath. ISS is a boondoggle.
Why do I think humans should go into space?
Simple. I am not a robot.
While we're splitting hairs, it's a centripetal ACCELERATION. Not a force.
Agreed.
Note that it also didn't have engines. The main engines were not reusable, and were located on the bottom of the external tank. Buran carried only a de-orbit burn system and orbital maneuvering thrusters. Its engines burned up on the way back into the atmosphere.
Second generation? I don't think that the addition of teleoperation is a big deal, even though it's a good idea. There wasn't a lot of innovation on Buran.
Which, by the way, is how the Soviets developed their early fighter aircraft program. Their first jets were direct copies of English designs they used to learn about how the things work. Then they started doing their own designs, and by the Korean War, they had world-class jet fighters. Their airframes have always been absolutely superb designs. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I guess), their propulsion and avionics have always been a long step behind the West.
See, I just don't see the scientific take as a compelling argument for continuing space flight. Space is a place where people should go to do stuff. I believe our species is programmed to be inquisitive and exploratory, and when we can scratch those itches (even vicariously through the courage of others) we are better off as a people.
So, which is better? Another Shuttle launch or color pictures from a Mars rover? For me, it's a wash. Now PEOPLE on Mars, that's something to get excited about.
We do need to do some preparatory work before going to Mars, but I don't believe we need to do much.
http://www.nw.net/mars/
Obligatory reference to Mars Direct plan I like a lot. : )
Flight controls, yes. But power? You've got all the speed you could possibly want...engines are not helpful.
Aerobraking is the simplest, lightest, most cost-effective way of returning to any planet with an atmosphere. Yes, it proved fatal to the Columbia astronauts, but I still believe it's the right solution.
Don't sell your country short, friend. Those fellows at University of Queensland have as much or more expertise flying scramjets as anybody else in the world.
Me, I'm an aerospace engineer who's a lot more interested in the aero part than the space part. Maybe when we both get jobs, we can trade. : )
I think the ISS is cool for its gee-whiz factor, but I've come to view it as a) too expensive for what it does and b) not useful to get us to Mars, which I believe should be our A-1 short term goal. The book that crystallized my thinking on this is called The Case for Mars, and I never let a discussion about space travel go by without harping on how really really clever this plan is.
NASA has stated that ISS is necessary for, and will be used for, space exploration. I just no longer believe them. It's not necessary to get us to Mars, and I believe it's soaking up the funding that WOULD get us there. That, in a nutshell, is why I don't support the ISS program.
As Iron Sun posts below, it's not without dangers, but I think it'd be worth looking into.
I think it would be better to re-design the internal tank to make it more suitable, once we have a proven on-orbit assembly and manufacturing facility. Right now, we don't have the expertise for major construction (precision welding stuff, installing airlocks, etc) in space, so I don't think they'd be useful right now.
And by the time we have developed that capacity, I really hope we've got something a little more clever than Shuttle. : )
Alright, alright, you got me. Again with the late-night rhetoric. My bad.
Yes, you need flight controls and electricity. You do NOT need an engine.
I stand corrected.