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The Shuttle Mission No One Wants
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Apr 12, 2005 08:44 PM
from the no-one-in-my-room-anyhow dept.
from the no-one-in-my-room-anyhow dept.
Fourmica writes "USA Today (by way of TechNewsWorld) has a surprisingly insightful look at the planned 'rescue option' for Discovery's upcoming launch. The plan, which has been mentioned here before, is to have the crew hole up on the ISS until Atlantis can launch to bring them home. My question is, why shove everyone into the ISS? Why not just dock with it, and share the life support supplies between the two systems, instead of cramming everyone into the station?" See this earlier story on the same topic.
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Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the shuttle is only a supported flight platform for a very narrow range of parameters on a given mission. Yes, even with all the contingencies. We *know* the ISS is a predictable, stable environment, as opposed to a failed shuttle (whatever the failure is) requiring extended docking with the ISS.
Therefore, living in cramped quarters for a while and losing/abandoning a shuttle is far desirable to potentially losing a shuttle due to yet-unknown circumstances, *and* the ISS, and all of the occupants of both.
Better cramped and (relatively) safe than comfortable and (perhaps) sorry, no matter how remote the chances of a catastrophic event caused by unknown/unmanageable failures, even on orbit.
Finally - jokes aside - wouldn't you think NASA knows at least marginally what it's doing here?
Or maybe they can use...
...the *military shuttle*!! (Hello, WW fans.)
Re:Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
"We *know* the ISS is a predictable, stable environment, as opposed to a failed shuttle."
Yes. Rock solid and *very* predictable and stable [spacetoday.net], indeed.
Parent
Re:Answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this presumes that the shuttle is still functional enough to get to the ISS.
This is just a typical reactive strategy, e.g., the last shuttle completed its entire mission, but just *couldn't land* because of the foam anomaly. So now they'll look for this one-in-a-who-knows-how-many occurrence, and have a "rescue plan", as all the people who don't realize how complex this is asked about last time. It's just a contingency plan, because is something even remotely similar ever happened again and they didn't plan for it, NASA would be raked over the coals and heads would roll.
So, yeah, if something really bad happened, there's no guarantees the shuttle could get to the ISS at all. They just have to plan for the eventuality that it can.
Parent
Re:Answer (Score:5, Funny)
So, do you suppose that somewhere in NASA's big manual of back up plans there is a page that says:
1. Other incidents not yet mentioned...
2. ???
3. Mission saved!
Parent
Re:Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Informative)
Therefore, living in cramped quarters for a while and losing/abandoning a shuttle is far desirable to potentially losing a shuttle due to yet-unknown circumstances, *and* the ISS, and all of the occupants of both.
Actually, it's probably simpler than that. IIRC, ISS has limited docking facilities, I believe it can only accommodate one shuttle at a time.
In order to accommodate shuttle one, it would need to jettison shuttle one, and make sure it's a safe distance away from ISS.
Parent
Re:Answer (Score:5, Informative)
There are actually 3 Pressurized Mating Adaptors (PMAs) on the ISS but one is the interface between the Unity (Node 1) module and the Russian FGB module. The remaining two can be docked to but if a shuttle is docked to one and a Soyuz is docked to the other (there is generally an "escape" vehicle always attached), then you are probably correct that that one of these vehicles would have to be jetisoned to accomodate the second shuttle.
However, as to the "cramped" ISS versus using the shuttle too, I don't think anybody realizes the size difference. The shuttle has very small crew space. Both the mid-deck and flight-deck are about the size of walk-in closet. The ISS is HUGE in comparison. In the Unity module it's even possible to get to a point in the middle where you can't touch anything even fully outstretched. (For fun astronauts have put someone there to see if they could actually manage to get themselves out -- since they can't push off anything the only way to move is to throw something hard in the opposite direction you want to move. When all you have is your clothes, there's slim pickings -- and yes, it was a woman they did this to.)
A "cramped" ISS would be a lot less cramped than using the shuttle.
Parent
uh...no (Score:5, Interesting)
No, NASA is terrified of losing life.
Along with too many Americans.
Here's the thing...when the 6 astonauts died in the last shuttle accident it was too bad. Terrible.
But...it was no more terrible than 6 anonymous people dieing in an accident on the interstate. Its the same thing morally.
In people's minds though, its worse...and it is, but mainly because of the loss of equipment. People are cheap and plentiful, shuttles are not.
And shame on NASA and the bureaucracy for not having the b*lls to find a nice way to say the truth.
So to answer your question, no, I don't think they use their best *scientific* judgement; they're concerned about image.
Parent
Re:uh...no (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that's not true. I would say some poor schmoe dying on the interstate is MORE tragic than astronauts dying in space. The guy on the highway is probably just going from his crappy job to his tiny house with his bitchy wife (or her abusive husband - let's not be sexist) and bratty kids. The astronauts that die in space are actually doing something they probably have dreamed of doing since they were children. They all know the potential risks and signed on anyway.
Unfortunately, while we value human life, the reality of the situation is that everyone dies and any type of exploration is dangerous. Where would we be if every exploration expedition in the world was scrapped because of a loss of life. I think we should take every reasonable precaution, but scrapping a space program because a few astronauts lost their lives is just dumb.
Parent
Re:Answer (Score:5, Funny)
"My God!", he exclaims.
The others all crowd even closer together to try to get a look, which would have been difficult even without the mass of people due to the thick smoke that had gathered over the course of this marathon meeting.
Gregory regains his composure, and trying to keep as dignified as possible stammers out, "lostwanderer147 doesn't think we know what we're doing."
A hush falls over the assembled chiefs of NASA.
He contines. "He says we're in a death spiral, and unless something big happens soon, the US space program will be history."
There's a low murmer as they discuss what must be done, but almost immediately Schumacher has a solution.
"We've got to contact this lostwanderer147, and give him full control of NASA, as he alone is our hope for a future."
Everyone agrees, and they set about trying to find him.
Tragically, his email address is not displayed with his postings or profile, and NASA is no more.
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Re:Answer (Score:4, Informative)
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Fuel (Score:3, Insightful)
The combined mass will use more fuel to maintain orbit.
Re:Fuel (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought docked shuttles and supply ships were used to adjust orbits.
According to This Story [mosnews.com] a Russian supply ship was used to move it by 3 kilometers. As long as the shuttles OMS thrusters were working, it should have no problem maintaining its orbit. If the thrusters weren't working, well, they wouldn't be docking in the first place.
Parent
Re:Fuel (Score:5, Informative)
At extreme speeds, resistance tends to be proportional to the cross sectional area - it's the main reason that you'll see the fuselage of modern, very fast aircraft/spacecraft often "pinch" near the wings. So if the shuttle is aligned with the orbit of ISS, it won't make too much of difference in terms of resistance. Now, the increased mass will make the ISS's fuel less effective at boosting orbit, but even still, it's not a major issue.
Decay isn't *that* fast or that hard to compensate from. At the very least, the incoming shuttle can provide ample replacement fuel, in addition to boosting the orbit itself. ISS is at a very high orbit, as far as LEO orbits go. It has a long way to go if it is to reenter; I'd imagine that irreversible orbital decay with the shuttle attached would take more than a year, and would probably be closer to a decade.
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Retiring the shuttle program (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA has no choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:NASA has no choice (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
double dock and share? (Score:5, Funny)
New tech needed (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were to start off with a new design they could apply modern techniques/materials to create a lighter, stronger, more reliable system (i.e. a carbon monocot frame, carbon heat shield skin, computers that have more than 640k of ram, etc)
After working out the kinks on paper they could build a few dozen (price per unit should go down with increased volume) and launch more regularly. But then again, I'm just smoking crack here, NASA will never see that kind of budget again. Unless we can convience the public that Bin Laden is camped out in his secret moonbase.
Re:New tech needed (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a valid point that the shuttle program (or it's successor) could hugely benefit from new tech. However, to imply that it's on it's way to being a usless antique is a mischaracterization.
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Political (Score:4, Interesting)
So, instead of spending the 80s and 90s designing better and more suited craft, they kept up the sham that the shuttle is the best way of getting stuff into space. If someone had had the balls to admit a mistake back then, things could have moved along a lot faster.
Parent
NASA's ability to recover (Score:5, Interesting)
If you take the Apollo program as an example, the very first Apollo mission was a disaster with three astronauts killed. And yet after that, the Apollo missions were great successes (although Apollo 13 was a close call, of course).
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched with a faulty mirror, but this was fixed and Hubble's become a great success, too.
This program will probably go the same way.
Easy solution (Score:3, Funny)
Pass a law giving NASA the sole movie rights to the rescue mission.
That by itself won't even be enough to cover the cost. But wait... there are 293,027,571 Americans according to Google. At $10 a ticket, that pretty much covers it. But how do you get everyone to watch it?
Pass a law that revokes the citizenship of anyone who can't present the ticket stub for the movie on request.
I really need to get into policy work.
Uh... (Score:4, Interesting)
If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain... (Score:5, Funny)
Mind you, that last wouldn't be pretty, but this is already an emergency scenario. In such cases, people think way outside the box, equipment gets used for alternate purposes, and plans get modified. Sometimes literally.
Disclaimer: I am not an astronaut, I just work with one.Parent
Re:If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? The programmers lost a fight to fully automate the landing; but the code is in the machine. Just have the damn computer land the thing. It already applies the brakes! If I recall correctly, pretty much the only thing the pilot gets to do on landing a the shuttle is tell the computer to put the gear down. Maybe parent can confirm/deny this for me?
Not sure about flight paths crossing over cities; I suppose that is probably the driving concern about tossing the shuttly in the water. That, and how would it look if the damn thing actually landed fine?
Parent
Meanwhile in Russia (Score:4, Interesting)
Star Trekin' Across The Universe (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess on the docking question would be that the Shuttle has a relatively short period where it's life support is designed to operate. While the shuttle is operating sufficently, that's fine, but once it's systems start failing (like, running short on power, oxygen, etc), then it's an additional load on the ISS.
Also, this sounds like a last resort choice, so they'd only be docking up once they're relatively close to running out of supplies.
Also, if I remember correctly, the shuttle's solar panels are deployed from the cargo bay, which would be impossible to deploy while docked with the ISS. At very least, it would make it impractical to move the shuttle into a more favorable attitude for good exposure to the sun.
Myself, if I knew I was floating around in a big tube in space, which was the only thing keeping me alive, leaving a big crippled airplane tied to the site through a narrow tube, I'd rather not keep the door open very long. If something happened, I'd rather it peacefully float away, rather than risking that narrow tube become a relatively big hole in the side of my big tube I called home.
When floating inside a helium balloon, avoid pins.
Re:Star Trekin' Across The Universe (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
On a similar note... (Score:4, Interesting)
You did read your own submission, right? (Score:5, Informative)
The ISS can only dock one shuttle at a time. Discovery would stay there, and be remotely undocked prior to Atlantis getting there.
Seems someone else [technewsworld.com] has thought of this:
"If Discovery were damaged during launch or in orbit, Mission Control would determine whether the shuttle is capable of safely bringing the crew home. If not, the astronauts would be forced to take refuge aboard the space station and wait five weeks for Atlantis and its crew of four to come get them.
The damaged shuttle would have to be jettisoned before a rescue vehicle could arrive, because the station cannot accommodate two shuttles. Mission Control would command Discovery to unlock from the station and fire its steering jets, which would send the vehicle plunging down into the atmosphere. If all went as planned, the remnants would splash into the Pacific Ocean far from any land."
Re:You did read your own submission, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP is just full of crap and should be marked '-5 Trying to be impressive' or something.:
Because landing the shuttle is hard.
We can't even reliably auto-land
a passenger plane, and they're incredibly forgiving airframces.
Err, yes we can. When we implemented autopilot landings the system was so precise that the engineers had to go back and randomize the landing area; every single landing was basically right on top of the last, pulverizing that area of the runway. Not saying that we use these on commercial flights yet, but the technology is out there.
The shuttle is an incredibly unforgiving airframe -- it comes in along a 1:1 glide path. Unpowered. At about twice the speed of sound.
The System *IS* fully automated, that I know for sure. When humans take over the argument is that there is no redundancy in the onboard comp.
The Space shuttle L/D (lift to drag, which equals glide ratio) is about 4 for most of the flight.
Landing speed is a little over 200 nmph.
Did I mention that the shuttle has no maneuverability beyond that provided by its control surfaces? Once committed, it's going to land; there's no second chance.
Well, ok. That is certainly true.
If we tried to bring it down on autopilot, it would only make a really big crater.
Beh. Even assuming that we don't use autopilot because it isn't capable, which isn't the case, the human pilot is only in control for about 4 minutes, and only when the shuttle has dropped below about 600nmph.
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RC Landing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:RC Landing? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:RC Landing? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RC Landing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:RC Landing? (Score:3, Funny)
porp
Why ISS? Because the pizza guy makes deliveries. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's particularly sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry for pointing out the obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
No one to rescue -- Soyuz docks with Salyut/Mir, all work is done in a relatively large station + modules, and if anything wrong happens, there is another Soyuz attached.
No giant airplane-thing to land -- a small landing capsule is the last thing you would expect to fail (not that there weren't early failures, but that was long ago).
Soyuz can sit attached to the station being actually useful, with its living space, fuel and engines, as opposed to the shuttle that mostly produces corrosive gas and stress on the flimsy station.
If anything is REALLY wrong, another Soyuz can be launched in a reasonable time, and without some insane risk, as long as the Khrunichev factory will continue making what by then can be considered mass-produced parts, as opposed to unique shuttles.
That was the state of the art two decades ago. Six Salyuts plus Mir operated like this. And there was more scientific work done than bickering and genitalia-waving between participants in those projects (bickering and waving between the countries was another story though). Can we now make something that isn't significantly worse than things that flied 20 years ago?
Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years (Score:5, Informative)
for orbit you need LATERAL velocity as well as vertical velocity (with just vertical you will either escape completely or go up and back down you will not orbit).
Parent
You've got it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
Also remember that the Burt Rutan space ship is a LOT more dangerous than the Shuttle. The Shuttle's track record is better than anything humans have ever designed before. And that is one of the reasons why it is expensive. In government spending a fatality is unacceptable. In private industry well... Shit happens.
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Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, the Shuttles goes into a much higher orbit,
If by that you mean AN orbit. Spaceship one is a dinky little 3 man craft that didn't achieve orbit in the slightest. The space shuttle on the other hand is a giant bus that can haul tons of payload into orbit. It's like the difference between a bicycle and a Mack Truck.
it, like every bureaucracy, has become an entrenched special interest, more concerned with preserving its budget than in actually moving the cause of space flight forward.
Nasa has quite a small budget, and more than just a mission of space flight. The main mission Nasa is pursuing is one of science. The secondary (and FAR more costly one) is manned flight. Nasa simply doesn't have the budget to develop next-gen spaceflight (Rutan is pursuing yesterdays spaceflight at cheap prices, a VERY different goal). No politician in there right mind wants to give Nasa the huge amounts of money it'd take to develop these new technologies.
The shuttle monopoly has strangled the development of alternative launch vehicles,
The shuttle has done about nothing either way to the development of alternative launch vehicles. Satelite launch technology has been steadily developed. If you're talking about manned missions, lack of public interest in the whole endeavor is what killed that. Public interest == money. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
A lot of people had predicted we'd not only have launched a manned mission to Mars by now, but set up a colony.
A lot of people are idiots and don't realize how much more difficult Mars is compared to the moon.
Until there's a serious shakeup among the upper echelons of NASA bureaucrats, expect for the U.S. manned space program to creep along rather than soaring.
No, until the majority of the public gets motivated to dedicate massive funding to Nasa the manned US space program will creep along. During the 50s and 60s the US was motivated by the Cold War. We reached the moon, and defeated the "bad guys". After that everything was just anti-climactic. Now that we've been to the moon and the Cold War is over, what's motivating the public?
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2 week turnaround (Score:4, Insightful)
It was also scheduled to be retired years ago. Heck, probably a decade ago by now.
Those original specs were never realistic, but a lot of the difficulties are because of the compromises required to serve many masters. E.g., the size of the cargo bay was mandated by the military (to hold their satellites), as was a large "cross-range" langing zone. The original design had a smaller cargo bay and much narrower wings.
As for bureaucratic side of your argument, check out the competition a few years ago. Several companies, including a guerilla team at McDonald Douglas (iirc), were invited to develop prototypes of the next generation shuttle. A lot of people were very enthusiastic about the guerilla effort - it was a basic system built atop proven technology, and it had already had several successful flights with fast turnaround.
NASA went with the sexiest, most unproven design that would require breakthroughs in something like three different technologies. I haven't heard anything about it since the competition.
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Re:Burt Rutan: 4 Days. NASA: 2 Years (Score:4, Insightful)
It tells me that you don't know an apple from an orange.
The most directly comparable government project to the SpaceShip One was the X-15. It flew just as high as SS1 (and it could fly ~4X faster to boot). The only thing SS1 has over the X-15 is two extra passenger seats. In both cases the vehicles only achieve 3% of the kinetic+potential energy required to get "into orbit".
A quick review of the mission history shows that they did a 1-day turnaround for two launches in December, 1964. One could also ask why it took 40 years before Rutan achieved a similar feat.
Parent
Re:Public Choice raises its ugly head. (Score:5, Insightful)
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