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Shuttle To Fly Without Safety Revisions

Posted by Zonk on Sat Apr 29, 2006 01:51 PM
from the gotta-get-up-there dept.
Space NASA
HaloZero writes "In the face of safety concerns, NASA has decided to proceed with launching the Space Shuttle Discovery in July without changes to the external fuel tank. The article states that even though Discovery's last launch shed a huge 1-pound chunk of potentially devastating foam, they're willing to wait to change the spec on the disposable tank. The changes would modify the Ice/Frost Ramp assemblies, which prevent a buildup of ice on fuel lines and cables (as a side effect, they also have a tendency to dislodge large chunks of insulation)."
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  • Proposal (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Saturday April 29 2006, @01:53PM (#15228905) Homepage Journal
    I think Nasa should coat the entire shuttle and tanks with materials cold enough to not freeze during take off and with a hard enough shell to survive the heat of re-entry.

    Yes folks, I believe we should coat the tanks and shuttle body with politicians and lawyers.

    Before you deride my concept as mere rambling, consider that they are now running the show anyway so we might as well make them useful.

    I did a quick survey amongst the remaining engineers and technical folks at Nasa and they all consider my proposal double plus good.
    • Wouldn't their incessant blabber drive the astronauts Nuts? A filibuster in space? Will the galactic federation council charge us with polluting space, if some of them politicians and lawyers break off during flight and drift into space? Gosh, the prime directive! We can't possibly risk them landing on a planet with intelligent life!
  • "Mejor muerto que tarde"

  • Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)

    by flooey (695860) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:12PM (#15228974)
    The summary is possibly a little misleading. Several safety changes have been made to the foam so far, but there are further changes they'd like to make. It's not like they're flying without any changes whatsoever. That's not to say that I completely agree with the decision, but it's an important point.

    • Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)

      by iamlucky13 (795185) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:32PM (#15229042)
      Correct. Foam pieces falling from the area in question (the ice ramp) have been observed to be too small to cause major concern, based on their calculations and testing, or will safely clear the orbiter (I forget which). They had been considering replacing the foam in this area with heaters. There has to be some sort of protection or else ice might build up. Ice hitting something at 500 mph is a lot worse than foam. I assume the combination of not wanting to add another active system (which can fail) and needing extra power supplied while sitting on the pad were contributors to this decision.

      After the loss of Columbia, NASA removed a foam ramp from the tripod area that holds the external tank in place. This is where the piece that caused the damage came from. In Discovery's last flight (and I believe in some older launch videos), foam was also observed to come off the proturbence air load (PAL) ramp, which is another aerodynamic feature. This was also eliminated. Additionally, NASA is going to be flying a gentler flight profile on remaining missions (listed as "Low Q"). They lose a little bit of load capacity doing this, but the acceleration is lower and their speed is slower in the denser levels of the atmosphere.

      • Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)

        by Frequency Domain (601421) on Saturday April 29 2006, @03:14PM (#15229188)
        ice hitting something at 500 mph is a lot worse than foam.
        You'd think that ice would be more dangerous than foam, but you'd be wrong. I had the pleasure of chatting last December with one of the astronauts who was doing the accident review. According to her the danger is more from relative velocity differences than from mass, since kinetic energy goes up quadratically with velocity and only linearly with mass. The problem with the foam is that it has such a low density that it decelerates very rapidly from aerodynamic drag after breaking loose. Ice, because of its much greater density, retains it's velocity and hits surfaces below at a much lower relative velocity. Given a choice between being hit by a chunk of ice at a few tens of mph, and a chunk of foam with the a tenth of the mass at hundreds of mph, you're better off with the ice.
        • That is pretty much correct. However, the higher density of ice also raises some problems. It is much harder and it the force is transferred to the shuttle over a smaller area. NASA is reasonably comfortable ignoring smaller pieces of foam because they are pulverized without causing damage if they contact the orbiter. The smaller area of contact means less skin area resisting the impact and the hardness of the ice raises the chances, for a given KE, of damaging the skin or the brittle thermal tiles. Now I d

          • Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Frequency Domain (601421) on Saturday April 29 2006, @06:29PM (#15229826)
            She specifically talked about foam vs. ice. She said that going into it, they all assumed that ice would be the greater threat because of hardness and mass, but after running lots of simulations (it was a simulation conference where I met her) they discovered that foam's propensity to rapidly decelerate made it a much greater threat in terms of KE once the shuttle picked up speed but was still in the atmosphere.

          • Actually, he may have a good point. Ice, being denser than foam, will have less surface area for the same mass. Less surface area means less drag, which means it slows down less in the air when it comes loose. Slowing down less means that its velocity relative to the speeding shuttle will be less, so it could well do less damage.

            For similar reasons, if you drop a point of nails and a pound of feathers, the nails will hit the ground first. It's all about drag, not weight.

          • No, but it looks like you missed the term relative velocity. If the shuttle is going 500 mph and you simultaneously release a pound of feathers and a pound of lead, which one will be travelling at a speed closer to that of the shuttle half a second later when it hits the wing edge? Hint - you're still in the atmosphere.
    • They're also going to be flying with changes that will allow them to detect if there was damage during launch that will cause another Columbia disaster. And if there is, there will be a campout up in the space station for awhile.

  • I have an easy solution... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jo7hs2 (884069) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:46PM (#15229086) Homepage
    Spray the external fuel tank with a thick coat of EZ-Cheez. The incredibly high fat content should insulate the tank nicely, and any debris will just leaving cheeZ-ee marks on the side of the shuttle That way, it will really look like it has been around geeks. Some soda stains might help.

  • Here's an idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Saturday April 29 2006, @03:12PM (#15229178)
    Have the guy responsible for shuttle safety fly with 'em. I hold any bets that those shuttles will be safer than driving through downtown NY rush hour... bad example.

    But I guess you get the idea.

    • Have the guy responsible for shuttle safety fly with 'em. I hold any bets that those shuttles will be safer than driving through downtown NY rush hour

      Or indeed get a politician to ride in one.

      Rich.

    • The engineers and the astronauts work hand-in-hand. I doubt that the engineers will be anything less than absolutely miserable if anything happened to the vehicle and crew. That said, the astronauts willingly assume the risk so as to further scientific progress. The engineers won't let them down if they can help it.

  • managing risk is art and science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deltacephei (842219) on Saturday April 29 2006, @03:34PM (#15229259)
    It's easy to armchair quarterback NASA at this point, but it's probably safe to assume that there is overwhelming pressure to make the right decision and that the decision to postpone further tweaking has not been made lightly. Fundamentally this is coming down to pressure to get on with the show and determine if this risk is a showstopper or not. They've decided that they can take the risk, and in all likelihood it is just one of many risks that have probably kept both engineers and managers in overdrive discussion for months.

    The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up. For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic. So given an unreliable shuttle program depending heavily on Soyuz, the painful decision to stop station construction and maintenance needs to happen. This makes the July launch akin to a make or break demonstration. If there is a serious problem, or another disaster, then NASA really can't look Congress in the face and make an argument for the station. Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained. As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments.
  • It seems the only people who are really in a position to either complain or approve of these changes (morally) are the astronauts themselves. If they think the risk is worth the benefit of getting to fly earlier well who are we to say that they aren't making the right deciscion?

    I mean given how many safe flights the shuttle has made without the foam causing a problem, and given the extra in fight safety measures (cameras and stuff) that have been implemented it isn't clear that the foam is the biggest risk the astronauts face. Flying into space is a very risky, unsafe buisness especially on old equitment like the space shuttle. It would be a shame if the publicity of the previous disastor meant that we spent tons of money fixing the foam problem when the total risk could have been reduced more for the same money/time by fixing other safety issues.

    It is a general problem that things we have seen cause disastors seem more dangerous than those that have yet to cause any problems. However, we should not let that emotional effect get in the way of making the best safety choices. If the next shuttle blows up because we insisted on reducing the foam risk to 0 rather than doing a cost benefit analysis then the blood of the astronauts is on the hands of everyone who flipped out about the foam but wasn't going to care about other safety issues. On the other hand if fixing the foam really does decrease the risk the most per unit of money/time we than we bad better focus on that. However, as laymen the only thing we can do is trust the experts and second guessing them risks doing more harm than good.

  • slashdot exaggerating again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by heroine (1220) on Saturday April 29 2006, @07:21PM (#15229971) Homepage
    The fuel tank is flying without the PAL ramp. The decision was not to continue removing sections other than the PAL ramp. They have to do as little as possible and test each change in a real flight to know what works.

  • I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dthx1138 (833363) on Sunday April 30 2006, @05:22AM (#15231260)
    ... That many of you are assholes. I'm sure your physical science course at Ithaca Community College gives you the necessary qualifications to fix the entire shuttle program with a two sentence /. post.

    Give us engineers some fucking credit please.

    • Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 2.7182 (819680) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:18PM (#15228993)
      I dont' think you should start throwing around statements like that lightly. The bottom line is that the astronauts are volunteers , and they fully know the risks involved (i.e. that ~ 2/150 shuttles get destroyed.) They have a military mentality and are willing to risk their lives for a very special opportunity which they have worked for years to achieve. They assume that the engineers are working their hardest, which they probably are.
      • Off topic I know, but it would've been impressive if you could've gotten the user ID number 818284. :)
      • I would like to second that comment - as someone who genuinely intends to become an astronaut I can tell you now that I would happily risk going up in a current model shuttle rather than waiting years for safety revisions that may not happen. I'd choose to risk my life to for the chance to fulfill the greatest dream in my life in a heartbeat. The fact is, if NASA are to be called irresponsible for this launch (which I do not believe they are, but hypothetically speaking) it should be on financial grounds; s
      • I'd bet there would be no shortage of volunteers for a one-way mission to Mars.

      • Sanity Check (Score:3, Interesting)

        by J05H (5625)
        That is not the bottom line. The bottom line is that America, The Good Ol' USofA, does not have manned access to space. We have a system that is broken beyond usefulness, that is bringing the rest of our government space program down. The astronauts being volunteers has little to do with our strategic requirements. We can't get up there even if we want to.

        We need to have a frank national discussion. If we are going to stop being spacefaring, stop. If we are going to develop cislunar space and beyond, we nee

    • That's not the half of it! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dietrollemdefender (970664) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:18PM (#15228997)
      I know there are "love the whales" slashdotters out there...

      I just can't stand all that smoke that the shuttle produces! Can't they use smokeless fuel?!? An the fact that they're using salmon to fuel those things! Yes its true! They use LOX to power it! See, they take Salmons and cream cheese to send the shuttle into space! It burns up soooooo many Salmon, that one day, they'll be extinct!

      • As the shuttle was landing, it startled one of the many eagles that live at the space center. The eagle dropped a salmon on the runway. The shuttle ran over the salmon.

        You might argue the salmon was probably dead from the eagle or the impact, but...

        I don't know about salmon, but there actually are lots of bald eagles at the space center. They build whopping huge big-ass fortress-like nests in the trees.

    • Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:5, Informative)

      by A non-mouse Cow Herd (67426) on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:19PM (#15229000)
      You are incorrect. Please read the CAIB report (see chapter 3, part two here http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/caib/PDFS/VOL1/PART01 .PDF [nasa.gov]). The foam that destroyed Columbia was the old foam. The 'new foam' was only used on machine sprayed areas, while hand formed areas used the old foam.

      Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.

      F3.27 Foam loss occurred on more than 80 percent of the 79 missions for which imagery was available to confirm or rule out foam loss. F3.28 Thirty percent of all missions lacked sufficient imagery to determine if foam had been lost.
      The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.
      • Thanks for providing accurate info. Infortunately, in the case of the parent he won;t listen. He's heard what newsmax told him to think, and that's that. He even AID so - said he would not read any replies. He flat out admits he's not letting facts get in the way of his opinions.
    • What's even more interesting is the blatant fact that the old foam is actually more safe than the new foam that failed. That's right, the foam that failed was a new EPA regulation applied to NASA [newsmax.com]. From that article:

      But instead of returning the much safer, politically incorrect, Freon-based foam for Discovery's launch, the space agency tinkered with the application process, changing "the way the foam was applied to reduce the size and number of air pockets," accordi
    • There's no chance that rabidly right-wing Newsmax and rightwing heartland would have ulterior motives in trying to blame something on environmental regulations. No, not a chance.

      Look, if you really want to link to someone with credibility, link to the Karl Rove Institute for Social Justice or something.

    • Here's a crazy idea, allow the few launches to use old foam as it's apparently safer.

      I've got a better idea: Forget the damned foam. Put the Shuttles on flatbed trucks and tow them straight to the Smithsonian. Then pledge to never design or fly another rocket where chunks of loose ice are perched high above critical components.

      It'll save the US taxpayers countless billions, and we'll finally get this 35-year episode of kludges, budget overruns and broken promises behind us.

      • 1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bLanark (123342) * on Saturday April 29 2006, @02:26PM (#15229028) Homepage
        There's no way that those old things were more reliable than a modern car. Back then, every driver was an amatuer mechanic, 'cos they broke down so often. This is when breakdown/roadside rescue services really took off, as more people became drivers without the tinkering instinct.


        What those cars had was that they were ***easy to fix*** - easy to diagnose, easy to get the parts out and in, easy to obtain the parts, in fact. These days, the simple diagnostic tests do not work or cannot be performed, and as a result, you can't fix your own car. But cars today break down far less than they did back then, at least that's my recollection of it.

      • Ok, but how many cars from the 1970s were around in the 1970s?

        now, how many shuttles have we ever had?

        A teaspoonfull of salt will not kill you, but if you eat an entire cylinder of morton's, you're gonna have some health problems.
      • Ah, the 'they don't make cars like they used to' fallacy.

        I've owned older cars. They need a lot of TLC to keep running reliably - my old Mini needed new points/condenser every 6 months (with the oil change), frequent spark plug/HT cable replacements, and I had to have the cylinder head off twice in the time I owned it. Although it was a fun car to drive (and had lots of character), it needed a LOT of maintenance to have any hope of reliability. There was actually a very noticable performance difference afte
        • A tune up was not a problem. It was just normal care, which you could do yourself. Grab some standard (non-metric) tools and swap out the points, etc.

          Sure, a modern care won't need that. When the modern car starts to fail though, you need to go to the dealer. Only the dealer has all the secret electronic codes needed to deal with the car.

      • as others have said, that would be much more difficult, but more importantly, it would increase the weight immensely. Remember the first two flights, where the tank was white and not orange? That was because they painted them. The stopped painting the foam because the paint alone weighed THOUSANDS of pounds.
    • Two definite factors I can think of are (1) - it's more difficult to apply and to inspect and (2) - The structural volume of the tank would have to be larger, increasing the overall weight.

      Two possible factors (I don't know enough about this, but I suspect they would cause problems) are (3) - The foam is porous. If fuel seeped into the foam, it would significantly reduce the insulating value of the foam allowing the fuel to heat up and boil off or ice to form on the outside of the tank as well as reduce

    • Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iamlucky13 (795185) on Saturday April 29 2006, @06:58PM (#15229905)
      Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim. For us Americans, it's currently tied to the CEV, which utilizes the best of both the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs with the best of and the lessons learned from the Space Shuttle program. Not to mention the space shuttle program had nothing to do with manned settlements on the moon or Mars. I think NASA envisioned continuing to have enough budget to operate extensive low orbit missions, in addition to manned exploration missions when the shuttle was conceived, which then is a failure of Congress and less directly us voters to provide them with the money needed.

      Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now). I also want to point out that this "obvious mistake" was copied almost directly by the Russians with their Buran shuttle, which flew perfectly but was abandoned because of their limited resources, not because of the drawbacks (which we are now more keenly aware of) of a mixed cargo/crew vehicle in a side stack configuration.

      My final point is that you incorrectly posit that the safety chief wanted to veto launching without the changes. He would've preferred the changes, but will apparently accept their omission since the major concern (the PAL ramp) was addressed. The decision to move forward was also endorsed by Griffin, who is a very accomplished engineer himself (a very different background than Keefe's, the former administrator). This is the way engineering works (in fact, life in general). You will never eliminate all the risks, so you figure out which ones can be addressed reasonably with your resources and you keep going.

    • Hold on there a darned minute (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ktappe (747125) on Saturday April 29 2006, @08:39PM (#15230164)
      First of all, the shuttle is not a "a death trap for any astronaut brave enough or foolish enough to jump in the cockpit". Only a small percentage of those who climbed in the cockpit have died. I'm sure your response will be that none should die, but that is a belief borne of complete fantasy. Which brings me to:

      Second, where did you and so many others get the hooked on the delusion that space travel is or can be made completely safe? Or that astronauts/cosmonauts expect it to be completely safe? None who climb into the shuttle or a Soyuz capsule are under the delusion that they are climbing into the car for a jaunt down to the corner store. Getting up and moving at 17,500 miles per hour is dangerous, pure and simple, and for you to call any machine a "death trap" for tackling this hugely complex task is to ignore reality.

      Can the shuttle be safer? Yes. Can the shuttle be made safer with the tiny budget NASA is being given and the critical ISS supply timeline and the "we must be absolutely 100% safe" political attitude being imposed? I propose that it cannot be. And if it cannot be, I concur with the others who have pointed out that we have to get this vehicle flying again so that we can "get back on the horse" and continue with the progress of our society into space.

      And yes, I would fly on the shuttle today. No, it's not 100% safe. It can't be. Yes, I could well die. But I would still fly on it. And you can damn well rest assured those flying on it know they could die too and are adult enough to have made that choice consciously and willingly. It is not up to you to think you know better than they who have been training for decades for their missions.

      -Kurt

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