Space Shuttle One Step Closer To July Launch 92
Mictian writes "The risk to the space shuttle from launch debris, mainly ice falling off the external tank, has been reduced and is now low enough to be considered 'an acceptable risk,' NASA's shuttle engineers and managers concluded in the debris verification meeting held Saturday at Kennedy Space Center. The board recommended a green light for a July launch, which Shuttle Program Manager Bill Parsons accepted. The independent Return to Flight Task Group will hold its final meeting on June 27th to determine if the remaining 3 (out of 15) hurdles to launch are cleared, as mentioned in previous Slashdot coverage."
Interesting? (Score:5, Insightful)
I took particular offense to this passage: The gross glutted wealth of the federal government; the venality and stupidity of our representatives; the lobbying power of big rent-seeking corporations; the romantic enthusiasms of millions of citizens; these are the things that 14 astronauts died for. To abandon all euphemism and pretense, they died for pork, for votes, for share prices, and for thrills (immediate in their own case, vicarious in ours). I mean no insult to their memories, and I doubt they would take offense.
What a kook! This guy obviously has no background in anything scientific, has absolutely no clue about what the space shuttle or NASA are trying to accomplish and can not analyze anything outside of a patheticly narrow and egotistical political lens.
Not surprising to me though was seeing this kind of an article come from the National Review.
Don't rush it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Successor to the shuttle? (Score:2, Insightful)
At least hopefully that isn't what happens.
Someone else already posted about the CEV, so there is at least a planned successor.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll read the article. But:
The West Wing on Voyager crossing the termination shock:
"Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extraterrestrials, is carrying photos of life on earth, greetings in fifty-five languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chant to Chuck Berry, including "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by 1920s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man. He died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down.
But his music just left the solar system."
Okay, maybe I'm dumb to feel inspired by that. I don't know why it's so touching. But every time I think of it I get goosebumps.
The Onion said it best. Holy shit, we walked on the fucking moon.
It may be true that there's no incentive to explore space, in terms of measurable returns. We get spinoff technology, but maybe it would have come anyway. That's debatable. But we walked on the fucking moon. That is one of the biggest moments in any chronicle of our race. Let's keep at it, if for no other reason than that we can. Let's be the one species that survives itself and spreads out into the universe.
Re:Successor to the shuttle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes.
Let's have some balls, for once, and go somewhere. We can sit here, doing with shinier toys what we did again and again throughout history, or we can go somewhere. Exploration, man. "And he willed that the hearts of men would seek beyond the world, and find no rest therein." Let's go.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting? (Score:3, Insightful)
The shuttle ain't doing much exploring, it's just going round and roung in circles: and it's far cheaper to send robots to do the job of actually exploring than humans.
"2. Testing and developing new technologies to advance space flight, aviation, and other areas that wind up being useful here (velcro, etc.)"
The spin-off argument is totally bogus and has been debunked numerous times. The fact that you believe NASA developed velcro shows you don't know what you're talking about.
"3. Eventually building space habitats that more people will be able to visit. ISS is for scientific purposes,"
What science, exactly, has ISS produced?
"but several private companies have already put forward plans to put up space hotels, resorts, etc. A lot of them use technology developed by NASA."
No-one in their right mind would use NASA technology for a space station: it's way too complex, expensive and maintenance-intensive. The only 'space hotel' likely to fly in the next decade, if at all, is based on inflatable modules, not NASA-style spam-cans.
"4. AI. Robotics has made large advancements thanks to NASA and the space program."
For which the shuttle is absolutely irrelevant, except to the extent that it takes billions of dollars away from useful robotic exploration programs to blow on 'Buck Rogers'.
"5. Developing new propulsion methods. Several preliminary designs for commercial hypersonic aircraft are based on NASA tech."
For which the shuttle is absolutely irrelevant. Equally, we don't have any 'commercial hypersonic aircraft', so the fact that NASA blew a few bucks studying them is irrelevant too.
In the Sixties... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it went from "the best and brightest" to "how do we do with less". Now NASA is going with "eh, it seems like an acceptable risk" but you know the folks that say that are thinking "as long as I'm not the one on that shuttle".
It is attitudes like this that has allowed other countries to catch up (and even surpass) the U.S. While we are arguing over whether evolution should be taught in schools, other countries are pulling ahead of the U.S. (and why not, as American corporations apparently feel that Americans are not worth hiring).
Apollo 17 was the last mission to the moon. It only got noticed because it was the last mission to the moon. Shuttle missions are hardly even noticed now by the general public. As far the the public is concerned NASA barely exists.
Sadly, I fear that in my lifetime NASA will either be absorbed by the DoD or close its doors altogether. That will be a sad day for this country and for science.
(OT) Re:In the Sixties... (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a reason for that. Americans don't want to go into engineering, they go to business management and medicine and law. That's where the real money is. Can't blame anyone for that.
An american engineer, if you can hire one, will cost you more, and will come with a certain set of expectations (work week, benefits, etc.) which his foreign competitors are not burdened with. In a capitalist society a business purchases generic labor at lowest cost, as it should. Nothing to complain here about.
To change this, and to make an american engineer competitive on the world labor market, such an engineer must reduce his price; in addition to that he needs to work harder, as his Chinese competitors do. His office presence from 9 to 5 must bring enough cash in to pay his salary; you start here and figure out how much he is worth to a business. At $80k/yr his work day costs the business about $500. If the engineer during that day produces some 30 lines of a generic code, he doesn't earn enough to stay employed. Drop your price to $20k/yr, or start writing 100-200 LOCs daily, then you are profitable.
Re:Successor to the shuttle? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of the CEV, life is simple. Spiral One will only require that we build a technology similar to what was created in the 1960s. i.e. A capsule. Reusability isn't even specified, but most competitors have taken that route because they can. (The shuttle technologies are not completely going to waste here.)
Since the capsule will be designed for only carrying (relatively light) humans as opposed to the 28 tonnes of cargo + 104 tonnes of spacecraft the shuttle carried around, the engines will be nothing more than a commercial booster. In the case of the CEV, the booster will only need to manage a mere 20 tonnes to LEO. Which means that the CEV can pull a Delta IV or Atlas V off the shelf for launch operations. (The CEV program does have bugetting for a new rocket, but the point is that any rocket can be used.)
In short, the CEV is completely the correct idea. Use technology we have today to develop a targetted launch vehicle for humans, and worry about developing other vehicles through regular development programs. For cargo, just use a cargo specific vehicle. The very definition of KISS.
Re:The shuttle is about politics, not science (Score:3, Insightful)
You left out, giant welfare/jobs program. They are cool high paying tech jobs for the most part
- All the NASA civil servants in the manned space program, civil servants being hard to fire once you hire them you pretty much have to make work for them and their number almost never gones down but instead creeps up.
- All the people working for the prime contractor which as I recall is a consortium made up of a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed. (Note Boeing and Lockheed should be vitter rivals and competing with each other but since they formed a consortium for the Shuttle and just announced a parternship for expendable boosters they successfully eliminated all pretense of competition and are now a defacto space flight monopoly and the DOD and NASA have to pay whatever they feel like charging. Those two companies are really formidable lobbyiest so they can almost single handedly arm twist a bunch of Congressmen in to keeping the funds flowing to Shuttle and the ISS most of which goes in to their pockets, and interestingly they make just about as much with the shuttle grounded as if its flying. Most of the people in the manned space program probably don't actually care if it flies because their paychecks keep coming anyway and its less nerve wracking if they don't fly. Maybe their paychecks should be contingent on successful launches with all their salaries for a period being revoked in the event of catastrophic failure, then maybe they would get serious about spaceflight.
- All the people working in all the NASA centers and facilities, all the prime contractor plants, and a vast army of small contractors. Interestingly they are intentionally spread through nearly every congressional district and there are big centers in politically powerful states like Texas, Florida and California. The work was spread all over just so Congressmen had to back the space program no matter how screwed up or wasteful it got because it meant jobs someplace in their district. Sen. Bill Nelson in particular is a huge supported because he is of course from Florida.
Maybe all this is what you meant by "political" but I'm inclined to say the manned space program was pretty much doomed when LBJ put Johnson in Houston. He did it purely to heap prestige, jobs and dollars on to his home state of Texas. It also insured the Texas congressional delegation would back manned space flight from that point on. Practicly though its insane that everything done at Johnson isn't done at Kennedy. Much of the bad communication leading to both Challenger and Columbia could be traced to the fact half the people team was at Kennedy and half was at Johnson and the communications between the two warring centers is inevitably bad not to mention the bills they must run up constantly traveling between the two places.
If you want to restore your faith in people who are in aerospace for the love of it, the Discovery channels runs Black Sky; The Race for Space" [discovery.com] once in a while. Someone with a camera roamed around Scaled Composites as they worked on SpaceShipOne, the first private launch of a man in to space to win the Ansari X prize. Its great stuff for geeks and engineers. The head aero engineer is a new hero of mine. He really knew his job and they have footage of him spotting a trim problem that would have lead to a fatal crash if he hadn't caught it in realtime. He has a great, dry sense of humor too, and looked to be a great role model for young people who want to go in aerospace or engineering. Towards the end he had a great comment I can only paraphase. He pointed that we've reached the point that people feel like they can't do anything amaz