107 Cameras to Scan Discovery for Damage 261
neutron_p writes "We already know that NASA has prepared for space shuttle rescue mission if a crisis arises during Discovery's return to flight. NASA wants to avoid any risk, that's why they also installed 107 cameras which will film and photograph the orbiter's first two minutes of ascent from every angle scanning for pieces of insulation foam or ice fall off during the launch and strike the shuttle, the kind of damage that doomed its predecessor Columbia. Cameras will be installed around the launch pad and at distances of 6 to 60 kilometers (some 3.5 to 35 miles) away, as well as on board of two airplanes and on the shuttle itself."
American miles? (Score:3, Informative)
6km is approx 3.7 miles not 3.5 and
60km is 37 miles and not 35
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
They should ask the Russians (Score:5, Informative)
Safety.... (Score:5, Informative)
The point of the cameras is to determine if something broke on the shuttle. If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth. The cameras aren't there to say "OMG, SOMETHING WENT WRONG, ABORT." The cameras are there to determine if something went wrong and if so, to send the backup shuttle into space to return the astornauts safely to earth.
Re:That's great, but... (Score:4, Informative)
NASA reviews the tapes and assesses whether or not the point of failure is avoidable or is an inherant flaw of the shuttle system.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
The first, RTLS (Return To Launch Site Abort Mode) [nasa.gov] can be initiated upto T+4mintues20 and involves an early ET (External Tank) seperation followed by a powered phase to bleed of excess fuel and a glide phase which see's the orbiter return to KSC at approximately T+25minutes.
The second is the TAL (Transatlantic Abort Landing) [nasa.gov]. This can be initiated in the event of critical failure after T+4minutes20. The orbiter continues in a balistic trajectory downrange across the Atlantic to land at a runway in Spain, Gambia or Morocco. Landing occurs T+45minutes.
Re:They should ask the Russians (Score:5, Informative)
By having an extremely simple booster with low-to-modest performance and vast amounts of margin built in. This means pretty reliable, but it means not much room for growth and not much in the way of accomplishments. (What accomplishments they do have are because of the larger, and much less reliable and more expensive Proton - not the Soyuz.)You have to be careful there - the Russian have two spacecraft that they call Soyuz, don't confuse the two.
The Soyuz booster has indeed flown 2000-odd time, with a sucess rate of 98%. Oddly enough, thats the same sucess rate that the US has achieved.
The Soyuz capsule on the other hand, has flown only 90-odd times, and has had significant (life threatening) accidents no fewer then 8 times, plus two fatal accidents, plus about 8 loss-of-mission accidents.
That's a sucess rate no better than the US, and from some angles far worse. It's a sucess rate that in any other industry would cause headlines in 72-point type on a daily basis. (If 1% of 747 flights failed, there's be something like 20-30 747 crashes daily.)Umm... Maybe. Nobody knows how much a Soyuz (booster or capsule) flight actually costs. There's no direct conversion - and the prices they've quoted/charged have varied widely. No doubt not having to amortize the cost of your infrastructure helps, as does paying your engineers wages equivalent to your average third-world Nike sweat shop worker.Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. There used to be ejection seats on Columbia for the Commander and Pilot, which were useful to 100K feet. (If you listen to recordings of the first four launches, you'll hear a call from the CAPCOM, "Negative seats" or somesuch as the vehicle passes that altitude.)
They weren't used after the first four flights, and were removed when Columbia went in for its first refurb.
Re:If severely damaged.. (Score:3, Informative)
The shuttles have a very limited on-orbit lifespan; they quickly run out of fuel for the fuel cells, coolant, etc. They make lousy space stations. The average shuttle mission is ten days, and the maximum is 18 with the Extended Duration Orbiter upgrade.
If you docked one with the ISS, I'd expect it to very quickly die --- and once dead, I doubt very much whether doing an in-orbit renovation to get it into a sufficient state even to land it on autopilot would be feasible. (If there is and autopilot.)
Given the sheer mass of a shuttle and how much stress it'd put on the ISS' station-keeping facilities, I strongly suspect that in the event of an on-orbit failure, the crew would be evacuated and then it'd be given the heave-ho into the Pacific...
2 contingency plans... (Score:5, Informative)
2. They're going to be visiting the station - this mission is reportedly rigged so that if something really bad is found, the can stay on station until another shuttle can be launched.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
- RTLS - Return to Launch Site
- TAL - Trans Atlantic Landing (European and African landing sites)
- AOA - Abort Once Around
- ATO - Abort To Orbit
So, if there is a problem, and they find it early enough, they have options.Re:Great....but what if the worst happens? (Score:2, Informative)
Basicly to match vectors you have a very small launch window. You will either aim for ISS or for the escape pod. If you have just lost 25% power at one of the main shuttle engines you just lost your window. You will have to follow an alternative plan. This is why all this "stay safe in ISS" is a bullshit plan. It will only work if a tile gets loose. It won't work in Challenger-type scenarios (which there is no escape with the current Shuttle tech) nor Columbia (something happens unnoticed and you have the failure in the re-entry).
Going up and down is easy. Changing vectors and orbit is just too expensive in energy terms so you don't do it. The whole point is getting it right the first time.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Complacency is the problem (Score:2, Informative)
The shuttle's engineering design also specified no foam loss as a requirement. Over time, foam loss became tolerated, with a pervasive management attitude of "well it hasn't caused any problems, yet". Damage to the shuttles' carbon panels was documented on numerous missions, and was ultimately treated by management as a post-flight maintenance issue, rather than as a safety issue.
This sort of complacency is what killed Columbia, and is well documented in the extremely interesting Accident Investigation Board report [nasa.gov].