Discovery's Dangling Gapfiller Removed by Hand 401
Cyclotron_Boy writes "According to the New Scientist and NASA TV, Discovery's gap-fillers were removed successfully by hand by astronaut Steve Robinson earlier today during the eva. They didn't even have to use the forceps or the makeshift hacksaw-blade tool."
Re:Lemmie get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Futurama.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Futurama.. (Score:3, Insightful)
They Said NASA Couldn't Build A Better Mousetrap (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm
On a more serious note, I imagine they're running this experiment to prepare for the eventual necessity of resusitating a human after exposure to vacuum. We use animals in medical experiments, to test new food additives, and even to make sure our beauty products are safe for people.
So, unless you want to give up medical research, beauty products, and dozens of other things that we take for granted--and need to ascertain are safe before they come to market--get over it. They aren't tortuing animals for the thrill of it, they're doing important science designed to save human lives, and regardless of what propoganda may be coming out of the mouths of PETA zealots, human life is more valuable than animal life. That's why we eat the critters and wear their skins, after all (or have you never owned a pair of leather shoes?).
Re:Alternatives to tile? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's so simple, I just can't imagine why NASA hasn't come up with something like this.
Re:PR Stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like saying: sometimes when I walk briskly, I get a crushing pain in my chest and numbness in my arm. I don't understand why it is happening, but it goes away in a few minutes, so I must be perfectly fine. -- It only takes one "major problem" to disprove the assertion that there is nothing wrong
Re:If you still needed proof of the lemon, here it (Score:5, Insightful)
The Russians understand something that NASA does not, namely that their technology is limited and thus must be overengineered for saftey. Everything about the former Soviet space program was overdesigned for a reason, just like our Saturn V was: to give good safety margins without going gonzo with costs. If you've got four engines making enough thrust to get you into orbit, you add a fifth for safety and then run all your engines at 80% rated thrust for even more safety. Is it efficient? No, but it's safer.
Now, I'm not about to argue that space exploration is, or ever should be, perfectly safe. That is obviously absurd. However, the more of a design margin you have, the less meticulous you have to be when preparing to launch the vehicle. Almost all the cost overruns in the shuttle program are due to the incredible number of inspections and maintenance needed to turn a shuttle around. With a throwaway booster, you don't have any of that. Sure, you're junking valuable hardware every time you launch with a throwaway booster, but it actually costs less to do it that way. Why do you think commercial satellites are launched on Delta rockets instead of the shuttle?
Take a modern top-fuel dragster as an example. It is designed to do one thing: go as fast as you can in one quarter of a mile. Everything inside the engine is designed to last roughly just that distance, and it is torn down and rebuilt pretty much completely between every run. It is, in essence, a throwaway booster. Dragster teams do it this way because it is impractical to build an engine that can survive multiple runs and be competitive. Sure, it's expensive. But losing the race is even more expensive.
NASA needs to get away from giving us a Ferrari of a shuttle, with all its myriad valves, camshafts, and amazingly expensive maintenance, and instead give us a slightly-updated version of the 60's-era Chevy Big Block. Sure, a Ferrari can get 400hp out of a 2.5-liter engine, but it must use exotic techniques to do so. A big block V8 can make 400hp all day long without working hard, and it costs pretty much an order of magnitude less to construct and maintain. We need the Chevy, not the Ferrari, if we're going to get back into space on a large scale.
Re:Would have fallen off (Score:3, Insightful)
The utter fragility of such a system is proof enough the design is tragically flawed. If a billion dollar vehicle can be taken out by such a simple failure, something is wrong. Would you accept such SPoF's (Single Points of Failure) in any I.T. system you're responsible for designing or maintaining? I mean, it's not like we can't make something better than the current tile-and-felt the shuttle uses. Apollo-era capsules had monolithic, non-reusable ablative heatshields that were far less fragile, and the capsule design was elegant enough to protect the heatshield with other portions of the spacecraft until it was actually time for re-entry.
The shuttle was, is, and remains, a boondoggle. It was not a step forward from Apollo, it was a leap backwards.
Re:Futurama.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And all airline fatalaties occur not in the air but on the ground.
It really is a silly distinction. Its not a meaningful statistic to say that noone has died in space.
Challenger, TPS, problems, etc. (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, I still stand by the rest of my comment. The fact that it problems never resulted in a disaster prior to 2003 does not mean that there were never any serious problems. I see this attitude all the time and it's wrong. People get away with doing stupid things for a while -- years, sometimes. Then, for whatever reason, they stop getting away with it and come to me and say, "Fix it", and won't listen when I point out that it is their behavior that is the problem.
"We've always done it that way" makes a lousy epitaph.