NASA Hopes Discovery's Move Is Not The Last

An anonymous reader wrote to mention the movement of the space shuttle Discovery. The upcoming mission, if it launches, is crucial to the future of American manned space flight. From the Washington Post article: "A successful flight will allow NASA to resume construction of the half-built International Space Station and possibly extend the life of the beloved Hubble Space Telescope, which has allowed humans to peer into far galaxies. But with the shuttle fleet due to retire in 2010, any serious problems during July's mission likely would bring a premature end to the shuttle program and disrupt NASA's plans to keep its skilled work force intact while a replacement spacecraft is being developed."

Re:I have to agree

[DoktorTomoe]

and not safe for the inhabitants if we can't rely on the space shuttle to get up there.

Deaths in manned spaceflight since beginning of the Shuttle Program] USA: 14 [STS-51-L and STS-107] RUSSIA: 0 (last confirmed death: Komarov, Soujuz 1, 1967... ) Really, no way to get inhabitants up there safely ;)

Re:I have to agree

[DoktorTomoe]

Correction: Last confirmed Russian death is those of the cosmonauts of Soyuz 11 on June 30th 1971

However ... Sojuz seems a lot more reliable to me...

SM4 needed

[tonymtdew]

This is regarded by folks at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD (where they design and engineer the Hubble and parts for it) as Servicing Mission 4. When I was last there in March, the scientist the designed and built the mass spectrometer for it told me that its current one is no longer working. It had actually outlived its expected age by around 50% I believe. Furthormore, this will be the last servicing mission for the Hubble. After that, the hopes is to have the new and much more powerful telescope flying. Some facts- GSFC is just on the outside of Washington, DC- it is a HUGE campus. I was lucky enough to be able to get a behind the scenes tour from where the build the hubble's twin for parts in an enormous clean room, to where they test satellites for launch, etc. They handle unmanned space missions here. They control Hubble in Baltimore from Johns Hopkins University.

Re:I have to agree

[vondo]

We go through this every time with you shuttle fan-boys:

What is this hey-dey you speak of where we were launching shuttles to ths ISS every month:

2002: 5 missions, 4 to ISS
2001: 6 missions, all to ISS
2000: 5 missions, 4 to ISS

NEVER have we sent a mission a month (for more than thre months) to the ISS.

Look it up for yourself.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlem issions/list_main.html [nasa.gov]

Re:A humble suggestion to NASA

[WindBourne]

Congress did NOT cause the shuttle program. That was a pure nixon program in the early 70's. NASA fought against it, but accepted it in the end.

Re:Jerry Pournelle has the answer YET AGAIN!

[Bing Tsher E]

Chinese production is cheap,

Every day at work I evaluate parts made at our Chinese manufacturing facility that is 'cheap Chinese production.' There is this strange myth that processes and capital can just be airlifted to China and the machines turned on and the quality will be the same. That is a myth, and a frightening myth when it comes to anything that will be flying overhead.

I am sure there is (expensive) high quality Chinese production. I know firsthand that the cheap Chinese production is terrible. When there are problems and the memos start flying across the timezones, it becomes obvious that the highly regimented culture in China isn't going to foster innovative technology anytime soon.

Re:I have to agree

[DerekLyons]

However ... Sojuz seems a lot more reliable to me...

You are right, Soyuz seems to be a lot safer.

Mostly it seems so because it's numerous failures and problems (with the exception of Soyuz 1 and 11) are little known outside of Russian space program. (During the Soviet era they told niether the US, nor their own people.) However an account [jamesoberg.com] of just the re-entry and landing problems makes for frightening reading - and leaves out the two launch accidents and multiple loss-of-mission accidents/incidents.

The next argument people make is usually the same one that you did, "Soyuz hasn't killed anyone... lately". Let's put that in perspective shall we? Between STS-26 (Return To Flight post Challenger) and STS-107 (the loss of Columbia) the Space Shuttle flew more flights than the Soyuz has in it's entire history.

Finally, we have the current Soyuz model, the TMA. It's flown eight missions to date, with accidents or serious incidents on four of those eight flights.

The moral? When you have a spacecraft with an ongoing history of problems - it's not a safe spacecraft, no matter whose flag is on the side, and even if it hasn't killed anyone 'lately'.