Matt_dk writes "For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle will begin stacking on a mobile launch platform (MLP) at Kennedy Space Center. The Ares I-X aft skirt, which was mated to a solid fuel segment in the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility at KSC, rolled over to the 528-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building today, where it will be lifted and placed on the MLP in High Bay 3. On that platform, workers will secure the aft booster and continue adding segments of the first stage rocket, the upper stage simulators, the crew module mockup and the launch abort system simulator, taking the vehicle to a height of 327 feet."
Dudes, the game ends at 2020. There's around 10 years to go, and the trip to alpha centauri takes way more turns. All the modules should had been installed by now and the space vehicle should be on its way already! I mean, I did take my extra time to build the better modules and prioritized production in all cities to do it, but I would had never left it this late in game to actually launch it.
Aah, Civ2 times.. All the lost weekends, while still learning so much from it.
All the modules should had been installed by now and the space vehicle should be on its way already!
Not if you plan on winning by global conquest. People actually launched the ship in that game? I always paid on bloodlust -- or if I wanted a challenge I'd allow spaceships and race to conquer my enemies before theirs reached Alpha Centauri.
Why pour resources into exploration when you can pour them into global conquest instead?;)
I actually found the technological way a lot better. It made it a little boring during early/mid -game, but I always had technological advantage to enemies because I pushed for it. Because of that the optimal winning tactic was launching the spacecraft to alpha centauri. Usually after it went there and I won, I would continue playing and totally crush the opponents who still were so much behind me in tech. I always found it hard to develop your army during game and still keep up with technology and city building.
I could never do it because I always got sucked into a war. Even when I had an entire island/continent to myself, an NPC would invariably land a settler and found a city within the radius of one of my cities and start stealing my developed land. A few dozen turns later and that particular NPC would be lain waste.
I didn't fall real far behind in technology while fighting wars because the computer players would usually switch to fundamentalism to keep up with your war machine. If they didn't and started to pull away in the tech race there's always the possibility of espionage to keep up. You did fall behind in the city building race though.
Even when I had an entire island/continent to myself, an NPC would invariably land a settler and found a city within the radius of one of my cities and start stealing my developed land.
That is preventable, at the cost of a bit of food and production time. Simply ring your continent with your own small cities; your ZoC around your cities will prevent them from founding their own cities there. Same thing for spots you aren't currently using in your large cities. Found a small city to use up the excess prod
Where once that post sailed above the masses in the +3 thermocline, now it languishes at the bottom of score:0 canyon. It is no longer its privilege to soar and swoop among the updrafts and downdrafts over the score:2 threshold, now it must crawl, penitently, through the scrubgrass.
Oh worthy moderators, how had he offended thee? Was it his wanton brashness in posts of yore? Was it his disagreement with your politics?
Oh, my keyboard for the knowledge of why, why, why his off-topic post gleans deserved moderation, while its off-topic parents receive continued adulation.
I could never do it because I always got sucked into a war. Even when I had an entire island/continent to myself, an NPC would invariably land a settler and found a city within the radius of one of my cities and start stealing my developed land.
That's why my FIRST major goal is always to develop Flight. Keeps a nice radius clear from any city.
Does this mean I can soon buy a retired space shuttle? (I'm sure the shuttles will go to museums or stay with NASA, but I can still hope... I just need that winning lottery ticket still.)
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
Everyone says NASA is expensive, but, I think the value is just tremendous.
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.
Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 [spacex.com] rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.
Agreed. Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Do you seriously think the Saturn I or IB are at all comparable to the Ares I-X? I mean, I'm certainly not against flight tests in general -- I think the Ares I-Y [blogspot.com] is useful, as it will test the 5-segment booster, one of the biggest question-marks about the Ares I. The Ares I-X is almost entirely PR, though. Ironically, it's looking like the Ares I-X schedule slips may result in the Ares I-Y being postponed/canceled.
Ares I-X is being made just to answer those "question marks" you infer, not build around them. Most of the Boosters will be very similar to the ones used For Ares I. Most of the test is to test separation and instruments to gather data on how the flight performs. The parachute, RSRM motors, Launch abort Motor, and other instruments have already been tested independantly, this is just to test all the systems together.
I know it's a site built by the Ares group, but here's more info.
Linky [safesimplesoon.com]
while I agree. i also don't want them to completely mothball the shuttles either. There is a handful of missions that only a shuttle can accomplish that would be worth every penny in keeping one on hand.
My personal favorite goal. When the Hubbel is finally dying And beyond repair, Send up a 2-3 man crew retrieve it and return it to earth safely. That is what the shuttle were meant to do with old satellites. retrieve them for proper disposal on earth. It is one mission not yet attempted. Besides how cool would it be to have the Hubbel space telescope setting in the Smithsonian? heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors. It would be risky, but for that honor, i bet you get lots of volunteers.
That's a total waste of money, considering the shuttles require something like a quarter-billion dollars to launch, aren't exactly the safest spacecraft invented (two have blown up already, and the remaining ones aren't getting any younger), and require lots of money for maintenance.
Here's a better strategy if you want to spend a little money to put old spacecraft/satellites into museums: just leave them in orbit, or maybe make some small/cheap/unmanned craft (launched on other missions) to push them into m
Or you could try killing 2 birds with one stone. Why bother with sending it up empty. I'm sure they have some Satellite that they will need to put up, or some other project, maybe an ISS mission.
They can send it up to do whatever the prescribed job is, and then grab the hubble and bring it back.
The only issue might be the orbits. Would take significant fuel to change orbits if they are far apart.
Might be a cool mission to test some robotic recovery systems. Fire a capsule up and use a robot to place it
With the space elevator, they'd probably never send it up empty. There's lots of stuff that people want to send to space, and not so much they want to bring back (at least until they snag some mineral-rich asteroids or something). And with the space elevator, all the energy is used sending cars up, not down. Bringing cars down is free (gravity), and actually generates energy which can be reused for sending cars back up. So if you can bring an old telescope or other satellite to the in-orbit way station,
considering the shuttles require something like a quarter-billion dollars to launch, aren't exactly the safest spacecraft invented (two have blown up already, and the remaining ones aren't getting any younger),
Note that the only other spacecraft that has flown anywhere near as many times as Shuttle (Soyuz) has lost two crews also. And then there's the one that blew up without killing the crew. So, what is this "safest spacecraft" of which you speak?
Soyuz has flown many more times than the Shuttle, IIRC, so two losses is statistically much better for the Soyuz.
Umm, no. Soyuz 102 manned flights. Shuttle has done 126. So its two losses are statistically worse for Soyuz (1.96% Soyuz, 1.58% Shuttle).
I know there are people who have been indoctrinated into believing that the Shuttle is the worst vehicle to ever fly into space, and the Soyuz is the best. But, fact is, the numbers support the reverse position.
Shuttle has had 126 missions. 124 of them reached orbit and returned.
Soyuz has had 102 missions. 98 of them reached orbit and returned.
Of the 124 Shuttle missions that reached orbit and returned, 122 completed their intended missions, two had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties.
Of the 98 Soyuz missions that reached orbit and returned, 91 completed their intended missions, seven had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties. Note that one of the 91 "successful" missions included accidentally ramming Mir.
It was - the original design never had the O-rings expanding quite so much to seal the gaps, but it worked well, so they kept the design as it was. theye did know well before the disaster that the colder the rings were, the longer it took them to seal and the more damage was done to the SRB joint and ring itself, so they put a lower limit on the safe launch temperature.
On the day of the Challenger launch, it was below freezing (or close to it), way below any previous launch of the Shuttle. When the SRBs wer
>heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors.
Donors? We're looking at 600 million or so dollars. Yeah, good luck finding someone willing to donate that much. A mock-up works just as well in the museum. I'd rather see that kind of money used for food security, healthcare, or education. Or at least a new space mission that isnt for museum bragging rights.
There is $350 million people in the USA alone. That's $2 a piece. Figure $20 since half are kids, and not everyone will do so. Plus the money can be gathered now slowly for the 2015 ending of the Hubbel. also i was figuring $2 billion. Prices always goes up.
Instead of worrying about the exact dollar figures try to put it into perspective. It is something that is sorely needed as the people of the USA have no clue on how much is spent/earned, and moved around this country every day let alone every year.
There was at least one mission that returned satellites to Earth. STS-51A returned two satellites that had malfunctioned; these were later repaired and successfully relaunched. I thought there were one or two others that did the same (and perhaps they were military missions), but I can't immediately find them.
Everyone says NASA is expensive, but, I think the value is just tremendous.
When you look at the scientific value of the various unmanned programs, you are right. As a percentage of the nation's GDP, it is quite small and we can make tremendous discoveries.
The manned programs are a different story. They are hugely expensive, dangerous and provide little scientific value. Apollo, the Space Shuttle, ISS are not much more than engineering exercises that answer the question of "Can we build this?" Even the goal of putting a man on Mars is an engineering exercise. How many remote p
Wrong. You're not going to learn how to put humans out in space, without actually putting humans out in space. Launching a bunch of unmanned probes is great for learning about other celestial bodies (slowly) without risking lives and costing too much, but when your ultimate goal is to get humans out into space doing things (such as constructing solar power stations on the moon, constructing large moon-based telescopes, mining asteroids, or whatever), these probes aren't helping much.
"NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon"
That was 40 years ago, completely different organization now. They for the most part don't even remember how they did it since all nearly all the Apollo veterans have retired.
"and a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets"
These are more JPL than NASA. JPL manages to operate in a little cocoon that has prevented it from being infected by the pointless bureaucracy in the rest of NASA
The construction of the ISS was pretty evenly split between the U.S. and Russia. You're probably thinking of Mir (the first space station designed for long term occupation) or Salyut 1 (the first space station, beating Skylab by two years).
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 09, @02:45PM (#28641177)
"For the first time in more than a quarter-century [...] on a mobile launch platform (MLP)"
Good thing they had that little disclaimer. SpaceX's Falcon 9 showed up there earlier this year. From the pictures, the Falcon's launch platform doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
The important part of that statement is the MLP is what goes into the high bays for assembly of the craft and moving the vehicle to the launch site. In other words it is officially the successor NASA rocket by following in the footsteps of the Saturn rockets and space shuttle.
Again, cool shape, just for the sake to make it look cool and non-Russian. But there are certain things in physics, which are fundamental and cannot be made different.
NASA should make a rocket with the right architecture. It means it shall look like Soyuz vehicle. No other way exists.
It is like with Sylvester Stallone's Rocky. He did boxing with hands down in movies. Many boxers in real sport got traumas and spoiled their careers because they wanted to look as cool as Rocky on the ring.
And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
Aerodynamics, last I checked, is not a completely solved problem (granted, it's in better shape than the more general fluid dynamics, but still not solved), nor are a large number of other design decisions involved with producing spacecraft. I somehow doubt that aesthetics are trumping science in the look; rather, they're probably guiding the selection among a number of similarly efficient designs.
As for imperial vs. metric, I think the big hurdle isn't patriotism, it's inertia. People were born and raised on imperial, and it's hard to reprogram them later in life. And teachers start with imperial because you encounter it more often. It's Catch-22; you can't switch until people are comfortable with it, and you can't get comfortable with it until you switch. The U.S. is slowly starting to switch the teaching to metric, so I suspect we'll try the transition again in the next decade or two, once the majority of the population can deal with it. Otherwise, you get smartasses/idiots driving 100 MPH on every highway.
And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
Don't be retarded. The English system is better for many things, like pints for beer and Fahrenheit for telling people what the weather
The English system is better for many things, like pints for beer and Fahrenheit for telling people what the weather is like today.
Huh? Celcius makes way more sense. 0=melting point of ice. Anything less is freezing. 100=boiling point of water. Anything in the lower teens is cool enough to warrant a jacket, anything in the 20s is warm, 30 and above and it's uncomfortable heat. How's Fahrenheit better?
Because temperatures are frequently below the freezing point of water in many parts of the world. 0C isn't all that cold. With Fahrenheit, if it's below 0, then it's really really cold. And if it's above 100, then it's really hot.
When is it ever going to be anywhere near 100 on the Celcius scale? Never, unless you travel to Venus.
Lastly, Celcius doesn't have enough resolution. Your thermostat has to allow for half-degrees for Celcius, which is pretty stupid. With Fahrenheit, your thermostat only needs
And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
It's not patriotism as much as infrastructure for fabrication and test. I'm thinking of propulsion here, but this is true of other areas as well. Raw materials required/needed are only available in the USA in English units (5/8in tubing for prop lines, etc), for that to become metric would require all the suppliers to support metric as well: it's not just NASA. Also, machining and test equipment in many facilities (again, not just NASA) are non-metric: again this infrastructure could be converted but wou
They do have that "Chicken Gun." I can imagine a test where they see what happens if you fire a chicken at 600 MPH into the 1st stage exhaust plume. Not that they'd ever have a good reason to do it, just that they could -- to have KSC Friend Chicken.
Maybe this is a one for the Mythbusters? How do we incorporate C4?
Not that they'd ever have a good reason to do it, just that they could -- to have KSC Friend Chicken.
That's the game where they align two launchers to point at a spot equidistant from both launch sites, then enter the codes for simultaneous launch and see which of two friends hits the 'abort' button first?
Or is that the game where they piggy-back identical rockets on top of each of two other rockets, and see which top rocket can knock the other rocket into the Gulf of Mexico?
Spaceship modules (Score:5, Funny)
Dudes, the game ends at 2020. There's around 10 years to go, and the trip to alpha centauri takes way more turns. All the modules should had been installed by now and the space vehicle should be on its way already! I mean, I did take my extra time to build the better modules and prioritized production in all cities to do it, but I would had never left it this late in game to actually launch it.
Aah, Civ2 times.. All the lost weekends, while still learning so much from it.
Re:Spaceship modules (Score:4, Interesting)
All the modules should had been installed by now and the space vehicle should be on its way already!
Not if you plan on winning by global conquest. People actually launched the ship in that game? I always paid on bloodlust -- or if I wanted a challenge I'd allow spaceships and race to conquer my enemies before theirs reached Alpha Centauri.
Why pour resources into exploration when you can pour them into global conquest instead? ;)
Parent
Re:Spaceship modules (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually found the technological way a lot better. It made it a little boring during early/mid -game, but I always had technological advantage to enemies because I pushed for it. Because of that the optimal winning tactic was launching the spacecraft to alpha centauri. Usually after it went there and I won, I would continue playing and totally crush the opponents who still were so much behind me in tech. I always found it hard to develop your army during game and still keep up with technology and city building.
Parent
Re:Spaceship modules (Score:4, Interesting)
I could never do it because I always got sucked into a war. Even when I had an entire island/continent to myself, an NPC would invariably land a settler and found a city within the radius of one of my cities and start stealing my developed land. A few dozen turns later and that particular NPC would be lain waste.
I didn't fall real far behind in technology while fighting wars because the computer players would usually switch to fundamentalism to keep up with your war machine. If they didn't and started to pull away in the tech race there's always the possibility of espionage to keep up. You did fall behind in the city building race though.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That is preventable, at the cost of a bit of food and production time. Simply ring your continent with your own small cities; your ZoC around your cities will prevent them from founding their own cities there. Same thing for spots you aren't currently using in your large cities. Found a small city to use up the excess prod
Re:Spaceship modules (Score:4, Funny)
Where once that post sailed above the masses in the +3 thermocline, now it languishes at the bottom of score:0 canyon.
It is no longer its privilege to soar and swoop among the updrafts and downdrafts over the score:2 threshold, now it must crawl, penitently, through the scrubgrass.
Oh worthy moderators, how had he offended thee?
Was it his wanton brashness in posts of yore?
Was it his disagreement with your politics?
Oh, my keyboard for the knowledge of why, why, why
his off-topic post gleans deserved moderation, while its off-topic parents receive continued adulation.
Consistency, please.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I could never do it because I always got sucked into a war. Even when I had an entire island/continent to myself, an NPC would invariably land a settler and found a city within the radius of one of my cities and start stealing my developed land.
That's why my FIRST major goal is always to develop Flight. Keeps a nice radius clear from any city.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you spent too much time, moving your units "around" the north and south pole.
Or your 500 sq. mile "cities" were too big, and you could not build enough onto that small map?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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That's a low ceiling.. (Score:4, Funny)
Just one question (Score:2)
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Cowboy Bebop Episode 19 [wikipedia.org]
Space Shuttle Columbia rescues the Spike. Outrageously unrealistic but fun to think a hobbyist could actually get and fly one in the future...
This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
Everyone says NASA is expensive, but, I think the value is just tremendous.
I cannot reiterate my support for NASA, enough.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:5, Informative)
I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:
NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.
NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.
Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 [spacex.com] rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
(Yes, this is sarcasm)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I [wikipedia.org] or the Saturn IB [wikipedia.org] when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
Do you seriously think the Saturn I or IB are at all comparable to the Ares I-X? I mean, I'm certainly not against flight tests in general -- I think the Ares I-Y [blogspot.com] is useful, as it will test the 5-segment booster, one of the biggest question-marks about the Ares I. The Ares I-X is almost entirely PR, though. Ironically, it's looking like the Ares I-X schedule slips may result in the Ares I-Y being postponed/canceled.
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I know it's a site built by the Ares group, but here's more info. Linky [safesimplesoon.com]
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:5, Interesting)
while I agree. i also don't want them to completely mothball the shuttles either. There is a handful of missions that only a shuttle can accomplish that would be worth every penny in keeping one on hand.
My personal favorite goal. When the Hubbel is finally dying And beyond repair, Send up a 2-3 man crew retrieve it and return it to earth safely. That is what the shuttle were meant to do with old satellites. retrieve them for proper disposal on earth. It is one mission not yet attempted. Besides how cool would it be to have the Hubbel space telescope setting in the Smithsonian? heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors. It would be risky, but for that honor, i bet you get lots of volunteers.
Parent
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That's a total waste of money, considering the shuttles require something like a quarter-billion dollars to launch, aren't exactly the safest spacecraft invented (two have blown up already, and the remaining ones aren't getting any younger), and require lots of money for maintenance.
Here's a better strategy if you want to spend a little money to put old spacecraft/satellites into museums: just leave them in orbit, or maybe make some small/cheap/unmanned craft (launched on other missions) to push them into m
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Or you could try killing 2 birds with one stone. Why bother with sending it up empty. I'm sure they have some Satellite that they will need to put up, or some other project, maybe an ISS mission.
They can send it up to do whatever the prescribed job is, and then grab the hubble and bring it back.
The only issue might be the orbits. Would take significant fuel to change orbits if they are far apart.
Might be a cool mission to test some robotic recovery systems. Fire a capsule up and use a robot to place it
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With the space elevator, they'd probably never send it up empty. There's lots of stuff that people want to send to space, and not so much they want to bring back (at least until they snag some mineral-rich asteroids or something). And with the space elevator, all the energy is used sending cars up, not down. Bringing cars down is free (gravity), and actually generates energy which can be reused for sending cars back up. So if you can bring an old telescope or other satellite to the in-orbit way station,
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Note that the only other spacecraft that has flown anywhere near as many times as Shuttle (Soyuz) has lost two crews also. And then there's the one that blew up without killing the crew. So, what is this "safest spacecraft" of which you speak?
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, no. Soyuz 102 manned flights. Shuttle has done 126. So its two losses are statistically worse for Soyuz (1.96% Soyuz, 1.58% Shuttle).
I know there are people who have been indoctrinated into believing that the Shuttle is the worst vehicle to ever fly into space, and the Soyuz is the best. But, fact is, the numbers support the reverse position.
Shuttle has had 126 missions. 124 of them reached orbit and returned.
Soyuz has had 102 missions. 98 of them reached orbit and returned.
Of the 124 Shuttle missions that reached orbit and returned, 122 completed their intended missions, two had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties.
Of the 98 Soyuz missions that reached orbit and returned, 91 completed their intended missions, seven had to abort due to non-lethal technical difficulties. Note that one of the 91 "successful" missions included accidentally ramming Mir.
Parent
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It was - the original design never had the O-rings expanding quite so much to seal the gaps, but it worked well, so they kept the design as it was. theye did know well before the disaster that the colder the rings were, the longer it took them to seal and the more damage was done to the SRB joint and ring itself, so they put a lower limit on the safe launch temperature.
On the day of the Challenger launch, it was below freezing (or close to it), way below any previous launch of the Shuttle. When the SRBs wer
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>heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors.
Donors? We're looking at 600 million or so dollars. Yeah, good luck finding someone willing to donate that much. A mock-up works just as well in the museum. I'd rather see that kind of money used for food security, healthcare, or education. Or at least a new space mission that isnt for museum bragging rights.
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There is $350 million people in the USA alone. That's $2 a piece. Figure $20 since half are kids, and not everyone will do so. Plus the money can be gathered now slowly for the 2015 ending of the Hubbel. also i was figuring $2 billion. Prices always goes up.
Instead of worrying about the exact dollar figures try to put it into perspective. It is something that is sorely needed as the people of the USA have no clue on how much is spent/earned, and moved around this country every day let alone every year.
Re:This is the way to spend taxpayer money! (Score:4, Informative)
There was at least one mission that returned satellites to Earth. STS-51A returned two satellites that had malfunctioned; these were later repaired and successfully relaunched. I thought there were one or two others that did the same (and perhaps they were military missions), but I can't immediately find them.
Parent
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Everyone says NASA is expensive, but, I think the value is just tremendous.
When you look at the scientific value of the various unmanned programs, you are right. As a percentage of the nation's GDP, it is quite small and we can make tremendous discoveries.
The manned programs are a different story. They are hugely expensive, dangerous and provide little scientific value. Apollo, the Space Shuttle, ISS are not much more than engineering exercises that answer the question of "Can we build this?" Even the goal of putting a man on Mars is an engineering exercise. How many remote p
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Wrong. You're not going to learn how to put humans out in space, without actually putting humans out in space. Launching a bunch of unmanned probes is great for learning about other celestial bodies (slowly) without risking lives and costing too much, but when your ultimate goal is to get humans out into space doing things (such as constructing solar power stations on the moon, constructing large moon-based telescopes, mining asteroids, or whatever), these probes aren't helping much.
Plus, if you actually
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"NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon"
That was 40 years ago, completely different organization now. They for the most part don't even remember how they did it since all nearly all the Apollo veterans have retired.
"and a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets"
These are more JPL than NASA. JPL manages to operate in a little cocoon that has prevented it from being infected by the pointless bureaucracy in the rest of NASA
"build and operate a space plane and
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Note the "mobile launch pad" disclaimer (Score:4, Informative)
"For the first time in more than a quarter-century [...] on a mobile launch platform (MLP)"
Good thing they had that little disclaimer. SpaceX's Falcon 9 showed up there earlier this year. From the pictures, the Falcon's launch platform doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
http://spacex.com/updates.php
Re:Note the "mobile launch pad" disclaimer (Score:4, Informative)
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wrong macro engineering again (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA should make a rocket with the right architecture. It means it shall look like Soyuz vehicle. No other way exists.
It is like with Sylvester Stallone's Rocky. He did boxing with hands down in movies. Many boxers in real sport got traumas and spoiled their careers because they wanted to look as cool as Rocky on the ring.
And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
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Yeah, I'm just holding my breath until England stops using the pint.~
Re:wrong macro engineering again (Score:5, Insightful)
Aerodynamics, last I checked, is not a completely solved problem (granted, it's in better shape than the more general fluid dynamics, but still not solved), nor are a large number of other design decisions involved with producing spacecraft. I somehow doubt that aesthetics are trumping science in the look; rather, they're probably guiding the selection among a number of similarly efficient designs.
As for imperial vs. metric, I think the big hurdle isn't patriotism, it's inertia. People were born and raised on imperial, and it's hard to reprogram them later in life. And teachers start with imperial because you encounter it more often. It's Catch-22; you can't switch until people are comfortable with it, and you can't get comfortable with it until you switch. The U.S. is slowly starting to switch the teaching to metric, so I suspect we'll try the transition again in the next decade or two, once the majority of the population can deal with it. Otherwise, you get smartasses/idiots driving 100 MPH on every highway.
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And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
Don't be retarded. The English system is better for many things, like pints for beer and Fahrenheit for telling people what the weather
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The English system is better for many things, like pints for beer and Fahrenheit for telling people what the weather is like today.
Huh? Celcius makes way more sense. 0=melting point of ice. Anything less is freezing. 100=boiling point of water. Anything in the lower teens is cool enough to warrant a jacket, anything in the 20s is warm, 30 and above and it's uncomfortable heat. How's Fahrenheit better?
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Because temperatures are frequently below the freezing point of water in many parts of the world. 0C isn't all that cold. With Fahrenheit, if it's below 0, then it's really really cold. And if it's above 100, then it's really hot.
When is it ever going to be anywhere near 100 on the Celcius scale? Never, unless you travel to Venus.
Lastly, Celcius doesn't have enough resolution. Your thermostat has to allow for half-degrees for Celcius, which is pretty stupid. With Fahrenheit, your thermostat only needs
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So your argument boils* down to "It's better because it's what I'm used to"? Nice.
*Yes I did.
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And while I am on it, no vehicles should be built at all until the scientific metric system of measurement is introduced and imperial medieval system is banned. It should be forbidden, I do not know, by the Geneva convention. Due to pseudo-patriotism the complicated systems are built with archaic feet, elbows, inches, etc. All would be fine, but alive people are to fly it.
It's not patriotism as much as infrastructure for fabrication and test. I'm thinking of propulsion here, but this is true of other areas as well. Raw materials required/needed are only available in the USA in English units (5/8in tubing for prop lines, etc), for that to become metric would require all the suppliers to support metric as well: it's not just NASA. Also, machining and test equipment in many facilities (again, not just NASA) are non-metric: again this infrastructure could be converted but wou
Actually a plausible scenario (Score:4, Funny)
They do have that "Chicken Gun." I can imagine a test where they see what happens if you fire a chicken at 600 MPH into the 1st stage exhaust plume. Not that they'd ever have a good reason to do it, just that they could -- to have KSC Friend Chicken.
Maybe this is a one for the Mythbusters? How do we incorporate C4?
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That's the game where they align two launchers to point at a spot equidistant from both launch sites, then enter the codes for simultaneous launch and see which of two friends hits the 'abort' button first?
Or is that the game where they piggy-back identical rockets on top of each of two other rockets, and see which top rocket can knock the other rocket into the Gulf of Mexico?
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Re:Maybe next year (Score:5, Informative)
Not live but recent images here: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=4 [nasa.gov]
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Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the lower part of the rocket!