Discovery Heads Into Retirement 129
dweezil-n0xad writes "Technicians in bay No. 2 of Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility remove shuttle Discovery's forward reaction control system (FRCS) on March 22 as part of the ship's transition and retirement processing. The FRCS will be completely cleaned of all toxic fuel and oxidizer chemicals, which are used for the steering jet system while a shuttle is in orbit. NASA says the FRCS will then be put back into Discovery to help prepare the shuttle for future public display." These photos are pretty cool.
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Also, the photos are pretty poorly done - someone did these with an inexpensive camera, and without much photographic experience.
I know NASA has good photographers that work for them, as I've seen their photos - these are awful in comparison, and they don't do the occasion justice, in my opinion. I mean, really - most of them are crooked, even.
One hopes that the good NASA photographers are actually documenting all this stuff, and that these photos were just taken by someone who was there and happened to hav
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At this point I don't think that NASA is in any way able to push forward in space exploration. Though we are in for some 'dry' years in space I really think that this will be the best move, get NASA out of the way and allow private corporations to get into the mix.
If you really want something interesting on this topic, look at Burt Rutan's talk on TED [ted.com]. He makes some very excellent points on the pace of space exploration and technology and why NASA just isn't helping the situation.
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It means NASA is going to have to work a lot harder to kill 7 astronauts in one shot.
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Just as UAVs are taking over the dull and dangerous jobs of aerial surveillance and warfare, so to can remote-manned spacecraft take over exploration. Astronauts don't explore, they merely operate equipment while demanding
There is plenty of time to play about with sending manned missions when we have more advanced knowledge of space and a far more advanced matrix of supporting technologies and materials to choose from.
We can also exploit tech growth of other countries. Spacefaring won't be a single nation C
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Other countries benefit from US tech, why not turn the tables?
Because then we will be doomed to playing catch up with Russia/India/China. As they develop cutting edge materials science and propulsion technologies to further their own space programs we will be stuck licensing or reverse engineering their toys.
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The US also dismantled the last of its IBM 360 mainframes. Why? Because they're obsolete. So is manned "space travel".
A strange thing to say when there are dozens of companies trying to get into the space tourism business. Orbital flight won't be affordable to non-millionaires for years yet, but prices are only going down from here.
I know the shuttles are ancient... (Score:2)
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The problem is that flying the shuttles costs a lot of money, and developing a replacement costs a lot of money. NASA is never going to get enough budget to keep flying and developing a replacement at the same time. The only real option is to stop flying so NASA can concentrate on development.
Re:I know the shuttles are ancient... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It actually looks like they are being very careful with this process. Odds are they are doing it in a way that they could return them to flight if they needed to. But I am just guessing.
Part of me kind of wishes they would launch the last one unmanned and boost it up past Geosync and leave it there. Vent the volitals and park it there for some far distant generation to find.
Yes I know the Shuttle lacks the fuel to go into that high of an orbit it would take launching and docking a separate booster and would
Re:I know the shuttles are ancient... (Score:5, Interesting)
It actually looks like they are being very careful with this process. Odds are they are doing it in a way that they could return them to flight if they needed to.
Uh, no. The parts production line was mostly shut down a year or two back; there will be no more external tanks after the currently planned flights, and they'll presumably be laying off shuttle workers before long.
Restarting the program now would be expensive and complex; restarting it in a couple of years would probably cost as much as building a new spacecraft from scratch.
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That will depend in large part if they keep the jigs and fixtures. There are still spares available The will have a short time frame in which to do it but it may be possible for a year or so but you are correct after that time frame. I wonder how much it would cost to build a new Shuttle today. If you used the same requirements but with modern production methods and materials.
There will be one unused stack (Score:2)
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Actually I might be wrong, but I believe there is no backup shuttle for Atlantis. The boosters it's using were the last ones made, and they were meant to not be used because Atlantis was supposed to be the emergency backup for Endeavour. But when another flight was authorized, Atlantis moved from backup to being an actual flight. If there's a problem with Atlantis, the astronauts will ride home in a Soyuz from the ISS.
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They are careful because that RCS section is quite toxic. MMH can kill very easily if you're not careful.
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... but to me, we shouldn't take the shuttles apart until we have a viable replacement that isn't just drawings and a budget meeting. If we dismantle the shuttles, and then the Republicans cut space budget for the new vehicle, we're at the mercy of Russia, China and the EU for the foreseeable future. Bad, bad move without a functioning replacement in the hangar.
We'll only be at the mercy of Russia, China, and the EU if Democrats cut the military budget. The military has it's own launch capabilities.
Re:I know the shuttles are ancient... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just as likely that the Democrats will cut the space budget for the new vehicle.
More likely, in fact, since they've done that already.
Try not to let your political prejudices affect everything in your life.
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The Republicans have the majority.
Of one half, of one third of the federal system. Doesn't sound like much of a majority to me.
They have the majority of a full half of the legislative body (the part that actually has the constitutional authority to make law). The three branches are intended to check and balance each other sure, but the legislative is definitely the part that controls where our money is spent.
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I find it ironic that it was a Democrat that really kicked off America's space program (Kennedy), a Republican to hobble it (Nixon) and finally a Democrat (Obama) to stomp on whats left....
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I find it ironic that it was a Democrat that really kicked off America's space program (Kennedy), a Republican to hobble it (Nixon) and finally a Democrat (Obama) to stomp on whats left....
And they say that bipartizanship is dead.
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Now, with that in mind, which is offering the better return on investment?
Obama made the right call.
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We don't need manned missions to deploy military hardware.
The idea of manned missions for space is as silly as manned aircraft, which we are rapidly supplanting with remote-manned systems.
The ideal mechanical servant is expendable. The ideal job is not done by humans, but for them at their will. Work on the remotely manned tech that we REALLY need on Earth and Space.
We don't need meat tourists. Let the romantics pay out of pocket for adventure.
Typical Scenario (Score:2, Funny)
**A massive disaster occurs on earth, forcing humanity to flee.**
"Oh wait...we forgot we took apart our space only space ships."
Darwin would be proud.
Re:Typical Scenario (Score:5, Informative)
**A massive disaster occurs on earth, forcing humanity to flee.** "Oh wait...we forgot we took apart our space only space ships." Darwin would be proud.
The shuttles can't do anything beyond going to low Earth orbit and only can carry a handful of people. If that sort of situation occurs humanity is toast even if we had a fleet of shuttles orders of magnitude larger.
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If we had a fleet of shuttles orders of magnitude larger (say, 300), we'd be having a shuttle launch pretty much every day.
Which means, for example, that we'd have boosted about 70,000 tons of cargo to orbit over the last decade.
Which means massive (by our standards) orbital infrastructure. And probably several deep-space vehicles assembled in orbit. At least.
Plus, of course, if we had that much stuff in orbit, it's likely that some of the s
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So for a few trillion dollars we could have a toy lunar base and make some pretty bootprints on Mars?
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Doesn't beat the government not spending it at all.
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You my fine sir take /. comments too seriously.
Nah, it was just easy to believe you were that ignorant.
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The impact that took out the dinosaurs would've put crap into orbit plenty high enough to take out a "space ship" that can't actually go anywhere.
How is this better than nothing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How is this better than nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The current vehicles are already essentially a Mark II (or III or IV ...). There is actually not much more than the airframe/skin left from the originals. They've upgraded the engines, replaced the computers and flight instruments, etc. Each vehicle underwent an extended downtime in Palmdale to be refurbished/rebuilt.
Also, the problems that lead to loss of life are inherent in the design, so the only way to "fix" them is to build something else. In retrospect, a staged vehicle with stages and tanks side-by-side is a bad idea. Both Challenger (first stage SRB punctured the tank) and Columbia (tank debris damaged the vehicle) would not have happened in a stacked setup (like basically every other orbital launch system has used). Obviously, there were a number of contributing factors, both in design and management, but the basic fact is that a stacked vehicle (with the crew at the top) would not have had these failures. Columbia wouldn't have happened at all, and Challenger at worst would have been a survivable event.
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We could have upgraded the TPS to metalic heat pipes. Google heat pipe leading edge
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From what I read after a quick google, only the leading edges, since they're piping the heat to cooler areas to radiate away. A big advantage is that this is apparently a metallic alloy, not the reinvorced carbon-carbon, so a direct hit on it like what doomed Columbia would not have left a gaping hole in the most heat-sensitive place on the craft. On the other hand, it could disable the coolant circulation system...
You probably couldn't replace the entire TPS because the surface area covered by the black-ti
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Re:How is this better than nothing? (Score:5, Informative)
There wouldn't have been an explosion in a stacked system. The explosion was a direct result of the first stage booster being attached to the second (or 1.5) stage tank. The booster did not explode; the burn-through eventually destroyed the bottom strut between the booster and the tank. The booster pivoted and the nose punctured the tank, at which point the tank lost structural integrity and the fuel and oxidizer mixed and exploded. The orbiter was not "blown up" (nothing inside it exploded), it was torn apart by aerodynamic forces.
If this had been a stacked system (think something like the Ares I design), the burn-through would have eventually caused enough of a off-axis thrust that the guidance system wouldn't have been able to compensate, and you'd fire the escape tower and separate the capsule. Even if somehow the burn-though managed to burn all the way around (unlikely), you wouldn't have an explosion; you might could have a segment of the booster separate, but that would only increase the solid fuel surface area a little. You'd lose control, but again, separate the capsule and the crew should survive.
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Challenger probably would have been a disaster still. An explosion that large is hard to deal with
The ET didn't explode. If it had, there'd have been nothing much left.
But you're right, it would probably still have caused an increase in angle of attack large enough to tear the wings off, the way the ET disintegrating did in this world. Surviving a major launch incident is hard when your spacecraft needs wings to land.
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No, a tandem vehicle wouldn't have had those failures - it would have had different failures.
But there's another basic fact you're either ignoring or unaware of, the Shuttle isn't the only vehicle to use parallel staging. In fact, there are many such and many flights of them under our belt - and their failure rate isn't noticeably different from those using only tandem stages. Notably, the Shut
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Yes, I realize that. I also realize that that large amounts of money are spent to make all launch systems and manned craft that reliable. The Shuttle isn't unique in that respect.
I also realize that of the various manned accidents to date (Russian and US), escape systems would have been useful in only a fairly small percentage of them. Out of two hundred odd manned launches, and twenty odd serious accidents - escape systems were or would have been useful in precisely two... And for the Soviet ac
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The point is not that a stacked vehicle has a higher reliability rate than a side-mounted vehicle. The point is that IF something goes wrong, you're more likely to survive in a stacked vehicle because all the exploding stuff is below you rather than under your chair. If Challenger had been perched on top of a stack, and an O ring failure happened in the first stage booster, the crew vehicle probably wouldn't have broken up. And assuming it had, since it would have been in a stacked configuration they'd have
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Actually, that's not true. (Gemini used ejection seats and had no escape tower.)
And at last, you begin to show the glimmer of wisdom - every design is a compro
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But, most other parallel staging launch vehicles use liquid propellant boosters, not solid propellant ones that can't be shut down early once they're fired. And the payload for most of these launchers is still at the top, the Soviet-era shuttle notwithstanding.
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Wrong. Virtually all parallel staged launched vehicles use solid propellant.
Wrong. Solids can be shut down in flight. (It was first done back in the 1950's.)
Irrelevant to my basic point. No matter how you slice it, the Shuttle's failu
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All those other vehicles have crew/cargo on top of the vehicle, not down beside the stages. When the crew/cargo area is beside the stages, a failure in the stages is almost certainly to be fatal or destroy the cargo. If the crew/cargo area is on top, you have an escape rocket and can recover the crew or cargo safely.
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Go look up how many tandem staged vehicles have failed - and how many cargo's have been destroyed. (Hint: The numbers are identical.)
In some strange universe where it's impossible to put an escape rocket on a parallel staged vehicle. (Hint: we don't live in that universe.)
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So you say that strap-on solid boosters that would blow up the first stage would be OK if only the shuttle was on top of the 2nd stage? Can I have what you had? Solid and liquid propellants don't mix...
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Why aren't we replacing this generation of shuttles with an updated and improved "Mk.II" version?
Speaking as a non-American so looking at it dispassionately, it looks like Mr.Obama had a bigger priority of keeping whoreporations like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan rich, then keeping the Shuttle going.
Not that it's any better in other parts of the world who have also bowed down to the banking whoreporations.
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Why aren't we replacing this generation of shuttles with an updated and improved "Mk.II" version? This just seems like an enormous step back to me and I can't get excited about this process at all.
Because every time NASA tries, Congress shuts them down.
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Unmanned missions at this primitive stage of technology ARE better than manned missions that gobble the budget.
If your goal is romantic tourism, send people early.
If your goal is to RAPIDLY EXPLORE space and LEARN about what's out there, remote-manned missions are the way to go.
Cantankerous! (Score:3)
Ok, I read this first as (Score:2)
Discovery heads into Restaurant
But wouldn't it be cool to turn Discovery into a restaurant for a museum?!?
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But wouldn't it be cool to turn Discovery into a restaurant for a museum?!?
Didn't the commies do that with one of their retired shuttles?
Hope for Smithsonian (Score:2)
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I believe it has already been determined that Discovery will be going to the Smithsonian. That is where Enterprise is located, so it seems Enterprise will be going somewhere else. It would be nice to see one end up at the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH. And likewise see the rest of the fleet find locations that are free to the public.
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I hope for the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH. I grew up there and they have huge hangars where all the aircraft are indoors in an air-conditioned environment. Admission is free (except for IMAX movies), and lots of aircraft are open and free to walk through. Ohio also has a huge history in spaceflight, and I believe it would be one of the best venues for a shuttle.
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Supposedly (I can't find any reliable, from NASA themselves statements, only reporters saying) Discovery has already been promised to Udvar-Hazy (the Smithsonian), who will in turn loan out Enterprise.
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I didn't find Evergreen to be all that different from the way Dayton, or most any other air museum, has their displays arraigned. (I remember sitting on the nose wheel of Bock's Car at Dayton). I was a bit bummed about the cost for the Spruce Goose, but that is their star attraction and earner, especially since their B-17 is no longer flyable due to the dreaded wing spar AD. They're also a pretty new facility, so I don't blame them for having a bit of fluff and filler. Didn't see much in the way of obvious
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"...I don't blame them for having a bit of fluff and filler. Didn't see much in the way of obvious replicas..."
To their credit, they labeled replicas as such, you just have to pay close attention to each plaque. Your mention of "fluff and filler" reminds me of my other complaint: so much space (particularly in the space building) was taken by video viewing areas showing stuff you probably have already seen on TV. I can watch TV at home, I go the the museum to see the real thing up close. But they do have a
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As I said, they're still comparatively young as a museum. Getting a Shuttle would go a long way towards filling that otherwise empty(-ish) space hall.
I've been to better air museums; Fantasy of flight had a bit more of an overall theme, and the fact that they flew something everyday was fantastic (the day I was there they had a Fieseler Storch doing low speed flight and STOL demos). I've been to worse air museums; Pacific Aviation out at Pearl comes to mind. Evergreen's on a good track, they just need to ke
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If a Shuttle comes to Europe, I'd argue it should go to the Technical Museum in Speyer, D. They already have a Buran (the atmospheric test bed).
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The one at Speyer is the atmospheric test bed, not the orbiter, same as Enterprise was. They have unit OK-GLI which is named "Buran aerodynamic analogue" on Wikipedia.
http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran [technik-museum.de]
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That's incorrect. The Buran program [wikipedia.org] included a number of airframes. One of them, OK-GLI, was an atmospheric test bed. It featured four jet engines so it could take off under its own power. It was used to test the glide characteristics of the airframe.
OK-GLI is now on display in Speyer.
Maybe your confusion stems from the fact that both the program and the first shuttle in that program to be used for an orbital flight (OK-1K1) were named Buran.
maybe I'm reading too much into what I see (Score:4, Interesting)
Good ridddence (Score:3, Insightful)
We went down the wrong path with the shuttles. I think their main purpose was a plot to make the Soviets copy them breaking their economy. If we would have kept making Saturn V's ( 10 times the lift capacity of the shuttle ) we would be walking on Mars TODAY.
But no, 30 years of waste, tiny lift capacity, and far more expense than single use rockets.
The best use of the Shuttles in my opinion it to let people look at them in museums.
The program can't end soon enough for me.
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30 years of waste
What you call "waste" the politicians in charge call "buying votes". That was the only purpose. If they could have found a more expensive way to do it, they'd have done it.
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It would have been easy to find a more expensive way to do it (really easy, since Shuttle development costs were quite low); just go with the Paine plan, or the Mueller plan. Much, much more expensive, involved building a big space station (much larger than the ISS), continued production of the Saturn V, and so on. They didn't even have to keep doing Moon missions or Mars missions, it would have been perfectly easy to avoid doing that but still spend money like water.
They didn't do that because they wanted
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As I recall, their function was to carry things between the Earth and some orbiting station. To "shuttle" them, if you will. The problem is that they were meant to perform this shuttling with rapid turnaround times that never materialized in practice. Therefore, it seems some launch vehicle with less emphasis on reusability would likely be a better replacement.
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Therefore, it seems some launch vehicle with less emphasis on reusability would likely be a better replacement.
The problem with the shuttle isn't that it's reusable, but that most of it isn't reusable. From what I remember the fastest shuttle turnaround was less than two months, and a week of that was being flown back to KSC from Edwards.
Most of the problems that have delayed shuttle launches have been either due to parts that are replaced every flight (e.g. external tank) or parts that require major refurbishment every flight. If a reusable component has flown a hundred times and has no obvious faults it's probably
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In some parallel universe where Shuttle development didn't begin in the early 60's and Saturn V production hadn't been canceled in 1965, sure. But we don't live in that universe. In our universe the Saturn V was canceled because there weren't any payl
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One of the big reasons the shuttle was built the way it was was due to the military funding and the fact that the military demanded the ability to be able to return payloads to earth.
Clean...for why? (Score:2)
I'm curious, why the cleansuit smocks?
I mean, it's not like it has to be sterile-clean to sit in a hangar in Poughkeepsie.
Why are they in their little smocks? (Score:2)
Sort of seems like the doctor swabbing the convicts arm before he administers the lethal injection.
I retract this (Score:2)
Just wasn't thinking when I posted it. (Those look like LOX suits).
Use Discovery don't mothball it (Score:2)
Yes the tech is old and the computer systems highly dated, but boost them up one more time and leave them up where they can do a world of good. Like a used car they can't do the cannonball run any more but they have much more use in space then they do down the gravity well in a museum. With two of them up there you have lots of possibilities (and spare parts).
Up there they can be emergency escape pods, a space bound pick-up truck, they can use the robot arm(s) to help work on the space station and they coul
RIP Shuttle, RIP USA in space (Score:2)
It was a good ride while it lasted, sad to say, we'll probably sit by and watch while other countries carry on in space.
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Re:Original equipment for display (Score:4, Interesting)
Why even bother reinstalling it? If the only part visible from the exterior is a dark cone, just install a conical cap. Most of the hardware inside the shuttle such as computers, control panels, actuators etc is completely unnecessary for a museum piece. Just remove most of it and install dummy components.
Because it's about history and legacy, pal - not a tourist attraction. There will be a time when people will look at the shuttles trying to figure out how we did what we did - and a mockup won't tell them that.
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Eventually, I'm sure, some enthusiast group will work on setting up simulators for the avionics, and they'll get flight software running for others to play with. Just like it happened with Apollo's software (what was left of it, that is). Hopefully NASA will preserve shuttle's mission software better than MIT did Apollo's.
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Better yet, why not just make the Shuttle software open source...
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Guess what. SST was a contributor to the budget hole. Good riddance. Go SpaceX (no, I'm not affiliated with them).
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I'd say you're both wrong.
SST did not have a big impact on the deficit. $175 Billion over 30 years of operations. The deficit is $14.262 Trillion. So the Shuttle program in total represents about 1.2% of the current debt. So you're right of course in that it is a non-zero number.
That said, what did it get us? Why do we send people into low earth orbit? To what end? What is the purpose or goal of having people in space?
As far as I can tell there's very little purpose. We have this program, and we mak
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I'd say that 1.2% of current debt is a hell of a lot of money ;)
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I feel your pain on Concorde. But the end of shuttle is not the end of manned spaceflight. Far from it. SpaceX/Dragon is a promising approach that may finally lower the costs of American manned space access.