Shuttle Politics 805
TheLoneCabbage writes "Texas Rep. Joe Barton has been quoted today in an AP article saying that he is in favor of grounding the remaining fleet of shuttles. 'If we have to stop manned spaceflight for five or 10 years, then so be it.' The fine gentleman from Texas displays his outstanding grasp of statistics and engineering stating that 1 failure in every 62.5 flights is NOT acceptable. According to OpenSecrets.org this may have more to do with Joe's friends than how much attention he paid to his math teachers." There's also an interesting piece on testimony given by the first Shuttle program manager.
Why rush? (Score:5, Funny)
Why rush it? According to his math in another 187.5 flights, the shuttle fleet will be destroyed anyways.
Re:Why rush? (Score:4, Informative)
There have been 113 total flights, The true destruction odds are: 1:56.5 not 1:62.5
With his math we'll be safe to send up shuttles another 12 time before worrying about the odds again.
Re:Why rush? (Score:5, Interesting)
Odds must be taken in context and with the benefits and outcomes weighed against each other.
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
If I were told that my child had a 1 in 56.5 chance of getting a fatal genetic disease, I'd certainly think twice before have a child, and I'd definitely have any possible screening tests done.
In *your* opinion, the risk of death to people you don't know (probably) is low enough to justify letting them volunteer for a mission. Their spouses may think an almost 2% chance of death is far too high.
Regardless of the political motivation behind it, an examination does need to be made, and the risks adequately explored.
As a comparison approximately 129 soldiers have died in Iraq out of approximately 150,000. I had trouble getting an exact figure, but I think that's a conservative estimate of troop numbers and the 129 is an official DoD number from a couple of weeks ago. One place said there 110,000 troops around the Quwait border alone. So the chancces of getting killed in this latest ware were 1:1162. Pretty slim.
Re:Why rush? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just it. These people volunteer. We aren't /ordering/ them to do this. They aren't conscripted. They volunteer to do it. Nobody lies to them about the risk. Hell, you /can't/ lie to them about the risk, it's all right there in our history.
Why should we tell people they can't if they're willing to take on the risk? I would be willing to bet that this is more motivated by the cost of replacing shuttles and crew than it is the potential loss of life. Cynical yes, but sadly enough, probalby true.
Re:Why rush? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I didn't volunteer my money to burn up on reent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why rush? (Score:3, Interesting)
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Personally, I'd feel pretty good about taking a risk -- any risk -- if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
*Those* are odds I can live with.
It's a stupid argument anyway. Nobody knows the
Re:Why rush? (Score:4, Insightful)
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Well, if each selection of 6 numbers had a 1 in 56 chance of winning the jackpot and that cost me a dollar, then spending 60 bucks pretty much guarantees that I'll win the jackpot. I could still lose of course, but such a loss would be unlikely.
I assumed people would realize that 1 ticket costs a buck.
if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
So if I told you there'd be a 2% chance of death everytime you drove your car, you'd drive to work every day? Odds are you'd be dead in under a year. Better take the bus.
If there were a two percent chnce yould die from taking cough syrup, would you tough out a sore throat or take the cough syrup. A plain sore throat is a minor irritation that goes away on its own compared to a small chance of death.
At the other end of the spectrum, if there were a 2% chance of death as a complication to a heart transplant, you'd laugh off the risk because without the heart transplant you're dead anyway.
Odds are about more than just pure percentages. You have to weigh the costs and the benefits.
Re:Why rush? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that last half flight will be a real bear.
failure rates (Score:4, Informative)
The numbers:
1,600 Soyuz launches: two of which were destroyed [guardian.co.uk] in accidents.
113 Shuttle flights, two destroyed in accidents.
The price of exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Exploration has always been a risky business. I don't believe for a second that the ladies and gentlemen who volunteer for a space mission are not aware of the risks associates with it.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, broken down on passenger miles, it's the safest way to travel, on or off this planet...
Re:The price of exploration (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you count the useless miles that the shuttle takes on its circuitous route. If you cancel those out, you're left with 200 miles up from the Florida launch pad, and 200 miles back down to the Florida landing strip. For this 400-mile round trip, the odds are pretty dismal, even compared to medieval seafarers.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasing understanding is more important than money.
Sure, if you want to stop the shuttle and put all of the money into disease research or oceanographic surveys because they offer a better return there _might_ be an argument. However, if the shuttle was cancelled the money would just be pissed away on politicians perks and pointless wars, so we should fight tooth and nail to keep it.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps on a sane Federal budget that didn't rely on deficit funding to cover every pork barrel?
Because NASA's budget is so large compared to the federal deficit, right? The current budget problems have nothing to do with fighting a war, cutting taxes for the rich, or the current recession, is that what you're saying?
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Interesting)
You think so? NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD. Seriously. If you or others want to bitch about the way NASA is funded, back it up with some facts, and look around. I'll even help you!
NASA Budget [nasa.gov]
This reality check brought to by the Office of Management and Budget!
Re:The price of exploration (Score:3, Insightful)
Purpose of DoD - Defending the Nation.
Basically, when the sh*t hits the fan, I'd much rather have a small Navy cruiser then a couple of Space Shuttles.
Interestingly, the DoD's web site shows the 2002 budget at $371 billion, with just over 2 million employees. Walmart's budget/revenue is $227 billion w/ 1.4 million.
That's a *LOT* of employees.
DOD [dod.gov]
Re:The price of exploration (Score:3, Informative)
According to the General Accounting Office [gao.gov] (PDF document) a single Shuttle launch costs $759 million. I live in the real world, so to me, that still seems like an awful lot of money.
It then does around about 5.3 million miles [astroinfoservice.co.uk].
So that's $143 per mile. To do what?
So far NASA hasn't come up with a g
Re:The price of exploration (Score:3, Interesting)
It's closer to 25%, actually.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Informative)
Think so? Let's compare and contrast that amount (the sum total) against 1 (one) B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
B2 Info [af.mil]
Hrmmm.. how many bombers do we have at 1.16b a piece? How many do we really need? Keep in mind that this doesn't even remotely account for the support infrastructure like the NASA budget did.
Thus we arrive at the moral dilemna. Let's see, we can fund science and space exploration, learning about our planet and ourselves in the process... or we can produce machines whose only viable purpose is to destroy human life and their surroundings. How much is just -one- of those snappy laser-guided missiles that we seem to be so fond of shooting at other humans?
Cruise Missle [navy.mil]
$600,000 a pop to kill a handful of humans? I suppose I should be honored to be senselessly slaughtered by such expensive weaponry! Except I'm too [expletive] dead to appreciate it.
How about this? Let's go for the -BIG- picture for DoD:
DoD Budget [whitehouse.gov]
It's a problem of priority. There are some of us that feel that advancing human knowledge is worth more than producing more machines of warfare. What a senseless waste. Perhaps Darwin was on to something.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The purpose of exploration?? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about servicing the Hubble?
What about taking large pieces of things into space?
What about operating as an assembly point for putting large things togeather in space?
Re:The purpose of exploration?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking large pieces of things into space - what exactly do we need large pieces of things in space for? Presumably for the ISS and other large orbital platforms that serve an important purpose - keeping Russian scientists employed and not making weapons delivery systems for Saddam Hussein or your local nutcase of the day. I would however submit that we can finance such programs with hanging the Shuttle albatross around our necks, and we can lift materials into orbit and assemble them using lower cost manned missions - how did Skylab and Mir get there? The Russians have the cheap, reliable Soyuz system for manned missions. Sure, things can get fucked up, and you might land 300 miles off target, but it lacks the catastrophic reentry failure modes that our dear old STS has.
I want to see humans in space, but I want to see us doing useful things in space, not just going there to hang out. I would consider a useful thing to be exploiting resources of the moon to set up a permanent facility for construction and low cost deployment of larger exploration missions to Mars etc. Helium-3 mining on the moon could be used to supply fuel for exploration ships (assuming the economics are workable - I know this seems debatable), and energy market sales could finance transportation of materials needed for vessel construction to explore Mars and the rest of the solar system.
Of course, what we REALLY should focus on in the immediate term is lift costs - scrap the shuttle budget and use all that money to finance research on reducing them, and basic technology research to make something like a space elevator feasible. Reduce orbital lift costs, and you'll get a hell of a lot of research and space entrepreneurship real fast.
Re:The price of exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Too safe a society? (Score:5, Interesting)
End Manned spaceflight? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, helping delay extinction won't put money in his pocket, so I suppose that's a lost cause...
No, End NASA-controlled Manned Space Flight. (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the huge amount of private-sector activity in the suborbital market currently, and NASA's pitiful track record in developing new launch vehicles, it's not at all unlikely that simply getting NASA out of the way will yield an economically feasable set of replacement vehicles in a shorter time frame for less money.
Jon Acheson
Re:No, End NASA-controlled Manned Space Flight. (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, but NASA is absolutely NOT the right group to do this. NASA is a bureaucracy, an organization that is first and foremost a po
Re:End Manned spaceflight But dont end spaceflight (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the famous protein crystals [aps.org] were no better than earth-grown ones, and the flu drug came from an Australian crystal, not a Space Lab 1 crystal. [aps.org]. Other than spiders in zero G, very little research has been done on the ISS (International Space Station), and none of it needed human minders.
For exam
Texas Education (Score:5, Funny)
1) Edukayshun (phonetic manglings).
2) Mathematical Miscalculation.
I think they are planning on adding a third one in 2004:
3) Piracy Through Accounting
-Cyc
Re:Texas Education (Score:5, Funny)
it won't be sex education.
Actually they have sex ed in Texas but they stagger the classes with days they do drivers ed; it's too hard on the horses otherwise.
Re:Erm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of what CS people do is experimentation, if not all.
True, we don't often use the scientific method in the same manner, but that's because our work has more practical applications than research applications, so you don't see much algorithm research since they'd rather have us spitting out games and OSs.
Everytime I compile, it's an experiment. I have variables and consequences, and I have to draw a conclusion ev
Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have a Senator Disney, might as well have a Senator Lockheed-Martin.
Maybe we could start a group of citizens and buy our congressmen back?
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everytime we buy a Disney product, we help Disney buy our congressman. Remeber that the next time you buy "Snow white and the seven dwarves" on DVD.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I work for Lockheed.
I don't understand your point... surely Lockheed has proposals and products that compete with the shuttle, but they also have thier fingers in the shuttle as well. they handle the external tanks [lockheedmartin.com], where I work we do the data processing computers [lockheedmartin.com], they do the thermal protection [lockheedmartin.com], they support [lmco.com] shuttle missions, provide other [lmco.com] shuttle support services, and do other shuttle [lmco.com] related work.
So yeah, they'll probably gain when NASA moves to the next-gen space exploration system. But they're by no means missing out on the shuttle action as it stands now. The thing about Lockheed is that they are very diverse... they handle IT for government sites (pentagon, bases, etc), they do package distribution for the US & UK post office, we do traditional rockets, they do air traffic control, airplanes, avionics, missiles, support services of all sorts - the list goes on an on. Go to the main Lockheed homepage and look at the list of products & capabilities. So you can't pull one proposal or project that Lockheed has, and say that they want the shuttle to die because of that.
The politics here are a hell of a lot more complicated than $14,000 in campaign contributions. I don't understand them all, to be sure... but neither do you.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason we shouldn't be concerned about this is because it shouldn't exist. Under our constitution the People and The PRESS were the only entities afforded freedom of speech. A multinational and "diverse" c
Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:5, Interesting)
But how is it that we have had troops (US gov. employees) all over the world doing the most dangerous things for decades but 7 astronauts are unreasonable losses? They knew what they were getting into, I assure you, just like any soldier. Thousands have given their lives for science and would gladly do so again. These scientists/adventurers/gov. employees were willing to die for the embetterment of the human race - why should cowards decide where the brave may go?
if the problem is kids being horrified at school watching the space shuttle then put the feed on delay.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nitpicking further (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a Soldier, Fireman, or Astronaut is not even in the Top 10.
Airline Pilots and Railroad Signal Operators are in there though.
Astronauts have a lot more in the way of glory and probably money than fishermen too.
You ask people who Neil Armstrong was. I bet a lot more people know that than know who Neil Kinnock was.
source [usatoday.com]
Soldiers aren't worth as much. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you die, in service, your family might get enough for a funeral.
If you happen to be in an office building that is the target of a high profile attack (Sept 11) your family will get millions.
It's sickening.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:5, Insightful)
An excellent point. The answer is I guess, some people are more important than others. It's like when a pretty white schoolgirl gets kidnapped, it's frontpage news and the country is in shock. But if the same thing happens to a coloured guy, then nobody gives a damn. Or when you read how successful the war with Iraq was because there were only 200 fatalities, and you realise that they're just counting the Americans.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or when you read how terrible the war with Iraq was because there were a few thousand Iraqi fatalities, and you realise that they're ignoring the many thousands of Iraqis per year that Saddam Hussein killed.
You're missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we did away with the shuttle program [tnr.com] (which over the years has turned into a huge pork barrel for the shuttle contractors), we could replace it with many more cheap unmanned flights plus manned flights with focused objectives. There's no reason to send an astronaut into space, at huge expense, to perform experiments that could just as easily be done on an unmanned craft. Instead, we should be sending those astronauts to Mars, which will never happen through the shuttle program.
Hear, hear. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had my 'druthers, I'd scrap the Shuttle operations budget entirely, put all of them into museums, and spend the operations budget entirely on serious R&D for purpose-built reusable spacecraft.
We need:
1) A reusable, unmanned heavy lifter like Venturestar (possibly with an option to load a cargo module that would essentially be a cockpit/life support system, for getting people into orbits higher than LEO).
2) A passenger ferry
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, one could question how reasonable or unreasonable the size of the US military is. (Or one should be able to; these days even a hint that we should adjust the forcepool brings with it the accusation that you are a traitor.) Second, for me it's not the loss of the astronoauts' lives per se that makes the manned space program unreasonable. As you mention, the risks are concrete, obvious, and difficult to explain away, but people volunteer. The unreasonable loss is the loss of funding and opportunity to do better science, even space science, in the US. The expenditure of cash on the problem of how to keep a manned space program going when every launch makes you cringe with its "make-work" and PR mission content is just scandalous. People who think that *this* kind of thing will help us fight off near-earth asteroids or bring us closer to lunar colonization are really and truly just not thinking very critically. I would go so far as to argue that the people who are most interested in the eventual manned exploration of space should be the people who should be *least* interested in supporting the status quo.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Astronaught Ice Cream
Extreme, high temperature ceramic heat shields
Tang
Microwave Ovens
MANY studies on humans living in confined spaces for extended periods of time.
Bone loss from weightlessness for extended periods of time.
The moon is NOT made of cheese.
The United States can do Anything it sets its mind to do.
Deploying and repairing the Hubble space telescope, which alone is worth the cost of manned space flight.
Composite materials such as carbon fiber.
And many many more.
Re:Why are we always nitpicking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't need 2 & 3 after that.
What is an acceptable risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would easily say that 1/62.5 is acceptable. In fact, I'm quite impressed that it's not 1/2. It's a really amazing accomplishment to do it at all. Back in the early days (even well into the Apollo program) it was pretty much given that this is a major risk to the lives of the astronauts.
Could it possibly be that we've just gotten soft, and started to take space flight for granted (which would be good in it's own way)? Is it just that the fucking baby-boomers have no spine? If so, will this only get worse in time? For example, I just heard on Howard Stern this morning that the average person doesn't really consider someone an adult until around 26 years old. Are we just becoming less and less responsible and, consequently, less willing to accept the consequences of our actions (including death)?
Or, as stated in the
In any case, 2 crashes in 20 years is a very very good record. You'd be hard pressed to make the airline industry perform so well. Sure, the people on board the shuttle are worth more than those aboard commercial flights and the shuttle is worth more than a plane... still, it's quite impressive.
Re:What is an acceptable risk? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, this is a real problem.
Jon Acheson
Re:What is an acceptable risk? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an incredibly specious arguement--if space travel scaled to the point that air travel is at, we would naturally expect the rate of failure to decrease--it would have to, as we wouldn't expand to that point until it had.
It is a real issue, but bad analogies don't help with illuminating anything.
What the hell? (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, are you saying people should risk their lives to do stupid little experiments with ant farms and shit? Come on.
There's nothing wrong with taking a breather and trying to minimize risk. It's obvious these shuttle people are totally incompetent.
Re:What is an acceptable risk? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't weigh risk without looking at the benefits. And the lack of benefits is the biggest problem the Shuttle and ISS programs have.
The Shuttle is not cost-effective for commercial space applications. The science conducted on the Shuttle and ISS is a joke.
As an American tax payer, I'm outraged that billions of my tax dollars are being spent on a pork-barrel jobs program for aging engineers at NASA and bloated defense/space contr
Re:What is an acceptable risk? (Score:4, Interesting)
Shooting up a crew of seven to do what an unmanned lifting rocket could do for a 20th the price, or simply to dick around on a space station for a few months is simply a stupid risk to make. Yuri Gargarrin proved that humans could exist in space, that was we need to know until we think of something worthwhile to actually do up there. Perhaps the Russians found the first worthwhile thing to do with people up in that stupid domain of nothingness: provide entertainment for tourists for money. But now, because of the shuttles being suspended, the Russians need to use their soyutzs to ferry people to and fro from that stupid floating junkpile we call the ISS and they don't have any in reserve to do usefull things like make money.
You'd be hard pressed to make the airline industry perform so well
ROTFLMAO! That's why pilots and flight attendants have a 30 - 80 day (depending on the length of flight) average lifespan? And don't give me no crap about how the space shuttle flys further in a trip, because all that goes wrong happens on takeoff (Chalanger) and landing (Columbia), just like a plane.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for scientific discovery, but everything useful that can by done with humans in space was done in the sixties, now space "research" seems to be just a way to subsidise wothless contractors and risk people's lives, not that there arn't things worth dying for, it's just drumming in the point repeatadly that humans can live in space is hardly one of them. Maybe the money spent on maintaining those "reusable" monstrocities that cost more to maintain than any disposable rockets in existance (except maybe saturn V) could be spent in theoretical, non-dangerous, non-wasteful research by our friendly accedemics to find out how humans in space might actually benifit us as a race
Re:What is an acceptable risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Strangely enough, I had never considered combining the first and second failed shuttle missions into a single statistic. The space shuttle program is a system, with a failure rate that varies over time, not a single 20 year long experiment. I would rather say that the failure rate at the time of 51L was a little under 10%, and that the system now has a failure rate of a little over 1%, although good statistics don't really apply to such small sample sizes. Still I would hestitate a long time before replacing the known failure rate of a 20 year old system, with a new and unproven system which still has all of its bugs intact. Nor is NASA interested, if I guess rightly.
In part I think that this is what annoys Joe Barton among others. It isn't that NASA is too risky, but too conservative. There are no new systems coming on line, and the old system isn't sexy any more. In its current state the STS is incredibly manpower intensive, and a lot of the reliability of the system depends on the training and full staffing of the shuttle program. If NASA were less risk adverse, they might be able to reset and design a new system, which over twenty years could approach the reliability of STS, but at a fraction of the cost in time and manpower.
But thinking that way will make the system less reliable, not more; at least until the bugs have been worked out.
Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (Score:5, Interesting)
"Barton's moment in the sun, up until late last year, was his advocacy of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)."
So, apparently, this guy's not all bad...(although, apparently, that was politically motivated as well...)
Re:Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) (Score:4, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
agreed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Columbia and Challenger were not destroyed because of an O-ring or a piece of foam... they were destroyed because NASA as an organization failed [astron.berkeley.edu] [shorl.com]. We need to fix NASA before we continue to launch shuttles... which have become glorified construction and grocery delivery vehicles as opposed to exploratory or R&D craft.
Honesty at NASA (Score:5, Informative)
Based upon my experience at Goddard, I will say that most of the people at NASA are honest, upstanding individuals intent on doing the best job they can.
Unfortunately, I don't think the management culture they inhabit works the same way. Yes, there are honest people in management. Too often, though, they must fight against pressures forcing dishonesty and abuse.
Some people are quitting the field because of dishonesty and abuse. Donna Shirley, the woman who led the team that designed and built the successful Mars rover of 1997, has quit, citing the "lack of honesty and openness" in the field.
When I was at Goddard, some high level managers in my company were caught defrauding the government out of millions of dollars. As a part of being allowed to continue doing business with the government, the company signed an agreement that forced all employees to receive annual "ethics" training. The training was a joke, emphasizing things like not using government e-mail for personal use. Teaching employees how to recognize major corruption on the part of mid and high level executives? Why, we "worker bees" need not worry our pretty little heads about that sort of thing...
Personally, I think the kind of dishonesty reported in these articles will persist until NASA embraces honesty, openness and democracy in its culture.
1 accident in 62.5 flights IS acceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying there is no room for improvement in the shuttle program, but some bozo politician from Texas should keep his word hole shut, when it comes to issues like this. When people are probing the frontiers some are bound to die. He should look at the history of the state he represents, it was not a bunch of sissy frontiersmen who wanted to stable the exploration and charting of Texas.
How about Soyuz, then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike the Shuttle, the Soyuz is not a reusable craft. The Shuttle was designed to be reusable to cut down on the cost of manned spaceflight - the irony being that the cost of the two lost Shuttles is greater than all the money spent on Soyuz craft so far.
More information here [nasa.gov].
Re:How about Soyuz, then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about Soyuz, then? (Score:3, Informative)
Nitpick: Crashed due to parachute failure, but didn't burn up. (Still not great for the occupant).
One catastrophe involving loss of ground crew on an appalling scale (Nedelin)
This accident predates the Soyuz program by several years.
Re:How about Soyuz, then? (Score:3, Interesting)
The shuttle was driven by pork barrel politics, where the largest number of contractors got a piece of the pie. As such it is a gold plated tu
Re:Each has their own advantages (Score:5, Interesting)
As you said yourself two of the arguments don't really hold. There just isn't any money in reparing satelites, LEO or geosynchronous, just lanuch a new one. And geography takes care of the rest. There is one left though, return of heavy objects. Granted it's not that much of an issue, what heavy objects are there to be returned in one piece? A few hundred kilos will go a long way towards deorbiting anything worthwhile. There simply isn't hundreds of tons sitting up there waiting to come down.
But the answer is not that hard anyway. You design something that does deorbit a ton or two (it's not that hard to do). I'd bet that that could be done cheaper than the cost of a few shuttle flights. You only need a large enough parachute (perhaps metal vanes initially) and landing it in the ocean. Since there's no people involved landing shock etc can be much higher.
Looking at the dollars involved, the cheap thing is probably to scrap the existing shuttle fleet, and redesign non-reusable craft to go atop existing US rockets. Granted they weren't built for manned flight, but operational records aren't that bad for some of the more tried and tested designs.
Hell, if memory serves the Titan IV is cheaper per shot than a shuttle launch, and you don't even have to bother about what to do with the junk once you've used it! ;-)
Re:How about Soyuz, then? (Score:3, Informative)
The current state of affairs is that only the shuttle fleet can get so much material into space in one shot. Russia had a few heavy launch projects in the works, but i think they've all been canned due to the dismal financial state over there.
Soyuz not that good (Score:3, Informative)
Senator Byrd (Score:3, Funny)
I'm surprised at the source (Score:5, Interesting)
Most Texans (and especially Houstonians) take extreme pride in the space programme. You only have to look at the name of Houston's NBA and MLB franchises - the Rockets and the Astros - to see how synonymous the words "Houston" and "space" have become. ("Houston" was even the first word spoken on the moon.)
But lets look at the rationale behind this "frank" admission.
The longer the shuttle fleet is grounded, the more likely it is that the fleet will be put through a series of expensive upgrades and overhauls. Furthermore, the more likely it is that serious amounts of money will be spent on looking at the next generation of NASA manned orbiters. (There's no way that George W. Bush, the former Governor of Texas, will want to go down in history as the President that mothballed NASA and destroyed a national symbol of pride - that's not the way he wants to be remembered.)
And just who'll benefit from all that extra money pouring into space research? Why, astronautical and aeronautical engineering companies, oil, power and chemical firms, big and small, especially those that are based in (yes, you guessed it) Texas.
Is grounding the shuttle fleet for the next ten years a good idea? Well, I don't have all the facts but the failure rate does suggest that the programme does need to be more closely examined.
Is a new orbiter the best way forward? Again, I'm not on the NASA payroll so I'm not the most informed individual but I'd argue that we need a reusable platform for getting to and from the International Space Station now, and a more modern, flexible and efficient replacement ASAP.
Tokamak Parallels (Score:4, Informative)
From Robert W. Bussard's letter to Congress regarding the Tokamak fusion program [geocities.com]:
Astronauts were pioneers, not statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
We shouldn't remember them as some goddamn statistical casualties, we should remember them as people so dedicated to the cause of human space exploration that they willingly laid down their lives for the furtherance of human knowledge. This guy's statements bring those 14 brave people down to the level of a goddamn statistic, and I hope
Keep the shuttles flying as long as there are volunteers to crew them, and make every effort to bring them home. We have the technology now, we had it in the 1970's, all we need is the national will to do it right.
Re:Astronauts were pioneers, not statistics. (Score:4, Insightful)
So for that reason we should continue to spend billions of dollars and risk more lives?
Keep the shuttles flying as long as there are volunteers to crew them, and make every effort to bring them home.
As opposed to look at whether what we are doing up there makes sense in the first place?
Ok, these people are heros, brave, and all that. Yes we should remember them as such and not as statistics. But to say that because these people are brave and willing to take the risks, we as a society have no responsibility to look at and change the situation is ludicrous.
I think its been pretty well established that the science done by the manned space program and on the ISS is not worth anywhere near what we spend on it. So we have to ask ourselves what the prestige of the manned space program is worth, both in dollars and in human lives. Is satisfying our yearning for the last frontier worth the cost we are paying? Should we do it now, or develop a cheaper, safer way to do it 15 years from now? Maybe the answer is that it is worth it and we shouldn't wait. But let's at least be honest about the questions we have to ask and ask them rather than forging ahead blindly because it's the only thing we know how to do.
No problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus there will probably be a few private companies doing the same thing over the next decade or two.
China (Score:3, Interesting)
The American space program did not start because we though we could reap some tangible benefits. The American space program started because we had something to prove. Specifically, we had to prove that our ideology is superior to Communism, and that if they can put a satellite in orbit, then by God so can we. Yes, there are obvious defence implications as well (i.e., if you want to spy on people, satellites are your best bet), but mostly America was driven solely
A better stat (Score:3, Funny)
Why Politicians Are Shortsighted Idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
Project Mercury: 6 flights, no deaths.
Project Gemini: 12 flights, no deaths, 1 abort.
Project Apollo: 18 flights (including Apollo-Soyuz). 3 fatalities (non-launch-related), 1 abort (in-flight, no injuries)
Project Skylab: 3 flights, no aborts.
So, by the end of 1975, Americans have flown into space only 39 times. Thirty-nine. Barely enough to tempt fate, it seems.
Space Transportation System: 113 missions, 14 fatalities (in-flight).
Everyone knows that spaceflight is still very dangerous. In the case of a Shuttle, the odds just caught up. That's not a failure.
In the Challenger disaster, NASA and its contractors failed, as they did with Apollo 1, to use their imagination properly to see the real numbers as real chances for catastrophe.
In the Columbia accident, NASA didn't go the extra mile in determining damage on the orbiter, but all other decision making appeared on-target, IMHO. Not that there were many options that they could have presented to the astronauts to save orbiter and crew.
The main problem with the Shuttle right now is to protect the critical tiles. Ice will always form on the orbiter's ET and all flights have returned with some ding damage from ice. Foam falling from the ET was obviously too much damage for Columbia to withstand.
I propose an aeroshell that fits under the orbiter body where it mounts to the ET. It would be integral to the ET, and cover the RCC and underbody of the orbiter, including part of the nose. The only change in flight that would be required is for the orbiter or the ET to be given thrusters that push the ET forward (or orbiter to aft) to clear the aeroshell that covers the leading edges and nose.
That, and perhaps we can rig a harness where we can place inept Congressmen under the STS exhaust to show them how things really work.
If every space flight was guaranteed not to return (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that go up aren't doing so blindly. They've made their choice as to the relative value of their lives to themselves without going versus the value to themselves of going. We should honor that choice by being proud of them for being braver than most, not by denying the choice to others.
If someone were to come up with a plan for a one way trip to Mars that offered even a glimmer of hope for surviving, you'd have no trouble finding people who would rather live a few months on Mars than the rest of their lives on Earth. Time by itself isn't a reason to live.
Exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, one of the things we don't have a handle on is how to do it safely. That's part of the exploration process. We obviously have a system that works, as we've returned many safely back to earth. In the case of Columbia, an unknown variable was introduced. We've never known what happens if a tile is struck with an object on liftoff. It's never happened before, and we had to react with information we knew to figure out if it was a problem. Sometimes the only way to learn is to find out.
As for the 7 astronauts, this mission was hailed as one of the most successful in space history. The amount of research that was performed and the data was collected surpassed any previous missions. The astronauts love their work, so much in fact that they're willing to risk everything for it. For 7 people to sacrifice themselves for their research is truly an honor, and the world should see these 7 people as heros, not casualties.
Re:Exploration (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's fine and dandy, but since the shuttle never makes it above LEO (low earth orbit), there's not that much there to see that hasn't been seen before...
So if you insist on sending people to LEO just because you can, why not do it safely and cheaply in a non reusable orbiter, carried on top of a old fashioned rocket.
As others have mentioned the Soyuz has a remarkable
Loss of Life? Riiiight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving
Helicopters
Airlines
Military
Sex for those over 40
Smoking
Drinking
High School (Columbine)
What a crock. This whole thing is politically motivated.
So what, we had an accident and lost an expensive vehicle and some highly trained personnel. I don't want to sound harsh, but we lose highly trained military personnel in helicopter accidents monthly (and usually more than 7 personnel), why not shut down all of that model of chopper?
Just stop fighting already and build a space elevator.
BA
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is, it sells. What is it about space travel that scares the hell out of people so much?
just so you know (Score:3, Funny)
Do I get to appear naked on the cover of Entertainment Magazine now or what?
only half agree (Score:5, Interesting)
I've thought this for more than a decade now, seems a duh to me.
Dumb rockets can carry cargo and occasional passengers up better, and we can land passengers better too, our old "splashdown" into the water worked quite well..
Statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it acceptable? (Score:4, Insightful)
The story was, with all this expense (though NASA has been lying about the program expense from the very beginning, claiming it would be less expensive per mission than single-use rockets), you would be able to increase reliability and safety.
It hasn't turned out that way. The Russian Soyuz single-use rocket, for example, has a far higher safety rating (no accidents on manned flights since 1971), and costs about 30 TIMES LESS per flight.
There's something obviously wrong here, and you don't have to be an opponent of the space program to see it.
And I'm very much a proponent of the space program as a whole, and want to see a concerted effort towards a mission to Mars. But I don't see how the Shuttle program gets us there. It's a boondoggle only justifiable with really really bad math (read NASA math).
Thus, the biggest reason to be opposed to the Shuttle program: It's astronomic expense crowds out money for any meaningful space exploration.
Even if it means a five to ten years hiatus in the manned space program (though Russian launch vehicles could still be used), I'm all for using the money to build a manned space program that actually makes sense.
Someone should tell him... (Score:4, Insightful)
Barton's right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate to say it, but I have to agree with Rep. Barton. Manned space flight, as it is currently practiced, is a joke, and has been since the seventies. The Space Age has apparently come and gone....there are children today whose parents were not even alive at the time of the last moon landing. Having once stepped on another world, we now seem to be content to simply play in our cosmic back yard.
All our manned space activity has been devoted to a bloated hulking monstrosity of a vehicle that can manage far fewer missions at far higher cost than originally intended; for twenty years, until the ISS was finally built, it failed to serve the function it was designed for--ferrying equipment, construction materials, etc. into space. (And the value of the ISS is as dubious sa that of the shuttle itself.) We send it up two hundred miles, it circles around the earth a few dozen times, and it comes back down. If it doesn't blow up on the way up or burn up on reentry. The shuttle program has obstructed cheaper, more efficient, and more powerful ways of getting people into space. It has so hindered us that it would take us another ten years to rebuild the infrastructure needed to send us back to the moon.
And for what? For PR? So schoolkids could have a real live astronaut growing their bean sprouts for them? So John Glenn could have one last moment of glory? The only worthwhile missions in my opinion have been those to service the Hubble telescope. Consider the adverse impact it has had on other, more valuable, unmanned programs, either because of the shuttle's drain on NASA's budget, or its inability to function due to delays and disasters--the delay of the Cassini program, the bare-bones funding available for Mars missions, the shame of being the only spacefaring nation unable to send a probe to Halley's Comet on its last visit, the failure to send a probe to Pluto when it would be most scientifically useful...
The shuttle program is a parasite on the nation's science program, and it is a killer. Don't look at it as a 2% failure rate--two disasters out of 107 flights. It's a 40% failure rate: two of five vehicles catastrophically exploding, well within the limits of their expected usable life.
I am by no means saying that we should end the space program. The Voyager program, the Hubble and Chandra telescopes, and other unmanned scientific missions have provided us with vast knowledge about the universe around us. The commercial space program has enriched our lives here on earth, through global communications networks, better weather forecasting, etc. But compared to these, our manned space program is lagging far behind. We can send people no farther than low earth orbit, and we have no worthwhile vision for what they should do once they get there.
Why the sarcasm? (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds to me like Rep. Barton is on the money concerning shuttle reliability.
Shuttles, Safety, and Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
However
I do not believe that we have to send the rest of the Shuttles to the Graveyard just yet.
The two shuttles lost are so far, the first that actually made it into space (Enterprise being little more than a test platform) and the Challenger which (if memory serves and if I'm wrong I do apologize) is the second oldest orbiter.
Secondly, It's Space we're dealing with. It's an unknown and we're trying to learn how to get into space without killing ourselves. If you think about all the manned spaceflights that we have done as the world as a whole, mankind has a pretty damn good track record.
I agree that the Shuttle needs to go, but with a little care, it CAN still serve it's purpose until the replacement is designed, tested and ready. Give the remaining Shuttles a once over, fix the problem and get them back up.
Phoenix
I attended the hearing (Score:5, Informative)
His remarks were made thoughtfully and deliberately, not banging a shoe on the table. And as to remarks by MagusAptus that "Just goes to show that we elect the brightest and the best to congress. It would just seem reasonable that if we had to have these committees on everything, then the members of those committees should have at least *some* knowledge or background in the area," Congessman Barton has actually been on the S&A Subcommittee since the early '80s; he served when the Challenger crashed. And he also earned a B.A. in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M.
Deep Space Homer (Score:5, Funny)
Tom: It's a lovely day for a launch, here, live at Cape Canaveral, at
the lower end of the Florida Peninsula, and the purpose of
today's mission is truly, really electrifying.
Man 2: That's correct, Tom. The lion's share of this flight will be
devoted to the study of the effects of weightlessness on tiny
screws.
Tom: Unbelievable, and just imagine the logistics of weightlessness.
And of course, this could have literally millions of applications
here on Earth -- everything from watchmaking to watch repair.
Homer: Boring.
[tries to switch channels, but the batteries fall from the
remote control]
No! The batteries!
Tom: Now let's look at the crew a little.
Man 2: They're a colorful bunch. They've been dubbed "the Three
Musketeers". Heh heh heh --
Tom: And we laugh legitimately. There's a mathematician, a different
_kind_ of mathematician, and a statistician.
Homer: Make it stop! [panics]
National Pride??? (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW, I think NASA/society sets the bar too-high for astronauts ... a crew of high school kids with an old-fart chaperone (someone who is 28-years old) would do a far better job than the over-qualified astronauts ... real-life example is the reactor control room of a US Navy submarine.
Nixon and Mondale -- grey shades (Score:5, Insightful)
Today's neoconservatives often disparage the shuttle as high-tech socialism, and I've talked to more than a few different people who regard the whole program as a tax-and-spend legacy of an earlier governmental style. (Low-cost probes like Pathfinder and so on are their usual ideal.) Just goes to show you, the world's not black and white.
Mondale would be practically a liberal dinosaur by today's standards, and generally speaking he was arguing for funding social programs above NASA -- but his objections to cost estimates for this program seem to have been basically right, don't they? You have to respect that. Nixon's got a conservative's rep, but he was a Keynesian in economic terms and he definitely committed to a massive spending program here based on bogus estimates. With his eyes wide open about it, too.
Compare to the Russians (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't we at least do better than the Russians?
Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
when you consider these VOLUNTEERS enter the most dangerous and inhospitable of environments known to man (a vacum), and return safely in nearly 99% of missions, then the risk becomes more acceptable.
To ground the program due to what seems to me an exceptional track record given the extreme nature of their work is beyond senseless, a disaster occured in which information can be garnered to prevent such catastrophies from occuring again. Because a ship was lost does not justify reasoning that the entire organization is flawed. This is high risk work people, and generaly high risk work runs into intermittent tragedies that illuminate problems to be prevented int the future.
Now at this point im sure plenty of people will chime in, that what if these tragedies can be averted by further research and development... etc.... This logic however falls short because we cant prepare for every possible imaginable disaster, we cant protect ourselves from millions of potential disasters that are beyond boundless in scope and possibilities. An ill timed solar flare on a certain region of the sun could wreck ireprable damage on all the electrical systems on earth, so should we just not go into space at all considering that may happen (and trust me, we dont have the tech to protect ourselves from a strong enough flare)
so then the real question becomes acceptable risk. is a 1-2% failure rate acceptable? I would have to say yes, and most risk-analysers would agree.
the second question is risk vs profit. this is far more tricky, as many have mentioned what THEY believe to be pointless or fruitless expiraments done in space, which provide little benfit given the risk and cost of the endeavor. In my honest opinion almost any reasonable research in space is at this point priceless, even manned research is of an in-estimable value to mankind. The results may not lend any imediatly profitable outcomes to buisness ventures, but on the whole the entire endeavor does many things, it first of all provides a wealth of knowledge otherwise completly unattainable on earth to the scientific knowledge of all humanity. We are talking about research that is impossible to obtain otherwise. Second of all it gives us, humans, a goal beyond this planet, a sense of a greater direction, a destiny of sorts that we can all build towards. I know that sounds grandiose and over the top, but look at our cultures far back into time, breaking boundries and pushing limits to find new things has been the legacy of humans since we could write on walls. And lets face it folks, as far as earth goes we're begging to reach the boundries here-in.... the space program has been giving us a new frontier that is important for the well-fare of the human psyche and our global culture. Thirdly the program creates jobs on more levels than NASA, there are contractors, and the companies that support the contractors, most people in the end are somehow connected to NASA through the MANY companies that support, supply, or buy from her.
while no-one has seriously proposed to stop NASA, grounding her is a similar action in that it would kill a great amount of drive behind her development. And in my opinion NASA's development is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT things earth should be doing right now.
i agree that reviewing the processes behind how NASA operates should happen frequently, but hampering her as well is worse than foolish, it is counter-productive, and potentialy catostrophic in it's own right. If anything we should be pumping more money into appropriate portions of NASA and concentrating on creating and achieving even grander goals in shorter spans of time.
a manned mission to mars should have been accomplished years ago.... there should have been a manned (or at least unmanned) station ON the moon decades ago, there should have been hundreds more probes sent through our measly solar system, and many more things.
the space race has died, and needs to be revived for the greater good of all.
If commercial space ventures can get a jump-start soon (as they seem nearly there), then we may find ourselves finaly advancing at an acceptable rate.
Project Apollo (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the apollo astronauts knew that there was a significant risk of catastrophic failure. I am sure everybody around them knew of these risks as well. I remember a TV interview of one manager who was in mission control at the time of the first landing, talking about the master computer overload alarms that kept popping up as they were landing. He said he had estimated beforehand that it was 50-50 as to whether or not they would acutally be able to complete the mission. Apollo 13 came hairline close to catastrophic failure.
I remember seeing a film clip of a man testing a prototype parachute off the eiffel tower in 1900. His prototype chute didn't open, and the unfortunate man met his end at the base of the tower. Fortunately, this didn't dissuade others from repeating his tragic experiment.
We all have to go sometime, might as well make it for a meaningful cause.
Unmanned Shuttle (Score:4, Insightful)
Rip out all the life support systems and it will make a great space truck, then build a ligher, safer, more modern space plane to get the people there and back in one piece.
NASA spaceflight. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lockheed-Martin has no interest in seeing NASA shut down the shuttle - quite the opposite. Government contracting in general and NASA in particular are great cash-cows for LMC and for all the companies on the list you've cited.
Aging, sclerotic bureaucracies flying obsolete, overly-complex 'spacecraft' don't explore new frontiers.
The future of spaceflight doesn't lie with NASA - it lies with private ventures like Xcor. Taking the manned mission away from NASA and pushing them the hell out of the current command-and-control, false economy of the Shuttle-distorted launch market is the best thing that could happen to the cause of manned spaceflight.
Re:Stupid White Men (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, saying that you learned about US politics from "Stupid White Men" would be like me saying that I learned everything I need to know about German politics by listening to "Die Gerd Show".