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Space

Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yeah-my-cars-paint-job-has-the-same-problem dept.
Masq666 writes "Tiny rocks, paint flecks and other fragments of junk whizzing around the Earth pose the greatest threat to the shuttles and the astronauts on board, according to the preliminary results of a new NASA risk study. Even coin sized fragments can cause great damage to a shuttle, and the damage can be lethal, if it hits the windows or the heat shield."
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Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat More

Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat

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  • Slow news day? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:44AM (#11858848)
    The article doesn't tell us anything we don't know already...

    I thought there would be at least mention of new prevention measures, or theoretically possible clean-up solutions being proposed.
    • Aye,

      I remember reading about this when the challenger went up.
    • Solution? Three words. Point Defense Lasers. :)

    • Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wdd1040 ( 640641 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:17PM (#11859068)
      How many satellites are destroyed on a daily basis by this debris?

      If something is up there 24/7 and doesn't have the problem, then I'd say the risk is currently small enough for the shuttle.
      • Does it have anything to do with the fact that they're in different orbits? I know most satellites are in a higher orbit than the shuttle is, so maybe they're less debris up there?

        I'm not sure either - that's a good question.
        • Yeah, there's less debris up in geosync orbit.

          The probability of a collision is relatively low, and we have the ability to track the larger pieces of space junk (and I believe the Shuttle DOES frequently move around in orbit to avoid known junk), but if a collision WERE to happen, it would be disastrous.

          We just hope it never does happen...
      • It's not enough to see (yet!), but the Earth has
        rings of space junk now. Popular orbits contribute
        the most junk of course, with plenty from launch
        equipment. Then it gets moved around by various
        effects -- moon, solar and magnetic stuff, etc.
        So there are high-risk and low-risk areas.

        It would be nice to just avoid the high-risk areas,
        but that isn't so easy. Sometimes you have to pass
        through them, especially since fuel is limited.

        As if that wasn't bad enough, there's the South
        Atlantic Anomoly to worry about.

      • Re:Slow news day? (Score:3, Informative)

        by adeydas ( 837049 )
        http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/isis/pub/sdtechrep1/s ect03b1.html [unvienna.org]
        Why do you think Hubble is required to be repaired after an interval of time?
    • or theoretically possible clean-up solutions being proposed.
      It shouldn't be that hard to clean up space junk. Andy Griffith [imdb.com] showed us the way over 25 years back.
    • ...of new prevention measures, or theoretically possible clean-up solutions...

      I think they were gonna open the big doors on top, and put a big net in there to colect the stuff. But then they realized that the net would probably just get cut by some debris.

      Then they thought about going up with a big baseball bat in the Canadarm and knock a few homers, but Mark McGuire wouldn't go to bat for them.

  • Old News (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jbrader ( 697703 )
    Holy crap! You mean debris traveling at thousands of kilometers per hour is hazardous to a vehicle that's also taveling at thousands of kilometetrs an hour? Seems to me this was already known and isn't a danger only to the shuttle but to anything in orbit.

    • Re:Old News (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ckemp.org ( 667117 )
      The point is, they're looking at the in-orbit phase in a new way compared to launch and re-entry, which at first glance seem to carry far more risk. This is simply NASA increasing their safety measures in one more direction.

      Whether or not these actions are a bit late can still be argued.

  • Better to burn out than to fade away (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:45AM (#11858853) Homepage Journal
    That debris layer is our ablative "alien shield" defense system. Bring 'em on!
    • ...and if for some reason we want to launch more shuttles, we just have to piss off an alien race enough to invade. After all their ships have been cleaned up by debris, we will have a clear sky again.
    • Yeah. The Vogons will be SO pissed!

    • Re:Better to burn out than to fade away (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:10PM (#11859031) Homepage Journal
      That debris layer is our ablative "alien shield" defense system. Bring 'em on!

      Several years ago I partook in an online discussion regarding the future of space flight, hosted by Jerry Pournelle (sci-fi writer and hobnobber with NASA people.) Prior to my question being posed, a female assistant asked me what my question was, and I voiced something along the lines of 'doesn't all the debris accumulating in orbit amount to a danger' then I posed to question to Jerry and he poo-poo'd my worries with some analogy of a coconut in the pacific ocean. (He did seem to overlook the idea that the analogous coconut would be moving at a few miles per second and could really ding a ship with such some force) .

      Afterwards I told the female assistant I thought he was a daft bugger. She told me he was smarter than I thought and she was his wife.

      A few months later the infamous paint-chip nearly punctured a shuttle window.

      I don't think Jerry was the only one who didn't get it, I've felt there was a valid concern about doing our utmost to limit orbital debris. At the time there was alleged to be a catalog of 8,000+ known objects in orbit, including a power screwdriver. That last item could easily doom a shuttle.

      • I have an amazing ability to end up the exact same situation that you did. My luck got so bad after awhile that, if we were talking about education, I would ask the other person, "Are you a teacher? Is your SO a teacher, Any children or parents teach?"

        I've corresponded with Jerry many times. He's a pretty nice guy (even if he was shortsighted about the debris field).
      • Pournelle is a bloodthirsty jerk whose SF is primarily spacewar marketing. He's a soft gobetween for NASA and the Star Wars (SDI) crowd. His own books are unreadable (since the mid-1970s), and he ruined Larry Niven by making him lazy and shallow with his coauthorship. FWIW, his 1980s "Chaos Manor" BYTE column was a neverending brag about his promotional gravytrain, promoting sponsored HW/SW while ignoring its comparative disadvantages in the actual market. I'm not surprised he dismisses the risks to our ast
        • Don't really have an opinion one way or another about Pournelle but I have to say that you bring back some fond fond memories of Byte Magazine.

          I subscribed to that and read each one at least 3 times it seems. I didn't really read Pournelle's column that much because he seemed to be a blowhard that got free equipment at "Chaos Manor" and this thing called a Cheetah that he kept refering to...as I said I usually just skimmed it so I never retained enough info to know what the hell he was going on about. So h
      • I don't think Jerry was the only one who didn't get it, I've felt there was a valid concern about doing our utmost to limit orbital debris. At the time there was alleged to be a catalog of 8,000+ known objects in orbit, including a power screwdriver. That last item could easily doom a shuttle.

        I'm surprised that he didn't 'get it'. After all, he did participate in The book Lucifer's Hammer [amazon.com]

      • asimov's quote (Score:2, Interesting)

        by valdean ( 819852 )
        Isaac Asimov also predicted that space debris would limit the speed of space flight:

        "At 1/5 the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is - space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel."

      • "then I posed to question to Jerry and he poo-poo'd my worries with some analogy of a coconut in the pacific ocean. (He did seem to overlook the idea that the analogous coconut would be moving at a few miles per second and could really ding a ship with such some force) ."

        He was arguing that the Pacific ocean is so very big and the coconut so very small that chances of a collision were not worth worrying about?

        Reminds me of the thread about so-called 'temperature' of inter-cluster gas clouds... you see ast

  • Easy Solution (Score:5, Funny)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:45AM (#11858855)
    Why don't they just raise the shields?
  • I've been hearing about this since I was 15 (I'm 36 now) and come to think about it, when I read about it then it was some 15 year old Asimov!

    It is just sad that humans smart enough to put objects in space are still not smart enough to not make a stinking mess out of everything. As the old saying goes "Don't shit where you live."

    • "A good dog don't shit in his own back yard"

      "A broken clock tells the correct time twice a day"

      Journalists have many expressions for this.

  • Sounds like a job for... (Score:5, Funny)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:47AM (#11858865)
    Mega Maid! [sciflicks.com]
    • Nah, it's a job for the Half Section. I've heard they were becoming quite good at it, recently, despite still being sooo understaffed.

      Seriously, to all people who where bitching in previous stories about shows being canceled and bad science-fiction being shoveled down their throats: Watch this animé: Planetes [cokesque.com]. It's good science, and it's good fiction. It's very well made, it's captivating, in a low-key way.

      I'll let the intro of the episodes speak for itself:

      Artificial satellites that have been dis

  • PlanetES (Score:3, Informative)

    by .tekrox ( 858002 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:47AM (#11858866)
    maybe you should have a watch of this Anime series -all to do with the lives of "Debree Collectors" quite relevant to this story indeed
  • Mission "Space-Dump", to dispose of excess rocks, paint, coins and the homeless, has been a sucess.

    • In my early teen years, I wrote my first short story about this very thing. We dumped waste into space, a chunk crashed through a shuttle window killing the astronauts, and then we had to find a way to get rid of the waste that we'd sent up there. (This involved a ridiculous method of reducing an item's volume without changing its mass - thus increasing the density of the item considerably and creating a weak "miniature black hole" which pulled the tiny bits of waste into a collection unit.

      It was rejected

  • Little bits of rock... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:47AM (#11858876) Homepage

    Of course little bits of rock are probably more of a threat than big bits of rocks. Sure the big ones might make a dent but the surface area of a small one is much less and therefore much more likely to make a puncture mark.

    Or as one of my university professors once said

    "When you are travelling faster than a rifle bullet, its a bit of an issue when you hit something that is the size of a rifle bullet"

  • And? (Score:2)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 )
    Somewhere, I read, or saw, or heard, or made up, that theoretically we could put so much junk in orbit that one collision would trigger a chain reaction, wrapping the Earth in a cloud of junk, making space travel from Earth impossible. And knocking out all our satelites.
    • Yeah, that's the Kessler Syndrome.
    • "wrapping the Earth in a cloud of junk, making space travel from Earth impossible"

      Wow.. if I were an extraterrestrial, I'd *arrange* for this to happen... no *way* would I want those Humans escaping into space. They'd be a veritable *plague* on the galaxy...

  • debris?? pftt (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whammy666 ( 589169 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:50AM (#11858898) Homepage
    I think exploding fuel tanks and foam insulation have done far more damage than any paint flecks. The biggest threat to the shuttle is management overriding safety concerns in favor of keeping schedules or to save money.

    • Re:debris?? pftt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:24PM (#11859101)
      And that, my friend, is the problem. In todays culture, something actually has to HAPPEN and happen publically before the general populace would take it seriously. How many people thought the danger of a booster rocket leaking was greater than financial concerns before Challenger? How many people were worried about the foam covered fuel tanks before Columbia?

  • Space Pee (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tezkah ( 771144 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:50AM (#11858899)
    I read somewhere that since they eject (or did at some point) their bodily wastes from the space station, everything that returns from orbit is now covered in a thin coat of urine.

    Anyone know if this is true/false? Google doesn't show anything.

    If true, I guess that changes the meaning of "whizzing around the Earth"

  • A new NASA "risk study", eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noose For A Neck ( 610324 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @11:52AM (#11858915)
    Is this the same "risk study" that they failed to do when they arbitrarily decided to destroy the Hubble telescope rather than repair their most successful scientific mission to date?

    Just wondering, because I read that since Congress actually called them out on it, they're trying to retroactively produce their risk analysis to justify the decision, and this is the kind of bullshit that sounds an awful lot like their same old "we're too scared to do anything anymore" attitude.

    • when they arbitrarily decided to destroy the Hubble telescope

      Woah, easy there big fella. It wasn't NASA that wanted to let the Hubble degrade, it was a direct reuslt of the directive and pressing of the Dub. [cbsnews.com]

      Given that the man has final approval over NASA's budget, their collective hands are effectively tied.
    • Is this the same "risk study" that they failed to do when they arbitrarily decided to destroy the Hubble telescope rather than repair their most successful scientific mission to date?

      It sounds to me like your only source of news is /. and you are trying vainly to come up with some sort of continuity to the whole of NASA's efforts by piecing together only the bits reported on by stories here.

    • Re:A new NASA "risk study", eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ebrandsberg ( 75344 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:32PM (#11859160)
      You did read the tidbit that pointed out it would be cheaper to build a NEW Hubble based on the same plans, upgrade it before launch and launch it, then to do a repair mission to it, all things considered, right? Personally, if they put money into "hubble" it should be Hubble 2, as we could get a LOT more years out of a rebuilt one than with a repaired old one.

      On a side note, I'm not sure why the government doesn't take a "mars rover" approach to more space missions, building and launching more than one of the same craft, and launch them one week apart. This would have saved all the science on the previous (doomed) mars lander, as they would have messed up on the first one, realized their mistake, and landed the second one with adjusted calculations. The incremental cost for a second or third craft will be MUCH lower than the first one, and potentially twice the science can be had from them (think being able to look at two objects instead of one with two hubbles).
      • Exactly.

        As expensive as it is to get mass up into orbit, which would be cheaper:

        Shuttle weighs 4.5 million pounds [howstuffworks.com]
        Hubble telescope weighs 24,500 pounds [about.com]

        Cost per pound to orbit is something like $10k per pound [maglev2000.com], low ball.

        So launch costs for a new hubble would be about $245 million.
        Launch cost for the shuttle seem to run around 1Billion per shot. That leaves 755 million to build a new hubble and apply the refits. The original hubble cost 1.5 Billion at launch, which I presume includes launch costs, devel
        • Yes, well, shame the launch market doesn't work that way. You can't purchase a launch in terms of dollars per pound. You purchase a launch vehicle, which typically has a fixed cost. Not that I'm saying a shuttle launch is cheap. But your launch cost calculations aren't really worthwhile. You need to look at the cost of a launch for a vehicle capable of lifting the mass of the HST to a 500+ km orbit. It'll most likely still end up being cheaper than the shuttle (although your cost estimate there is a little
      • There are two problems with your suggestion:
        1. The incremental cost is not that much lower, because so much of the cost of a complete spacecraft is wrapped up in integration and test, launch, and operations. Adding a second spacecraft will double these things (although you arguably might manage to avoid creating a complete doubling on ops costs depending on how things were set up). Design engineering is expensive, but not the majority of mission cost.
        2. It's hard enough to get funding for 1 spacecraft, let a
  • Not Quark! http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/DS9/c haracter/1112445.html [startrek.com]

    This Quark!http://www.tvparty.com/recquark.html [tvparty.com]

    Could certainly use his services to keep our orbits clean!
  • We've known this for years and years, like come on, of course things going at thousands of miles an hour could cause damage to things flying at thousands's of miles an hour, duh, but why, with all the satelites orbiting earth, and all the shuttles sent up haven't ever been severly damaged (columbia doesnt count because thats not what happened) by the shit? You can't call it luck, maybe if we only had the shuttles, but there are hundreds of satelites orbiting the earth 24/7, so why don't they get hit?

    • Re:Why then (Score:3, Informative)

      by v1 ( 525388 )
      Over the last 10 yrs several satelites have suddenly stopped functioning, due to unknown causes. Besides basic failure, "collision with a small object" is listed as probable cause for failure in many of those sats.

      Make no mistake, the odds of hitting something up there (with proper planning) is remote, but there are still objects in orbit we don't have on our map, and collision with them creates significant risk. Put in everyday perspective, if getting a flat tire was almost gauranteed to kill everyone i

    • Re:Why then (Score:4, Informative)

      by NOLAChief ( 646613 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @02:35PM (#11859915)
      Luck has little to do with it. Unmanned satellites have the advantage that they can be placed in orbits that are relatively clear of debris. Depending on the mission, I think (and my memory's pretty fuzzy right now) that some satellites have been rad hardened enough to survive in/near the Van Allen belts, an area that is naturally swept of debris.

      Unfortunately, electronics are easier to rad harden than people, so the shuttle must fly in "riskier" orbits from a debris impact point of view. The shuttle is protected in two major ways that I know of: first, a box of space around the orbiter is constantly monitored by NORAD radar. If something enters that box, they assess it's threat to the orbiter and can order course corrections if necessary. This helps dodge a lot of bullets. Second, after the infamous paint fleck that took a chunk out of Challenger's window, flight rules were changed so that the orbiter is oriented with the main engines facing toward the direction of flight at all times. So much better to have a paint fleck put a hole in an ablative nozzle that isn't being used and that will get refitted anyway than have that same fleck cause an explosive decompression.

  • In other news... (Score:2, Informative)

    by RaZ0r ( 145723 )
    the moon really isn't made of cheese.

    And by the way, even a paint fleck moving at that kind of speed presents a risk to the shuttle.

  • And the point is? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:06PM (#11859004) Homepage Journal
    Sure, debris in space is hazardous to the shuttle. It's also hazardous to everything else up there, too - including any other manned vehicles we might put up, the ISS, and the entire constellation of satellites in LEO.

    If we're going to stop sending shuttles up, that's not the best reason - the reason to get rid of the shuttles is because they're too expensive, too unreliable, and too inherently flawed for what they can do. Not because they might get punctured by space debris.

    Meanwhile, what we (meaning any terrestrial space agency, not just the US) should be doing is preparing the next suitable for LEO vehicle that can solve most of the shuttle's flaws, and then used unmanned rockets to get cargo into space.
    • No doubt. Manned space flight is such an obvious waste of time its a joke. The politicians say that manned space flight somehow stirs the imagination.

      The good news is that people are starting to realize that rovers and robots are actually 10x more exciting than people. Sure I'd love see a man on Mars, but I don't want to pay for it, and watching a small army of rovers colonize that sucker would be pretty sweet.
      • I think there are useful applications for humans in LEO, and maybe even for lunar exploration. I think, though that the Space Shuttle is a lousy tool for the task. Given the huge limitations it has and the enormous cost of operating the dwindling fleet of them, we can easily do better. There are plenty of designs that NASA hasn't put any energy into pursuing because all the money goes into the ISS and shuttle fleet.

        I do think that the ISS can be made to serve a useful purpose, and is a decent platform o

  • beh! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Viceice ( 462967 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:11PM (#11859039)
    Funny... I would have thought the shuttle's biggest threat would be the current administration.

    Afterall, you won't need to worry about FOD if you have to worry about getting off the ground in the first palce.

  • Shuttle's biggest threat (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:23PM (#11859094) Homepage Journal
    Shurely Shuttle's biggest threat is the mac-mini?
  • Git those space convicts out there.

  • Perhaps we'll learn from this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:26PM (#11859111) Journal
    Maybe this is the kick in the pants that NASA, ESA, JSA, and others need to ensure that they stop leaving junk up there.

    Satellites and other space-borne objects need to be equipped with some means of safely deorbiting them, or else we're soon going to find that putting anything up in orbit and having it say there unharmed will be nigh on impossible.

  • The shuttle needs some serious design revisions and these latest findings only serve to underline this. I think the following changes are required:

    a) Separate the rear propulsion units from the main vehicle and keep them as far apart as possible.

    b) Increase the area of the heat shield, while allowing for a narrow profile in orbit (using, say, a large saucer shape).

    c) Fit a big deflector shield to the front of the main drive section.

    d) Install maintenance tunnels throughout the ship (all of which ca

  • Threats (Score:4, Funny)

    by northcat ( 827059 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @12:38PM (#11859191) Journal
    Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat

    No, gravity is the shuttle's biggest threat.
  • I thought the biggest threat was incorrect assembly (Columbia), manufacturing defects (Challenger) and parts falling off at launch (Columbia).
  • There is a semi-serious idea that we will eventually launch so much crap up there that we will have to wait for it to fall out of orbit before we can safely launch any new missions...
    • There have been proposals to use small satellites to grab and push objects into a retrograde orbit to burn up in atmosphere. For even smaller things, you could use some kind of mesh or aerogel to catch the objects, then once the sweeper sat has collected enough material, it retros the whole thing.

      Of course, the idea also leads to the idea of having small booster satellites being used to extend the life of satellites whose electronics are still good, but have exhausted their reaction mass.
  • The thing posing the greatest risk are the sorts of things which have already brought two shuttles, or the astronaughts have been quite unnaturally lucky in the many flights.
  • Scrapping the shuttle without any plans for a replacement and no way to pay for it if we did, is just another nail in the coffin of medicrity that the US has laid herself down in. In 3 years we will see plans annouced to outsource manned space missions to China and India. It will be sold as a cost savings but what it really will be is an acknowledgment that the US is no longer capable of producting anything but an entire country of middle managers, ad execs and wal-mart clerks.
    • Well, rededicating the money spent on the ineffecient shuttle on getting a replacement would get you alot of research money.

      As for the replacement, while I'm up for any ideas, I think that the replacement should:

      1. KISS.
      2. There's not much difference between building a new orbital craft and essentialy salvaging the old one. If the best design is built new each time, and turns out cheaper than refitting and recertifying then go with it.
      3. take advantage of advances in material science. For one thing I th

  • Spaceflight is dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @01:33PM (#11859542)
    We're still in the very early stages of spaceflight. It's still dangerous, and it will continue to be dangerous for decades to come. And debris in orbit is only a small factor. The Challenger wasn't hit by debris in space. Neither was Columbia for that matter. Should we stop going into space because of some debris? No. Should we stop going because of the other dangers? I'll tell you what, if we come to a point where the astronauts who are risking their lives, decide it's too dangerous, then I'll start to listen. After all, they're more acquainted with the exact nature of the dangers they face than any civilian or politician (John Glenn excepted).

    You want to talk dangerous, go be a soldier in Iraq. That's dangerous. Why don't we outlaw wars, particularly unjustified, needless ones.

    And while we're on the topic of dangerous, let's talk about automobiles? They're not a great deal safer than the space shuttle.. Why don't we actually make driving tests difficult in the U.S. and outlaw people who can't drive? That will really save lives.

    Space flight is certainly not going to get safer if we stop doing it. The only way to improve is to just continue doing it and making improvements as we learn. Will some astronauts die? Of course. And they know that. It's the risk they signed up for. Why not let them be the ones to decide whether or not it's worth it.
    • And while we're on the topic of dangerous, let's talk about automobiles? They're not a great deal safer than the space shuttle...

      Will some astronauts die? Of course. And they know that. It's the risk they signed up for. Why not let them be the ones to decide whether or not it's worth it.

      Hmm. I don't have all the numbers, but a quick Google search suggests over 40,000 people die a year in the USA from traffic related accidents. However, I can't imagine how many millions of car journeys actually take place

  • Biggest threat... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J05H ( 5625 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @01:59PM (#11859702)
    I'd wager that the biggest threat to Shuttle is hanging the payload off the SIDE of the rocket. That has doomed 2 Shuttles already, while orbital debris has only caused minor damage. No "but, this COULD be a bigger threat", either - the major danger to Shuttle and crew is one of the vehicle's "features". Rockets with payload and launch-escape system on top of the contained explosion are inherently safer than mounting the valuables next to the explosives.

    Capsules and rocket-launched cargo make so much more sense than this pseudo-plane. If we are going to have "spaceplanes", they should be in the heritage of x-15 and SS1, not Shuttle. 'We' in this context is the US and the open passenger market mostly. If tickets were available right now, I wouldn't even consider flying on Shuttle, whereas Soyuz, SS1 or any of the historical capsules are all safe enough. Compare the evidence of Soyuz, Apollo or X-15 to Shuttle for safe ops vs. a dangerous design.

    I'm going to be real cynical for a moment: Not A Space Agency shouldn't be allowed to say Not Another Shuttle Accident ever again! Never A Straight Answer from them...

    The fleet should be grounded and put in a museum and that money rolled into a crash capsule fly-off prize (1 year unmanned, 3 years first manned) and after that paying for tickets instead of operations and hardware.

    Josh

  • BSOD (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hmmble ( 829603 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @02:08PM (#11859771)
    "...the damage can be lethal, if it hits the windows"

    Resulting in a 'Blue screen of death'?

  • I could have swarned that NASA had a project to collect or at least slow down some of these objects in orbit. It was supposed to be a huge sponge or something. Anyway,about a year ago or so, the project go cancelled for no reason.

  • /rant mode on

    Space junk has been a fact of life in low earth orbit for decades. There is everything up there from gloves to nuts and bolts, all merrily circling the earth. Then we go and send our highly-trained citizens up there who are totally unprepared for any eventuality that they might get so much as a sprained elbow. NOT!

    NASA astronauts have been prepared to die for space exploration ever since NACA was reformed into NASA. It's a complete bunch of nonesense to suggest that missions to outer space in

  • This announcement comes as NASA is considering abandoning yet another multi billion dollar satilite to become space junk, then complaining about it.

  • Why is this news now? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Xybot ( 707278 )
    This has been a problem for the last 40 years and, as far as I know, hasn't suddenly become any worse.

    Anyway all objects > 10cm are currently being tracked and catalogued by USSPACECOM radar. I guess eventually we'll reach a point where blasting these debris out of orbit with an Earth or space based laser will become a necessity.

    I have in fact been in simulator training for just this job for the last 10 years, and as an added bonus I am also able to accurately hit those bloody annoying UFOS that mak
  • Get some nukes up there to squeegee the most common orbit paths clean of all the crap up there, including frozen Soviet satellite fuel globs which are untrackable by radar.

  • The shuttle has to go (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Sunday March 06, 2005 @08:13PM (#11862020)
    Its been said before and I will say it again here.
    The shuttle has to go.
    It should have been replaced years ago with not one but two new spacecraft.
    One would be a heavy lift launcher capable of launching things like parts for the international space station etc. The ideal solution here is just a big rocket engine (or engines) designed to be as cheap as possible to make and launch without the need for fancy systems.

    Should have a low turn-around time so that once one is launched the time it takes to get ready for another launch is low.

    The second vehicle would be designed to carry crew, tools, equipment, instruments, docking modules (so it can link with space stations like the ISS) and so on. It would be reusable (with as few components needing replacement after each use as possible). Such a vehicle would not need the design compromises that make the space shuttle the way it is.

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