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Space Science

NASA Ponders Postponing Launch until July 172

Posted by CowboyNeal from the wait-for-it dept.
BitFluid writes "According to Sun-Sentinel.com, NASA is considering postponing its Return to Flight shuttle launch because of 'ongoing concern about possible ice buildup on a liquid oxygen propellant line.' Apparently, that stuff turns into debris on launch, a risk they need time to investigate. If delayed, the target launch window becomes July 13 through July 31."
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NASA Ponders Postponing Launch until July More

NASA Ponders Postponing Launch until July

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  • To use old slang.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:48AM (#12381401)
    Postpone it again? Thats cold man...real cold

  • Let's give it up already (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:48AM (#12381402)
    Let's stop messing around with this piece of shit and develop something wonderful through international cooperation. Just like in The Contact.

    • Re:Let's give it up already (Score:4, Funny)

      by DisasterDoctor ( 775095 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:53AM (#12381416)
      We will as soon as the aliens beam us the plans.
    • And if it doesnt work, they could still claim that it DID work, but we just didnt see it because they returned so quickly :)
    • Let's stop messing around with this piece of shit and develop something wonderful through international cooperation. Just like in The Contact.

      Yeah, but then some religious nutcase would only blow it up.

      At least this way, a religious nutcase asks congress to pay for it.

    • The next generation vehicle is almost guaranteed to use LOX/LH at least for its upper stage, and is essentially guaranteed to use LOX for all stages. So, solving problems related to cryogenic fuels/oxidizers is something we need to do anyways.

      These problems aren't new - they've been around ever since we started using cryogenic fuels and oxidizers. Only the concern is new. We should be very proud of the fact that NASA is putting forth the money and time to try and solve these problems; we're doing a serv

      • The LOX issue, however, is not likely related to this - this is about preventing ice formation on the LOX lines (they didn't state which ones), not the tank itself.

        In order to diagnose a piping problem, you start with a P&ID. Is this available?

        Are the LOX lines vacuum insulated? Are they in proximity to other "stuff"?

        Sometimes fresh cryogenic eyes can spot problems. I am by no means an expert, but I've routed a few LOX lines (inside and outside cold boxes) and understand the design philosophy.

  • Nasa... here (Score:4, Funny)

    by William Robinson ( 875390 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:08AM (#12381455)
    NASA's focus in recent weeks has been more on ice debris than foam.

    Hmm.. I guess they need my shovell. It take care of my car during winter.

  • Armageddon (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Netsensei ( 838071 )
    Hm. Since NASA is so afraid of ice debris, I guess we won't be landing on any comet that's on a collision course with earth anytime soon.

    On the other side, there's enough ice on Mars, carrying the extra weight over there to make some cold Bailey's would just be silly.

  • Ice... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:15AM (#12381475)
    Remember all the ice raining off the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo rockets in the launch movies?

    All those guys said was "Let's light this candle"
    • I think the shape of those rockets had a lot to do with the safety.

      The problem with the shuttle was ice landing on the leading edge of a wing.

      • Re:Ice... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AgNO3 ( 878843 )
        The big exposion was caused me Styrofoam hitting the leading edge of the wing not ice.

        • Re:Ice... (Score:1, Informative)

          by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 )
          Wasn't that big chunk of foam saturated and frozen into a great big iceball though?

        • Re:Ice... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by WindBourne ( 631190 )
          Which explosion? The Challenger was partially caused by ice and freezing. So the solution was to use insulation (basically a light-weight spray on that is similar to styrofoam). Sadly the Columbia was hit by the same insulation.

          Do not be in a hurry with easy solution folks. That is the kind of solutions that we saw put into place. Sadly those solutions were put into place by appointees, not by regular NASA people. Think in terms of the current solution on the hubble and the "high risks" that were being sp

          • Re:Ice... (Score:5, Informative)

            by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @10:32AM (#12383904)
            The Challenger was partially caused by ice and freezing. So the solution was to use insulation (basically a light-weight spray on that is similar to styrofoam). Sadly the Columbia was hit by the same insulation.

            Challenger's problem was with the O-rings sealing in the solid rocket boosters. They did not use foam to fix this.

            Columbia was damaged by foam that fell off the main fuel tank, which doesn't have any connection at all to Challenger's problem.
            • ala the Richard Freynman report section: the orings were "COMPression" style o-rings. The they were used in an expansion style joint.

              while they worked, it wasn't what they were designed for originally. If you look at a breakdown of the tang and clevis joints, which had the problem orings in the middle, it was obvious the joints had been reengineered after their original design. (The addition of some relief valves and other crud.)

              Couple that with a senior engineer ignoring warnings about low temperature ex
    • Yes, but their design was very robust. The heat shield was underneath the capsule and above where most of the ice. If there was a problem with the launch they could just ignite the escape rocket and get out of there. Not so with the shuttle.

  • Uh, like (Score:4, Insightful)

    by madaxe42 ( 690151 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:16AM (#12381482) Homepage
    Spray de-icer on it? Wrap it in an insulator? Blow warm dry air over it? Why can't there be a low tech solution to this?
    • Because if NASA shows it can do something cheap, it'll get another budget cut.
      • That's is probably true. That happens a lot in the govt institutions. I don't know if anyone remembers but in the news a while a go was this woman who worked as a translator for CIA and she said her boss would tell her to create extra long delays in translation on purpose so he can pitch to the higher-ups how they need more funding and such.
        Of course one would want to think NASA has higher standards than that. They probably also know that one more failures and they might end up not getting any funding

    • Re:Uh, like (Score:5, Informative)

      by wyvernfink ( 846568 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @07:05AM (#12381900)
      Spray de-icer on it?
      LOX has a boiling temperature of -183 degC, and the LOX line can be expected to be at approximately the same temperature. De-icer lowers the freezing temperature of water, but it doesn't lower it that much.
      Wrap it in an insulator?
      Any insulator would have to be flight-qualified with assurance that none could shed during ascent. If the insulation were to fall off, it could impact the shuttle and cause damage, or worse, allow ice formation.
      Blow warm dry air over it?
      This requires both a source of warm, dry air and the proper ducting to get it where it needs to be. This adds weight to the vehicle and has the potential to change the aerodynamics of the vehicle.

      The end result is that low-tech solutions can (and often do) result in additional complexities for the vehicle. I mean, it's not like we're dealing with the most complex machine ever built or anything...

      • Blow warm dry air over it?

        This requires both a source of warm, dry air and the proper ducting to get it where it needs to be. This adds weight to the vehicle and has the potential to change the aerodynamics of the vehicle.

        Since this is only a problem during launch, you don't need to mount it to the vehicle, only the platform. Basically just a blow dryer that is retracted before liftoff.
      • I mean, it's not like we're dealing with the most complex machine ever built or anything... ... actually it isn't the most complex machine ever built.
    • It's Modern-Day NASA, they will either (1) ignore it or (2) appoint a senator's son to be incharge of a subcommitte of the materials committee in charge of developing a new metal that can't be iced over.
    • There is. They're installing a small heater on the part of the line in question.

    • Been considered (Score:3, Informative)

      by bluGill ( 862 )

      Read the article. There is a plan to use infrared from sources 500 feet (meters? I forget the units) away. However engineers are not confident that it will work. Blowers might work, except that you either need them on the tank (more weight to lift, and not areadynamic), or you put them on the platform and hope they never fail to retract after the main engines are lit.

  • Better Use for the Shuttle Money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pegasustonans ( 589396 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:18AM (#12381489)
    They could stop the shuttle program and use the money in the few years in between now and when the new man-rated launch-vehicle comes out to seed promising space initiatives by private firms. I'm sure this would more than pay for itself.

    • Re:Better Use for the Shuttle Money (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, stop.
      Think about what you just said.
      There is a Huge, (and I mean huge) difference between the shuttle and man rated lauch vehicles.
      orbital vs sub orbital
      payload vs no payload
      private orbital vehicles are at least 10-20 years off.

      and you are a twit.
      • Why don't you read what I said one more time. Finished? Now, please read it again. OK, notice that I don't mention anything about man-rated launch-vehicles from private firms. Specifically, I was referring to the man-rated launch-vehicle NASA is due to deploy after the retirement of the shuttle.

        Now, as for your last assertion, if you feel like coming out from behind the guise of your AC veil, then perhaps we can have a discussion about it. Until then, I'd say all your assertions have about an equal va
      • The funny thing is that the shuttle *was* built by private firms. And there are already private vehicles made entirely with private money, such as Orbital Sciences's Pegasus Rocket. You'll never hear any rocket fanboys/girls on slashdot cheering for them, though, because they're not joyrides, and because they actually can get to orbit, they actually cost more than the 100k-200k$/seat on SS1.

        So many people here have no concept of the technological difference between orbital and suborbital, and think that

    • Re:Better Use for the Shuttle Money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FTL ( 112112 ) * <slashdot.neil@fraser@name> on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:26AM (#12381714) Homepage
      > They could stop the shuttle program and use the money in the few years in between now and when the new man-rated launch-vehicle comes out to seed promising space initiatives by private firms. I'm sure this would more than pay for itself.

      The Shuttle is the only vehicle capable of completing the International Space Station. If you stop flying the shuttle right now, the Space Station would be doomed. That's billions of dollars worth of hardware wasted.

      Don't care about ISS? Then what about other countries? America convinced Canada, Brazil, most of Europe, Japan and Russia to pool its resources and focus on building the space station. Pull out now, and you will NEVER be trusted again. Even if ISS isn't worth the price of the shuttle, pulling a multi-billion dollar fraud on the rest of the space-faring world will hurt America for decades to come.

      Oh yeah, and without the shuttle, there's no Hubble. Nasa's new administrator is still thinking about the pros and cons of sending a shuttle up to fix it.

      No, the mature thing to do is to hurry up and finish the space station, then drop the shuttle. Which is exactly what Nasa is planning.

      • "Oh yeah, and without the shuttle, there's no Hubble."

        I don't think this is true. Using a robotic vehicle to carry out repairs is a serious option, and you don't need a shuttle for that, AFAIK. Just launch it up on a rocket.

        -Erwos
      • It is highly possible that cargo-rated prototypes of a crew exploration vehicle could fulfill the United States' necessary obligations as far as the ISS is concerned.

        As for Hubble, naturally it is a rather controversial topic, but it seems to me you could send up a second Hubble with a longer initial lifespan for the cost of doing all the repair missions for the current one.
    • So your plan is to replace something which is in many ways the essence of pork-barrel politics (i.e. the source of tens of thousands of constituent jobs and local funding), and replace it with competitive enterprise (essentially the opposite of pork-barrel). Sure, that sounds great, but it's politically dead in the water.

      Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of things like the Centennial Challenges [nasa.gov]. However, there's a reason that Congress put a cap on how much NASA could spend on that program.
    • Why not just drop a big nuke on the Johnson Space Center? It would have the same effect. You would kill the manned space flight program and the space station. You don't dump 15,000 people on the street and expect them to be available in a few years when, or if, your new toy gets funded and built.
    • "in the few years in between now and when the new man-rated launch-vehicle comes out"

      If you are referring to the CEV its not a few years, its more like a decade. The only thing happening in a few years, maybe, is a test flight by the two teams of an unmanned tin can maybe in 2008 but it would be a miracle if they held that schedule, this is NASA, Boeing and Lockheed after all. The earliest there would be a manned flight is 2014 and that is pretty much a fantasy target.

      Here is a biting editorial [spacedaily.com] on the g
      • The launch vehicle will be a derivative of existing expendable launchers and wont have anything close to the power of a Saturn V

        You do realize the SatV was not a LEO launch craft, right? If used in LEO mode and all three stages the SatV could put 130 tons of *payload* in orbit. The shuttle can not do that. Weight-wise the SatV could put the shuttle in orbit. With payload.

        The Shuttle can put a mere 24 tons of payload into LEO (Columbia was higher but they lowered it). That is within the (estimated) range

  • Was I the only one who... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shreevatsa ( 845645 ) <shreevatsa@slashdot.gmail@com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:23AM (#12381498)
    read this as "NASA Ponders Postponing Lunch until July?

  • Sensors (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tahii ( 758556 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:24AM (#12381501) Homepage Journal
    Apparenly the delay is due to a sensor failure that occured during tank testing. The delay will assist with getting a few other things sorted too, like cleaning up a hydraulic fluid spill.

    NasaSpaceFlight.com [nasaspaceflight.com] has a nice write-up about it.

  • Aero News Net Coverage (Score:4, Informative)

    by LakeSolon ( 699033 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:29AM (#12381515) Homepage
    Here's ANN's coverage [aero-news.net] of the story.

    If you're interested in this and similar sort of news, ANN is a great daily news site you should probably check out.

    ~Lake

  • oh cmon... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Illserve ( 56215 )
    It's not like the shuttle's gonna blow up or anything.

    Jeez...

  • Obviously.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by lordfoul ( 108260 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:38AM (#12381537)
    This postponement is so they will have more time to copy the features of Tiger...

    • Re:Obviously.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by michaeldot ( 751590 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:43AM (#12381796)
      No, NASA uses OS X to check the weather, not to launch shuttles. Mission critical, not mission chic.

      (I'll admit, the dashboard weather widget is pretty cool though.)
    • Surprisingly enough, NASA uses, almost exclusively, a blend of UNIX (for number crunching) and Mac OS (for desktops). Recently some Linux has entered the fray, mostly on servers. On a recent trip to Langley (NASA, not CIA), the only wintel machine I saw was running X over the network.

  • Time to toss NASA and get serious. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mikelieman ( 35628 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:45AM (#12381566) Homepage
    NASA did the job once, but since then they've done nothing but screw shit up.

    It's time for Congress to get off their asses and ACT. Jerry Pournelle came up with the idea, which would get us a complete spaceflight system in five years, and only cost 10 Billion Dollars.

    How?

    Congress must pass TWO lines of legislation.

    1) It is in the National Interest of the United States to have a mature spaceflight technology.

    2) The Tresurer of The United States is directed to pay, tax free, the sum of TEN BILLION DOLLARS to the first American Company to keep thirty Americans alive and well on the surface of the moon for Three Years and A Day.

    That's it folks. If we ain't got it, it's cause BUSH and Co don't want us to have it.

    ( Not that Klin-ton wanted us to have it, either, though... This idea ain't new. )

    All we lack is the will to achieve great things. Killing kids over lies, that we can do. "Supporting Our Troops", check.

    Pass TWO LINES of legislation to ensure AMERICANS have a stake in The Future? Nah...

    • The Tresurer of The United States is directed to pay, tax free, the sum of TEN BILLION DOLLARS to the first American Company to keep thirty Americans alive and well on the surface of the moon for Three Years and A Day.

      I would have thought getting thirty Americans to the Moon alive and then keeping them there well on the surface of the moon for almost 1000 days would cost far in excess of 10 thousand million dollars. It would be like £100 rebate on a £20,000 car, so I can't see it being any so
    • 10 Billion for:

      a) developing a lauch carrier that can reach moon with more than 1 or 2 tons payload
      b) getting enough material up to be able to support 30 people for more than 3 years INCLUDING oxygene (look at the biosphere2 disaster as to how difficult something is even at earth) (that would be a few 1000s of tons for sure->a few 100s worth of saturn5 lauches)
      c) GET 30 people up there (plus medical support, ect)
      d) bring them back.

      I would guess this would cost 500-1000 billions at least.
      Alone lauching
      • That's NASA thinking, son.

      • The lunar surface has a huge amount of oxygen in it. Spend a few hundred million to get O2 out of the surface and you are in business.

        Biosphere failed because the people involved were all a bunch of arrogant scientists and academics, iconoclasts that could not get along. If you want to put lots of people into space, you have to do it military style, run things like an 18th century warship. They would be out at sea for years and order was kept by a rigid social hierarchy. There are no worker's rights in
    • The only piece of legislation NASA needs to pass, is legislation that restricts the amount of money goverment contractors can get from a given project. Right now we are getting screwed left and right. We pay too much to companies such as Boeing and Martin Lockheed. They are ripping us off. I don't have the link but there was the article about the Robert Bigelow, Budget hotel owner (less then a year ago) who said that a life-support part he bought from a European producer cost him around 50k, while Lockh

  • NASA needs some balls (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:51AM (#12381589)
    "If we die, do not mourn for us. This is a risky business we're in, and we accept those risks. The space program is too valuable to this country to be halted for too long if a disaster should ever happen."

    Gus Grissom
  • How is it we can visit the moon on multiple occassions in the much younger times of technological capability (even before electronic calculators for god's sake), but when we have advanced our technology we find ourselves topped in mid-countdown because of ice?

    I say toss out the newer technology and let's look at what the guys in the first few launches did with older technology that made it so successful, and without the continual nagging for perfection in a job enviroment where risk is not only high, but w

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Stween ( 322349 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:28AM (#12381720)
      Well the issue is suddenly that people are concerned about the heat shield failing, yes? On the old rockets that went to the Moon, was it not that the heat shield was hidden almost until re-entry?

      It's a design flaw in the Shuttle, essentially. They're making sure that it's less likely happen again, over the course of the Shuttle's remaining years in service. Can you imagine what would happen if the next Shuttle were to suffer the same fate as the last? They're trying to get back to space using the only workable vehicle they have just now, so that the US is back in space, not waiting for a replacement. They might as well try to carry out this risky business in as safe a way as possible, and if that means delaying by another two months, so be it.

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis&gmail,com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:32AM (#12381740) Homepage
      Detection.

      This is like saying "cancer rates are up compared to 1965" ... I say "medicine is detecting more than in 1965".

      If you think the early flights were "safer" you're most likely sadly mistaken. They just didn't know about all the problems that could go wrong or had ways of addressing them.

      Keep in mind the driving force was to beat the ruskies to the moon. So at all costs.

      Though I agree. The shuttles are outdated and there are likely cheaper/safer ways to accomplish the same goal using technology ... from THIS DECADE!

      Tom

  • It's all my fault (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I decided to fulfill a lifelong wish and see this launch in person. So I booked my vacation when they announced May 15 was the target date.

    Then they bumped it back to May 22 last week, and I had to scramble to rebook everything.

    Now they've fucking pushed it back to July. This is the kind of luck I have. If I were to move to Florida, they'd probably cancel the fucking space program and de-orbit the ISS.

    Thanks, NASA! I should have known to wait for a few launches to come and go, so you got complacent again
    • Dude,
      Never plan your holidays around astronomical events.

    • Not your fault (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zippthorne ( 748122 )
      NASA is not going to launch another shuttle. They're just going to play the "One more thing" game 'till everyone gets bored with it and gives up. Even when the shuttles were working it was nearly impossible to plan a vacation around it: you'd wait on the intercoastal for 5 hours with your scanner listenening to rebroadcast NASA transmission only to have the launch scrubbed when the 2-minute hold goes into the launch window.

      The moral is: never plan your trip around a shuttle launch. An atlas or titan lau
  • Delaying the launch would give NASA more time to also address several other nagging technical issues."
    Well, that is a relief! Better you don't rush the launch like they did with Challenger, give it time to really fix the problem. I am thinking they need to build something like the Skunkworks reusable vehicle that launches like a plane, instead of going up on a bunch of hydrogen. If only they had a millenium falcon.
  • Man, being a Rocket Scientist sounds harder every time I see one of these stories.

  • NASA = Need A Sense of Adventure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by scharman ( 308566 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @06:34AM (#12381751)
    Geez, you gotta feel sorry for these guys. They are proably quintuply(sp?) checking everything! If this one goes boom there will be hell to pay. Poor bastards. I hate management and stupid media. Whats the odds of something going wrong with a flight? pretty high? 5-20%?

    And how many accidents have they had in 40 years of space flight? Not many. Come on, they had to have a few bad years.

    Best of luck to them! All the best NASA! There area lot of people who love you from the old days. You were and still are the technological pioneers of the world!
  • Mid to late July is typically when the hurricane season starts to really pick up steam. I would suspect that there will be more delays before the launch.

    While I would hate to see the shuttle system scrapped due to another avoidable crash, I would also be disappointed to see NASA delay the launch until late November.

  • It's Done (Score:2, Informative)

    by 090h ( 129325 )
    FloridaToday.com has an article this morning indicating that they *have* postponed the launch.

    http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20050429/NEWS02/504290343/1007 [floridatoday.com]

    One thing I quickly learned after moving down here to the "Space Coast" area, is that Florida Today usually knows before anyone else does!

  • funds and public opinion (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rctay ( 718547 )
    The simple truth is the average American just doesn't care anymore. Congress is only concerned when NASA funding will bring pork and jobs to their districts. There's no long term commitment, funding, motivation, or fascinating technology there. The average Joe would rather watch SciFi, it's cheaper, less dangerous and fits his 60 to 90 minute attention span. Maybe it is time to scrap manned exploration for now and de-orbit that international boondoggle.

  • Am I the only one... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bombshelter13 ( 786671 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @08:16AM (#12382454)
    Am I the only one who initially read this as 'NASA Ponders Postponing Lunch until July'?

  • Heat and humidity problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jbeaupre ( 752124 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @08:28AM (#12382572)
    It may be a case of 20-20 hindsight, but trying to keep giant tanks of cryogenic gases cool and ice free in Florida seems a mistake. Granted, there are huge advantages to being located towards the south, so heat is a given, but the whole icing problem would have been reduced by launching from Edwards, Yuma, or White Sands.

    I wonder if anyone has considered wrapping the tanks loosly in mylar and blowing dry air in to create a bubble. You'd get some thermal barrier effect and avoid ice. The trick would be to rip the mylar off in the seconds before launch, but some Vegas magicians could teach NASA how to do that.
    • The US has two major launch sites, Canaveral and Vandenburg. One of the major concerns is a problem on launch causing loss of the vehicle. They would rather not have flaming chunks of said vehicle then rain down on an unsuspecting population, which is why Canaveral is used for launches to the east and Vandenburg is only used for launches to polar orbits. There's nothing but open ocean for the distance it takes the vehicle to get to orbit.

      I don't think the mylar would work. You'd be dealing with at leas

  • NASA should certainly fix any bad design in the Space Shuttle and it's launch procedure. But basically going to space is dangerous and I wonder if what they are going after now are unavoidable risks of having both very hot and very cold stuff onboard. Personally I would accept a 10% risk to my life for seeing space and helping serious science like repairing Hubble and I am sure so would thousands of other people. They should continue flying both shuttles and do cool stuff including sending space tourists un

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