Shuttles Grounded Once Again 685
PipianJ writes "After discovering that the piece of the shuttle that fell off mysteriously, not actually striking it, (as reported earlier) was a piece of foam insulation not unlike the piece that ended up in the destruction of Columbia, Yahoo News reports that NASA has once again grounded the shuttle fleet."
FP? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Funny)
NASA. It's not rocket science!
Gilligans Space Station? (Score:4, Funny)
"Now sit right back
and you'll hear a tale,
the tale of a fateful trip
That started from Cape Canaveral
abord this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailerman
the skipper brave and sure
five passengers set sail that day
on a nine day tour
***
The weather was impeccable
but the insulation foam was lost
if not for the courage of slash dot chat
the Discovery would be lost..."
***
The crew set foot on the ISS
a small galactic isle....
[...what comes next?!]
Re:FP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to treat this as if you were serious...
Liquid hydrogen (the stuff in the big, brown tank, along with liquid oxygen) has a boiling temperature of about -434 degrees fahrenheit.
The launch site is next to the ocean and bounded by swamps and rivers. Humidity at the launch site is quite high. The surface of the external tank, if exposed to the atmosphere without the foam, would develop a very thick layer of ice - a material with considerably higher density than foam.
Now, which would you rather flake off of your orbiter during climbout: ice, or foam?
Re:FP? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not religous, but godspeed Discovery.
Re:FP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:poor design (Score:3, Informative)
The goal was to build something so you could just refuel it each time you want to send it up thus saving a lot of $ but a large % of the ship is not reusable and they have to inspect / disassemble the rest of the thing each flight which is why it's so expensive. They should have build a ship that can do low temp reentry and can do horizontal takeoff and landing not some sort
Re:FP? (Score:3, Interesting)
The space shuttle experiment was a great success. It proved that with late 70's technology, an RLV was simply not as cost effective or as safe as you would expect. Of course, saturn V's are not much better ($ per launch), but they make up for it in $ per kg.
Hello? Do you read the news? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FP?-Brick on a stick. (Score:5, Informative)
You're kidding, right, AC? The Shuttles can carry at most 28 tons of cargo. Saturn V could lob 118 into LEO. Proton can boost almost as much as Shuttle, for far less money, including a series of integrated space station components (Zarya, Zvezda, Mir baseblock). Maybe the trunnion pins were great for launching Hubble, but that is the exception. Your "triangle" thing doesn't make sense, inline thrust structure is more efficient, less mechanically complex and makes trajectory calculation simpler.
>And siting on top of a roman candle is safe?
Yes, comparatively. For manned flight, a rocket under the crew is far safer than having components next to them. Launch escape towers are safe, accurate tools for keeping crews safe from an exploding "candle". There is footage online of a Soyuz capsule popping off the rocket right above the pad, the rocket failed but the crew lived. The same can't be said for low-altitude launch problems with Shuttle.
Capsules, rockets and tugs for station components make sense. Buck Rogers spaceplanes don't.
Re:FP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FP? (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with LH is that it condenses oxygen from the atmosphere onto it. That does two really bad things - first, you now have lox all over the place turning everything around it into a high explosive (pratically any porous sub
Re:FP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:FP? (Score:5, Funny)
Cheers
Re:FP? (Score:5, Funny)
The shuttle and boosters are packaged using foam peanuts so that while during shipping it cushions the fragile spacecraft. My recommendation is to use bubble wrap which doesn't fall out of the box as easily when opened and not as bad to the environment.
Re:FP? (Score:4, Funny)
Harmless foam loss (Score:5, Informative)
Re:FP? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember... (Score:5, Informative)
The point is, now that we're looking intensely for problems in this area, we're going to find them. We're looking with eyes, cameras, satellites, lasers, sensors, robotic arms - all with unprecedented scrutiny. What do we expect to find? The shuttles are the most complicated pieces of machinery ever built, designed to launch into space with a controlled explosion, and then return to earth. Regardless of whether some here think the shuttle is junk, whether it's unnecessary, whether Air Force jocks doomed the program for the beginning, whether manned spaceflight is sentimental tripe, etc., the fact remains that flying something like the shuttle is a risky endeavor.
It's all about smart management of risk. Eliminating risk, especially for something like the shuttle, is impossible. This focus on debris falling from the shuttle is nothing more than a reactionary CYA tactic in the midst of a media circus in case something else like this were to happen again. Doing get me wrong: it's wise to consider the problem, to attempt to prevent it, and to ensure there is not undue exposure. But that exposure cannot be eliminated, and this intense focus on debris in particular beyond anything else, even in light of Columbia, is unwarranted.
NASA is operating in panic mode: one more catastrophic shuttle failure, and that's the end of the shuttle program, and essentially the practical end of the ISS and a lot of scientific research to boot. If you're paralyzed with fear, you're, well...paralyzed.
This New York Times article [nytimes.com], which I posted in the previous article on this, sums up the situation quite nicely, for those who may have missed it.
Notable:
"How do you distinguish - discriminate - between damage which is critical and damage which is inconsequential?" asked Dr. David Wolf, an astronaut who spent four months aboard the Russian space station Mir. "We could be faced with very difficult decisions, in part because of all this additional information that we will be presented with."
"...the harder they look, they'll find more things."
"There is risk in anything you do."
July 27, 2005
Intense Hunt for Signs of Damage Could Raise Problems of Its Own
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 26 - Now that the Discovery is in orbit, the examination begins. Its 12½-day mission will be the most photographed in the history of the shuttle program, with all eyes on the craft to see if it suffered the kind of damage from blastoff debris that brought down the Columbia in February 2003.
There were cameras on the launching pad, cameras aloft on planes monitoring the ascent, cameras on the shuttle checking for missing foam on the external fuel tank, and a camera on the tank itself. One camera caught a mysterious object falling from the shuttle at liftoff; radar detected another, about two minutes into the flight. Cameras aboard the shuttle and the International Space Station will monitor the Discovery until the end of its mission.
But all this inspection may be a mixed blessing. The more NASA looks for damage, engineers an
God forbid that people apply similar policies... (Score:2)
Re:God forbid that people apply similar policies.. (Score:2)
That's probably because a leaky DLL never caused the server to explode, instantly killing the entire IT staff.
Re:God forbid that people apply similar policies.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certain computing systems absolutely must operate reliably. Unfortunately, modern engineering does not offer a solution to the problem due to a number of constraints.
Essentially, teams setting out to write flawless systems will be practically incapable of doing so in reasonably complex instances.
Because of this, we use redundancy. It is of note, however, that people have been killed by buggy software, and that this is something that we can control with proper practices (by which I don't mean any of the more asinine things that the industry has come up with).
Instances of software both behaving well, and killing people because of malfunctions, can be found in domains such as health care and the military.
Re:You are correct. (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a good story if you hadn't made it up. The pilot had slowed to near stalling speed
and realised too late he didn't have enough high t to clear the trees, he pulled back hard on the stick and went down into the trees. The computer didn't change the outcome one bit.
Re:You are correct. (Score:5, Informative)
OEB 19/1 Engine Acceleration Deficiency at Low Altitude
OEB 06/2 Barometric Cross Setting Check
In a nutshell, the bulletins state that the engines didn't respond "normally" to throttle input and that barometric altitude indicator did not comply with airworthiness regulations. Air France chose not to share this information with the pilots. Naturally, this is the kind of thing that the data recorders could shine some light on. The data supported the claims that it was pilot error and the case was closed.
In 1998 it was determined that the data that was supposedly from the flight had been compromised. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders had been tampered with during a 10 day period when they were not in the hands of the magistrate's office. They were in the hands of the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC), contrary to their own regulations. The funniest thing is that one of the boxes presented as coming from the crashed A320 spontaneously changed its markings during the interim. An independent body from Switzerland determined that there had been a switch by comparing photos of the CVR being recovered from the crash site with the one presented as evidence.
While the "official" verdict was pilot error there is enough evidence to call that verdict into question. Who lost the least with the verdict? Airbus was introducing an advanced aircraft and attempting to challenge Boeing, and they were selling the "advanced" electronics of the 320 series: even admitting that there may be an issue with the system would have had devastating consequences.
The onboard computers did lead to a few incidents with the A320. In 93 a Lufthansa pilot made a landing with a very low sink rate, so low the flight computers would not allow the deployment of thrust reversers or brakes for a number of seconds. The plane ended up going off the runway. I guess you could make too soft a landing.
Admittedly they seem to have solved those problems, and I have no qualms flying in an Airbus but then again I flew Aeroflot a couple of times.
Embedded Systems? (Score:5, Informative)
Those can't ship with bugs. Try applying a patch to several hundred 512 byte micros that are controlling the charging systems on the shock paddles in hospitals.
Re:Embedded Systems? (Score:3, Informative)
Two ways (Score:3, Insightful)
They can and do, as anyone who has ever used a flakey piece of such equipment can atest. The big diff is they usually just lock up or reset without any indication of what went wrong, so all you can do is curse and shrug. And buy a new product.
Now, embedded systems do tend to have higher standards of quality then, say, a word processor. I suspect that's due to a number of factors. One is mindset (people expect "computers" to be
Re:God forbid that people apply similar policies.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Funny)
<slap> You look with your eyes, cameras, satellites and lasers, not your robotic hands! And you can put your sensor away too!
Bu but ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Remember... (Score:3, Interesting)
And why would that be? It might be the end of NASA and U.S involvement in the ISS. I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians would keep ISS going. They have an inexpensive, ultra reliable pair of spacecraft unlike NASA, and can service it though at modest levels. They wont ferry any more U.S. astronauts there because NASA has been a deadbeat for the duration of the last 2 1/2 years, and hasn't paid Russia to carry U.S. astronauts and supplies to the ISS (becau
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can rationalize it all you want but the fact is its a bad design. A couple basic reasons:
- The foam is applied by hand to the ET, it is a hack added after the design was done to deal with all the ice that they had to know would be there. but chose to TOTALLY ignore in the original design. Applying that foam by hand is an accident waiting to happen, because it ends up different on every tank. If there are air bubbles under it at the wrong place its going to blow off and hit the shuttle. Most of the time its non fatal but it can be fatal anytime. The foma that did fly off was heading in the general diretion of the leading edge though it didn't get close.....this time. Its always a gamble.
- Prior to the Shuttle U.S. spacecraft had all the most delicate and important manned part of the stack, that had to survive the whole mission, and keep the crew alive at the top of the stack. Debris and ice rained down all over Saturn V but there wasn't anything fragile to hit and the stuff on the bottom is ditched early and isn't around for reentry. The crucial heat shield was totally protected since is was between the capsule and the stage below so it couldn't get damaged by debris. All the new designs return to putting the vehicle at the top of the stack because that is a good design. Handing it on the side of a cryo tank was a now fatal mistake.
The shuttle by contrast has a massive, very fragile array of heat shields all of which are out in the open and most of which are right next to the ET which sheds debris and or ice every flight. Its an accident waiting to happen. Its a crap shoot if debris falls off in the right place to strike the wrong place on the shuttle. In Columbia it did. There are odds it will happen again, so now NASA knows it has to spend half of every mission just checking to make sure a debris strike or a faulty tile isn't in the wrong place, and it can't fly any place but the ISS in the event the roll snake eyes again and get damage to the heat shield in the wrong place.
Re:Remember...Top Heavy. (Score:3, Interesting)
The CEV designs and Kliper are pretty tiny compared to the Shuttle.
It would be totally OK to stap a heavy lift cargo carrier where the SHuttle is because you aren't going to have it reenter the atmosphere in most cases and if you did want to return something big to earth you wouldn't have a crew in it that would die if was da
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Foam shedding was NOT expected when the shuttle was designed; the foam came in late in the game apparently. The tiles and wing structures were not designed with the intention of being struck by so much debris at such high speeds, and so initially the foam was seen as a real risk to the shuttle integrity. However, over the course of many launches, as the foam debris strikes piled up, it came to be an "expected" event, and the risk it posed was downplayed. And although you may "expect" a car with failing brakes to not crash everytime you move it, that doesn't mean you should drive it that way.
The mindset that foam was not likely to cause loss of structural integrity, was so strong for NASA shuttle managers that when the Columbia launched for the last time, they did not have a proper way to evaluate the extent of damage from foam. They had lots of data on small foam hits, and this was a BIG foam hit, and at very high speed. But since previous ones hadn't broken the shuttle, there was an "expectation" that even big foam hits probably wouldn't; they really weren't sure. The engineers obviously knew that F=ma could be a large number, even for small m, and they attempted to adapt some tools to calculate the possible damage. But the mindset that "foam is an expected event, it hasn't led to shuttle loss before" was already too well entrenched, and so the risk of wing impact damage was essentially dismissed.
This was made famously clear, when during the post-Columbia loss investigation, Scott Hubbard demanded that the foam gun tests be performed (ie. launching foam at a mock-up of the shuttle wing) in order to convince shuttle flight managers of the risk it posed. At that point, the majority of the investigation team already knew that the foam had been the cause and didn't press for those tests, but Scott knew the NASA culture, and knew they would not accept it unless proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Against NASA's objections, the tests were performed, and we all saw the results.
It is important to remember that the exact same problem in mindset doomed the Challenger flight. The O-rings were not designed to allow any burn through of the rubber. When it started to occur, it was accepted as an inevitable consequence of launch, rather than a fatal design flaw. Because it had not burned completely through on previous flights, it was accepted that some burn through would happen, and not be catastrophic. NASA management downplayed the risk so much that even when engineers insisted that such a failure was more likely on a cold launch, their objections were not well understood. Burn-through was "expected", so how much of a risk could it be?
There is a lot to be learned about engineering, and management, by these examples. Engineering has been called the art of compromise. However, when so much compromise has been made, it becomes easy for people to not properly evaluate all the consequences. Meanwhile, management has pressures that go outside the engineering realm, and the psychology of that situation can lead to completely unrealistic assessments of risks and liabilities.
Re:what do we expect to find? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it doesn't. Aerodynamics is a pretty mature science. Look at cars, aircraft, and ships. They do not double in performance every 18 months.
1 Moore's law IS NOT law of physics like the speed of light is a constant.
2. Moore's law is based on observation of one specific technology integrated circuits.
3. Moore's law even for integrated circuits will have a limit.
The only way to improve the design drastically would be to build NEW shuttles. There is a limit to how much you can improve a design without building a new design.
Re:what do we expect to find? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Moore's law doesn't even directly talk about performance at all.
It is specific to integrated circuits and says that the complexity will double roughly every two years.
Complexity roughly corresponds to number of transistors which certainly roughly corresponds to performance.
See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
Re:what do we expect to find? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember... (Score:3, Informative)
You have it backwards. The shuttle was INITIT
Huh now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh now? (Score:5, Interesting)
(And another shuttle would hardly be "scrambled".)
And the fact that the over 15,000 pieces of debris that hit the shuttle on the previous 113 flights didn't cause any problems 112 of those 113 times. You might say once is too many, but we're only finding issues here because we're looking so hard.
And, no, it's not "hard to do" with one shuttle on orbit. The fleet is grounded. Discovery is on orbit. Once it returns, no further shuttles will be launched until further notice. Quite simple.
Re:Huh now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Huh now? (Score:3, Informative)
That's partly truth and partly fiction. The 'enviromentally friendly' foam is used for acreage foam (and has lead to the 'popcorn' problems). The ramp that broke off was made from the older "enviromentally unfriendly" foam. At any rate, Columbia flew with an older tank, all if it's insulation was the older "unfriendly" foam.
Much has been m
Re:Huh now? (Score:3, Insightful)
On one side of the tank, you have O2 and H2 at 100C saturated water vapour that will surround them seconds after ignition. The thermal shock on naked tanks could rupture them, which would very likely lead to very nasty consequences. Also, in such a water-rich environment, it would take only seconds to grow ice sheets some milimeters thick on a naked tank... even atmospheric moisture would be enough for that over the first few minutes of ascent where atmospheric moisture is stil
Re:Huh now? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why they pay astronauts the big bucks.
The fact is space travel is still in its infancy. The space shuttle was supposed to transition us to the point where space travel was routine, but for a variety of reasons that never happened. We thought it was happening, in the early 1980's, but then the Challenger brought us back to reality (I actually wrote "back down to earth" before realizing what a bad metaphor that would be). Anyway, even if the shuttle was as successful at everything it was supposed to be, a transition is still a transition. The shuttle was to help us learn how to make space travel routine.
It's done that, but it is a complicated machine, and as the saying goes, this is rocket science. It's not easy, and I remember reading a bit after the Columbia accident that despite the OV (Orbiter Vehicle) designation the shuttles carry, they are still considered experimental vehicles within NASA and are treated as such. Astronauts are by definition test pilots. The fact that they actually get real work done on most missions is pretty amazing, considering. But they go into it with an understanding that it is dangerous work - even knowing that, could you imagine a better, more honorable way to die if it came to that? Would you rather die working for your country, for humanity, doing important scientific work that will pave the way for future generations, or would you rather die of a heart attack while sitting on a toilet taking a crap one day? This is the thinking astronauts have.
Someday, we will reach the point where space travel is relatively safe. But the early shuttle days were a red herring - space travel has never been safe, and it is still not safe. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Since Columbia, there has been a rumbling that suggests if you can't make space flight as safe as atmospheric flight, that manned space flight should simply be abandoned until it can be. That's at least partly what's behind the decision to ground the fleet today - after all, nothing happened on Discovery's launch that hasn't happened on every other launch before. The issue is this is no longer considered an acceptable risk.
Maybe in the end this will be a good thing, and it will drive NASA to create more robust vehicles that genuinely are safer, and that will put us on a path towards commoditizing space travel. My fear is that it will simply scare us away from manned space travel altogether, which will be a shame.
The space shuttle fleet is definitely near the end of its useful life, though... which is kind of hard for me to acknowledge, as someone who watched the first experimental flights of the Enterprise live on TV in the 1970's. This was a huge event back then, filled with the promise of things to come. Well, like a lot of things in life, the shuttle program accomplished a whole lot of things but never quite did live up to its full potential. And now it's winding down, in a not very good way. Oh well, such is life, and hopefully NASA and the world will learn from the experience. I just really hope the recent shuttle problems don't scare this country away from space flight altogether. It is dangerous and we must accept that, even as we strive to make it safer.
Just so we're clear on "big bucks" (Score:5, Informative)
The lowest step of GS-11 is $45K per year, the highest step of GS-14 is $99K per year.
Another way to look at it is that they do it in spite of the middling bucks, because that's the sort of person they are.
Re:Huh now? (Score:3)
Atlantis in no condition for rescues (Score:5, Funny)
(*Damn* I hate that show.)
Spaced (Score:3, Funny)
Ummm,.... What about Discovery (Score:2)
Re:Ummm,.... What about Discovery (Score:3, Informative)
What a wonderful bit of news... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Uh, yeah. Remember Columbia? Well, to make sure it doesn't happen again, none of the Shuttles are going to fly. Oh, except you guys. You're cool. Trust us."
Re:What a wonderful bit of news... (Score:5, Insightful)
And their families back on the ground...
Seriously, I'd hate to be the one who has to answer the question "Is daddy going to be OK?".
Of course, you have to think, yea, they checked out their ship, yea kid, they'll be fine, we just have something to work on before we do our next launch, it's no big deal... and yea, this is just fairly normal stress for families of astronauts ( it's not like they're serving in Iraq or Afganistan or living in downtown D.C. or anything ) but all the same... not exactly the news you want to hear. That supersonic plane you're flying? We just recalled it. Have a nice flight...
Isn't debris unavoidable? (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like the death of US space travel, but maybe this will speed along a space shuttle replacement.
Re:Isn't debris unavoidable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The shuttle fleet should be mothballed and replaced with a workable vehicle.
Re:Isn't debris unavoidable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Takeoffs are optional. Landings are mandatory.
NASA has lost two vehicles by disregarding safety issues as "overreaction" and proceeding with optional takeoffs.
NASA has now found evidence that the design flaw that brought down the last shuttle is still present. By saying "OK, no more takeoffs until we have a better solution", NASA has done the right thi
Re:speed along a replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had continued with development of the X-33 [fas.org] instead of turning it over to the Air Force and canceling the NASA development work, we would probably have a replacement by now. Instead, it will take probably a decade and substantially more money to bring a replacement vehicle to fruition from this point.
I suspect that politically, the manned space program is dead here in the US, given the huge budget deficits and slipping technology base.
There is the possibility that a superior insulating technology will be arrived at quickly and the remaining few shuttles might fly again, but I wouldn't bet on it. There is too much to be gained politically by stabbing the wounded for that to be allowed to happen.
Re:speed along a replacement (Score:5, Informative)
The X-33 was over-budget, late, and suffering major development problems. The performance was getting worse and worse. And then you would have had to hope that Lockheed-Martin was willing to put up their portion of the funds to build the production booster.....
And, at the same time, Iridium was bankrupt, "Dark Fiber" was eating into comsat requirements, etc.
And worst of all the Skunk Works had said, "Hey, we've been building all kinds of classified stuff all these years. I know that nobody in the public field can make a multi-lobed composite hydrogen tank, but we can pull one off, winkwinknudgenudge" So when it was shown that they couldn't, people lost faith. Especially because the only actually novel, testable parts of it was that multi-lobed composite hydrogen tank and the linear aerospike... everything else wasn't going to be getting a proper workout because it wasn't going to have enough speed to really properly test the metal skinned TPS or much else.
The problem was the X-33 was the riskiest design of the three contenders. So it was mostly doomed from the start....
No, they'll probably figure out how to dust off the shuttle yet again and fly it. Remember, it's just the PAL ramp that's the problem, so they might just be able to change it to using a metal cover.
Y'know, now that you point that out (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 7palrampimages/ [spaceflightnow.com]
looks an awful lot like the unidentified chunk of debris that missed the starboard wing (scroll to bottom of link).
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/05072 6images/ [spaceflightnow.com]
put public money into space (Score:2, Insightful)
we need to give money to the private sector if we ever want to advance in space.
if aviation had stayed strictly military air travel would never have been as available as it is today.
$1Billion for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$1Billion for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, SpaceShipOne is not orbital capable. It is capable of going straight up, then straight back down. Achieving orbit (and recovering to earth sucessfully) requires 30 - 50 times more energy due to the much higher velocities to get to orbit.
Lots of speed = lots of heat, and you need a way to shed it if you don't want to burn up. They've known that for years
Go back to painted external tanks (Score:5, Interesting)
The paint probably ought to be non-stick coated to inhibit excess ice formation too. Then put heaters in critical locations to break up the ice while the shuttle stack is sitting on the ground, or still moving at slow speeds. That way, supersonic chunks of ice won't go zinging into the shuttle body and we don't have to wonder if we've launched another one way mission to space.
Re:Go back to painted external tanks (Score:2)
have you ever read how much weight the paint added? it was enough that it had significant impact on fuel use calculations.
heaters may be shaky in such an environment. remember this is not ice that is 30 F and requires a little warming.
Re:Go back to painted external tanks (Score:5, Funny)
Ok Einstein, exactly how do you intend to get this non-stick coated paint to stick to the external tank? ;)
Re:Go back to painted external tanks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Go back to painted external tanks (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the real thing we need to do is replace the fleet, and go through with the current redesign plans to place the shuttle's body utop the fuel tank. That way anything that falls hits an SRB and not the shuttle's hull.
Personally I think it pedantic and panicky to ground the whole fleet due to some insulation falling, but it was that which harmed Columbia. I mean every launch has had parts fall.
But, I guess I will side with them for now, until we get more information these next few days.
Re:Go back to painted external tanks (Score:5, Informative)
Wrap it with a long thread... (Score:5, Insightful)
private sector? (Score:2)
i might be oversimplifying things, but all the data on the space shuttle exists, after 20 years there is enough info that another country, corporation, whatever could pick it up and run with it. i realize it is an incredibly complicated and dangerous thing
Too bad the tank burns up in the atmosphere... (Score:2)
I noticed that the view from one of the tank-mounted cameras showed the tank kind of oscillating; going from perfectly round to oval in one direction then the other. It was really visible, clearly not an artifact of vibration. The struts, shuttle, etc. were perfectly still. I'm sure that's accounted for in the pliability of the foam insulation, but still it must be one of the challenges to keeping the foam intact.
I see the problem! (Score:5, Funny)
Parallel Plight (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hate to Bore You... (Score:5, Informative)
Considering it's been 360 years since the last English Civil war and 140 years since the last American Civil war, I'd be inclined to say that the American system is fairly stable, but doesn't look set to be breaking any records quite yet. I come from Australia where the last thing that looked like it could have become a civil war (but didn't) happend in Ballarat 160 years ago and so even that beats America's current record.
When will they admit it is inherent in the design? (Score:2)
Re:When will they admit it is inherent in the desi (Score:5, Interesting)
The shuttle-as-the-second-stage-of-a-Apollo V [astronautix.com] was an alternative to the SRBs later in the design.
I liked that idea signifigantly better, because the Saturn V stage would have been useful for other things...
The shuttle was initially supposed to be all-reusable. Two shuttle-vehicles would launch together and one would go all the way to orbit and the other would go back to the ground. They could do it, but not in the budget given with the performance required. They could have made it smaller but fully reusable and in budget, or use a drop tank and make it bigger and stay in budget.
New NASA acronym (Score:5, Funny)
How Risky was a cross atlantic cross in the 1500's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How Risky was a cross atlantic cross in the 150 (Score:3, Insightful)
the entire reason for the shuttle was to make
frequent, 3 x weekly, launches, which it has never
done!
The design is a failure, that much is obvious,
what is not obvious is hou long the oversight,
which should come from the Congress will let this
waste of taxpayers money coninue.
Re:How Risky was a cross atlantic cross in the 150 (Score:5, Insightful)
Although life was worth less then, at least there was an immediate economic incentive to making such a risky voyage. You could even frame it in terms of thousands of colonists that depend on those ships for trade. The only reason to send people into space currently is to send people into space. I personally think that's a decent reason, but I for my money's worth I'd rather put up a few new space telescope to find nearby planetary systems with or whatever, or send off a few robots to explore Mars or the moons of the gas giants.
The other problem with your argument is that no matter which century you live in, if given the choice between two transportation systems, all other things being about equal you should go with the more reliable one. Russia has a safer system, we should use it until we've built something comparable of our own.
watch it grow... (Score:3, Informative)
Conspiracy Theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand, I can understand NASA's safety concerns - but, at the same time, it seems that they didn't do a lot to change the external fuel tank - its construction, etc. In fact, you could even say that this is why the shuttle was grounded from a July 13 launch - the sensor that was faulty was built in 1989.... they considered it to be in 'good condition', but, I mean, if it's a 16 year old piece of equipment, how good of condition is that? (I'm not exactly sure how this could be true - external tanks aren't reused, and so unless NASA stockpiled them in the late 80's, the tank would be newer; did the article just mean that it was a 1989 design?)
On the other hand - we know that pieces of foam have fallen off twice in the past 2 launches - once with devastating effects, and once without. I don't know if anyone at NASA saw fit to review old launch tapes and look for falling insulation à la the stuff that struck Columbia, but it seems possible that, given the construction of the external tank, it might be relatively common - and thus, nothing THAT BIG to worry about since its only been a problem 1/115 times. (Its still an inherent design flaw).
So, now the shuttle fleet is grounded again - will it be another 2 1/2 years? Making it early 2008 before the shuttle flies again? I mean, if it seems like foam just flies off of external tanks, the only way to REALLY solve this problem would be either encasing existing tanks in a new (heavy, expensive) "exo-tank," or just designing new tanks, right? I mean, this isn't some minor design consideration.
All this makes me think... with NASA already pressing for a new manned vehicle by 2010, are the powers that be in NASA just saying, "We don't want to fly the shuttle anymore, its a $2bn death trap, doesn't get us cool places and is damned inefficient at lifting cargo" and asking instead to concentrate on a new vehicle, just forgetting about the shuttle? I mean, if NASA spends $500m and 30 months modifying the shuttle fleet just to retire it 24 months after that, that seems dumb, right? Even by government standards?
Anyone?
Tim
Re:Conspiracy Theory? (Score:5, Informative)
A suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Jettison the foam at T-0, during engine ignition.
Velocity at that point in time is low enough that no foam strikes will have any chance of damaging orbiter tiles.
The foam and ice stay on the ground. The orbiter, and tank, go up. Probably a few thousand pounds lighter, as well.
Sure, there's the problem of getting all of the foam off in a few seconds, leaving none behind. Maybe by forming the foam around a fine, mesh netting, and attaching that netting to the ground via cables, it all slips right off at T-0.
Re:A suggestion (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
My conclusion after reading this article ... (Score:3, Funny)
Space Exploration ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we use Freon again? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So they still haven't learned... (Score:2)
Things happen and things like this are to be expected. I am getting excited about the next gen space race, just to keep waiting.
Re:So they still haven't learned... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope this isn't what caused the damage we've seen lately, but if it is, it begs th
Re:So they still haven't learned... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just wondering what the adhesive effects of all that white paint were.
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, they'll be coming back. And no, it won't be particularly interesting if they land safely, because the foam didn't even hit the shuttle, not to mention that the shuttle has been hit by debris over 15000 times in the history of the program. Over a hundred tiles alone fall off and need to be replaced on every mission.
There's nothing interesting about this
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Replace the Shuttle (Score:2)
Re:What about modified jets? (Score:3, Informative)
NASP was eventually scrapped as "unworkable", and its successor project -- IIRC, the X-33 -- did not fare much better, even though it was actually built.
The short answer for why we haven't done it is "fuel is heavy." I'm not qualified to give the long answer, but a straight shot right into the atmosphere really is the cheapest way to get a given weight into orbit.
A