Launch Date Announced for Shuttle Mission STS-117 79
chuckpeters writes "After a two day Flight Readiness Review in Florida, space shuttle managers have announced an official launch date for STS-117 to be June 8, 7:38 PM. The launch window will run in two parts — from June 8th to the evening of June 12th when the shuttle must stand down for a June 14th Atlas launch. After that the windows opens again on the 17th. This first opening gives the standard four attempts in five days. If they have not launched by the 12th, they will replenish things such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen for the fuel cells to prepare for the 17th attempt."
This story need a car analogy (Score:5, Funny)
During the Bastille Bash, you did burnouts in front of your house so you need to refuel your car and put in some sweet NOS before leaving on the 17th.
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Correction (Score:5, Funny)
"Imagine you are taking your Civic from Maine to Califorina and it's winter."
Correction: Imagine you are taking your Civic from Houston to Orlando and it's winter, and you're wearing astronaut diapers...
We know it's June, but what year? (Score:2)
At the rate we're going, Belgium, Ethiopia and Rhode Island will have space fleets before THE USA does much else in space.
Texas needs to get its rear in gear on this.
I think I speak for everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
I even skimmed TFA and found this:
The STS-117's eleven day mission will install the second starboard truss segment, S3/S4, to the International Space Station (ISS). The truss will be attached to the first starboard truss segment, S1. This will be ISS assembly mission 13A.
I mean seriously?
Re:I think I speak for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Mars by 2020? Forget it, we can't even launch a freakin' shuttle in a descent amount of time!
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Re:I think I speak for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
This particular mission is not that big of a deal, other than others are lined up and waiting on this. In particular, the ISS needs POWER. This will increase it a bit, but current net is actually down. The reason is that P6 was rolled up to allow for this transfer. It is only after the NEXT shuttle that we will see major increased power. In addition, EU's ATV is waiting for this to be launch, but they will launch before the columbus goes up. Apparently, they have no desire to pay for the whole thing if they have a mistake. Almost too bad that we do not have a single unit up there for them to try against and vet everything. Oh well.
All in all, by the end of this year, we will see major expansions to the ISS.
Now, if there is a way to get CAM restored to there, which is one of the few really good uses for the ISS.
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aw, don't say that! Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, but foam comming off isn't so bad in and of itself, right? What happened with Columbia is that you had foam soaked in water (and frozen) so it was substantially more mass and therefore did more damage.
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As I said, I do not want to see this fail, though I suspect that there are quite a few here who would.
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So there is some truth to what you're saying. Well, I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope the launch goes off ok.
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how else are they gonna get the parts up there and attached?
Excited because its so mundane, long live Russia! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why I've always loved the Russian/ Soviet space programmes. In the USA, everyth
That's No Moon (Score:2)
Yeah, really, I mean, all they're doing is building a frikkin' permanent space station in orbit around our planet. What the hell? We've got dozens of them already.
Oh, wait, no - this is a first-of-its-kind monumental achievement for Man, and perhaps a real stepping stone to the human colonization of the galaxy.
Seriously though, just ignore the space stories if you don't care about space exploration. Some of us think it's really cool - 'stuff that matters', even. I realize some people th
Reasons for delays? (Score:2)
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After re-reading it, I think by "17th attempt" the submitter meant "attempt on the 17th". .
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what were the causes for delays?
I think it had something to do with some mild corrosion on the fuel system and something being amiss with the heat shielding. Earlier this year it was hail damage.
The radio people this morning were saying that it could lead to catastrophic failures. That is something that has happened before and I'm sure they would like to prevent it from happening again.
Then again, the Atlantis Shuttle is the 1985 model. I think it's time for NASA to get some new "wheels".
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Anyone else hear about this corrosion issue?
Kathy posted something about it at "NASA managers mull shuttle engine issue [starryskies.net] and that links to a Florida Today article [floridatoday.com].
Kathy usually includes this sort of news and more in our newsletter the Starry Messenger. Here is a mailto link to subscribe to the Starry Messenger [mailto].
Alternative fuels. (Score:1)
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Re:Alternative fuels. (Score:4, Informative)
this is why (Score:4, Interesting)
because the last time(s) we launched when we really shouldnt, people died. Challenger because they didnt want to delay the launch because of some faulty O-rings and the last disaster because of the fuel tank having a nasty tendency to shed foam. I would much rather them delay the flight then die- it is a terrible shame to lose human life and very bad for the space program in general if you rush things. what we wish could be done is be able to remotely install parts like this without risking human life but we haven't quite got that down yet- until then we have to be cautious with the lives we send up there.
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Name some. Then explain why that's worth $100,000,000,000.
"Why did explorers explore the earth?"
Money, in most cases. Columbus, for example, was looking for a new trade route to India.
I hate to tell you, but there's no-one to trade with in this solar system.
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No, but there's gotta be all sorts of metals and minerals in the asteroid belt. That might be worth something.
Re:this is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't agree more- they're far too bulky and inefficient to be doing the work we ask of them- we wont become a cosmicly interesting species until we develop better spacecraft.
because sitting here on this little speck of dust we call Earth is not an evolutionarily wise choice. there is only so much you can do as a species by sitting on your home planet. we can send probes places, gather dirt/gases what have you and send it back but that doesnt really tell us much about the places the probes went to. even after several probes sent to mars we still dont know much about its geology, the possibility of underground life or if it is even feasible to expand onto the planet. by sending people there we can get a literally hands on experience of what we're dealing with. the technology we devolop to get there along with the in flight experience of long term space travel will prve very useful if we intend to expand outward through space. for that matter, we need a backup home- Earth is just too much of a gamble. there are asteroids, overpopulation, wars and a number of other things we should keep an eye on along with having a way to survive far away from such things if we intend to survive as a species. even if that isnt enough of a reason, just think of all the other times we had a chance to explore- what would have happened if we had not gone- unthinkable. humans are curious-especially now and with good reason- instead of being relatively technologically backward on our planet from a lack of drive, we should push forward, outward and beyond into space and everythign we learn from going where no one has gone before.
Re:this is why (Score:4, Insightful)
Mars isn't exactly much of a back-up plan. I mean, if we can't hack it on Earth, what are the odds we can survive in a hostile environment like Mars? That's like saying, "oh well, if I can't handle the challenges of community college, I'll go to MIT instead". Even on its worst imaginable day, the Earth is vastly more habitable than Mars or any other place in the solar system. If the Earth got hit by massive overpopulation, global warming, an all-out nuclear exchange, and then a giant asteroid, our species would still have a much better chance surviving here than on Mars, where the temperature, pressure, and gravity are all wrong, and where liquid water is in short supply. If disaster survival is the goal, then Dr. Strangelove's underground bunkers are the answer, not spaceships.
As for overpopulation and war, those problems don't have anything to do with Earth, those have to do with humanity itself. So if humans on Earth can't live sustainably or keep from killing each other off, why is there any reason to think that humans put on Mars would suddenly figure out how to do so?
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Think about that question you asked for a moment or two (more than you already have)...
What have human beings always done, from... I dunno... before we were considered "human" and lived in trees? Multiplied and expanded. We've got the multiplication thing (and division thing, but that's something else) pretty well covered. Two people become a family, which in turn begins a community, which becomes a settlement, which becomes a city, which become
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I believe settling on Mars would actually be easier than settling underneath the ocean....the reason I say so is that the further down you go in the ocean, you have increasing amounts of pressure on everything due to the amount of water above you. This is a HUGE challenge to overcome.
Whereas if we went to Mars, ok, theres a few things to work out, like; how do we get there fast enough; what kind of building materials to use when there; how to deal with the radiation; how to produce water. These are probab
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There are people who still say that some of our historic space missions were hoaxes, due to disbelief that we can actually get out there.
I agree that heading out into space might be easier than to the depths of the ocean. And getting killed in either environment, is still getting killed in either environment. However, dealing with the ocean first and overcoming the obstacles th
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There's a sort of recursiveness to the shuttle program; the ISS exists to give the shuttle a reason to exist, which in turn gives the ISS a reason to exist. The shuttle fleet needs to be retired. Not after this mission, not after the ISS is completed. NOW.
Couldn't agree more, but ...
And someone needs to ask, seriously and without fear of being attacked as cowardly, what the point actually is to sending human beings into space. We went to the moon, and found nothing particularly interesting there (ce
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Hummm. Well, lets see.
How important is all that? Priceless. In fact, had we not shared that info with humanity, other countries would be planning on how to get there, not on settlements. Even now, Russia, China, EU, India
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Re:this is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Challenger and Columbia weren't so much due to rushing things, but to rushing things for no reason and doing everything really half-assed.
If Challenger had happened back in the old days, those engineers would have stood up and said, "Hell no! I won't sign off on this, if we launch then that thing will explode!" If Columbia had happened back in the old days then as soon as the shed foam was discovered, NASA would have asked for and received pictures of the damage taken from spy satellites, then when the full extent of the damage was discovered they would have put Columbia into ultra-conservation mode, started a mad rush to prep Atlantis for a rescue mission, and started seeing if they could steal payload space on unmanned rockets to launch supplies.
Instead, the Challenger engineers shut up and sat down when told to do so, and the Columbia management refused to even ask for spy sat photos to evaluate the problem. Result: 14 dead people for no good reason.
I say, go off, rush things, take calculated risks, and kill some more astronauts! But do it because space travel is inherently dangerous, do it because they're accomplishing amazing things, don't do it because you're too dysfunctional to admit when you have a problem and you're flying a crippled, dangerously flawed design and going in circles in low-Earth orbit.
Have to disagree wrt Challenger (Score:2)
As far as Col
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If the engineers who raised the concerns had been truly been convinced this was a problem they would have stuck to their guns (or they were fat
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17th time? Thats an awful lot of attempts; what were the causes for delays?
I'd wager that "17th attempt" means the attempt on the 17th [of June] and not the 17th attempt (or "17th time" in your wording) because a couple sentences earlier in the summary it specifies the 2nd part to the shuttle window begins on June 17th. The cause for the delay (if it's even needed)? The summary says an Atlas rocket needs some launch pad time beginning on June 12th.
Re:this is why (Score:4, Funny)
This is an example of why it's important to know how to distinguish homonyms.
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The reason for this is the redesign of the fuel tank's foam. Initially, it was designed with chlorofluorocarbons in it; nasty thing if you're a fan of the ozone layer; the old foam had no issues falling off. In my opinion, this tank should have been grandfathered in past the treaty banning the use of CFCs, because it's not like there's either a lot of shuttle launches or is there a lot of CFC in it compared to the bazzillions of air conditioners in use i
another one? (Score:1, Redundant)
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Should we really be announcing the date? (Score:1)
I'm not too interested in a shuttle mission. (Score:4, Interesting)
This James Hansen fellow is the same one who had his work censored by the 24 year old Bush appointee with no college degree [nytimes.com]. Sorry but I can't trust a god-damn thing any Bush appointee says any more, and that includes Griffin. Earth's climate may not be optimal but trying to keep the one we got sure is cheaper than going out to look for the "optimal" one. What a loony! Shuttle missions? That's just fiddling while Rome burns. Space Research at NASA has been cut 25% under this guy.
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1) Griffin Not Sure Global Warming A Problem [spacedaily.com]
2) NASA Research Suggest Earth Climate Approaching Dangerous Point [terradaily.com]
Somehow I have problems reconciling these two standpoints.
Re:I'm not too interested in a shuttle mission. (Score:4, Insightful)
The shuttle is a disgrace, by now NASA should have a daily scheduled launch system, capable of hauling 40 tonnes to LEO. No fuss, drama or excitement just like a bus service. I think old fashioned non-reusable rockets were the answer.
Commercial services should have begun in the early 80s. But guess who tied up all the suppliers with one way contracts.
Instead the US displays it's crumbling empire every time they wheel out the shuttle, rather like Ford and the Edsel. China, India & Pakistan are going be getting the job done while the US decides who to invade next.
The only good thing in the last 20 years was the X-Prize, pitiful.
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Re:I'm not too interested in a shuttle mission. (Score:4, Informative)
Gov. hind sight is like so many 20/20. They will continue to make mistakes. In addition, so will other gov. China has blown a few rockets. In addition, they have developed very little (though I love their concrete tower; great idea). They have bought or stolen almost all of their program. Brazil had a MASSIVE failure. Pakistan has not launched anything (yet). At this time, they have missiles. India is moving ahead slowly. So that leaves EU, Russia, and America as the big space launchers. EU has the ariane V, which is actually a decent rocket. But it has fairly high launch costs on a
While the X-Prize helped get citizen focus, the reality is that bigelow and spacex would have happened regardless of the x-prize. NASA made this possible. How? By doing the bulk of the research that BOTH companies currently use. They are simply applying a low cost approach to this. But the heavy lifting was done by Germany, USSR/Russia, and American Research dollars. If they had to pay for even a fraction of it, they would not be looking at doing these.
Finally, you speak of non-reuseable rockets. Yet, the lowest costs space access appears to be the falcons (which is on track to have lower launch costs than Russia OR china). How are they doing it? Be re-using just about everything. On the falconI, the cheap 2'nd stage and payload will not return. On the falcon 9, but stages will return AND be re-used. Most of the dragon will be re-used. Musk has made a HUGE point of showing that it is re-usablilty of nearly everything that is half of lowering his costs. The other half of lowering his costs is the russian way; Develop minimal amount of hardware and re-use it over and over. He has developed 2 engines. And one design is used up to 27 engines for the falcon 9 heavy. Smart on his part (assuming that it works).
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There are some pretty serious technical challenges to conquer to make the X-33 approach work. I would rather have seen t
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Going back to Nixon's bad call, and now the Ares fiasco - this technology delivers a critical jobs-preservation effort to the industry that grew around first, Apollo, then the Shuttle (which very much contributes to the high cost of Shuttle missions). At least in part - it's about retooling our nation's Launch Vehicle Manufacturing Infrastructure. Neither Lockheed, nor Boeing, can sustain EELV (Atlas and Delta) manufacturing at a rate that could fill in for the de
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I don't see why this works you up so. If global warming is a genuine threat, then we will acquire evidence of this. Sure, there will be political forces that attempt to stifle the research, but note that as in the case you mention, they fail. In the meantime, it would be irresponsible to exaggerate the threat of global warming and warn vaguely of "tipping points" that may or may not be there. But there is a good reason to think that a higher CO2 concentration is more optimal since one will have to trade off
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Griffin's statement is basically that he doesn't think "battling climate change" (whatever the hell that means...don't even pretend Al Gore has any idea) is a do-or-die committment, the same as the 95% of the rest of America whom continue life more-or-less as normal. Some journalist asked his personal opinion on it and he gave it. It was not a policy statement. In fact, even as an o
good place to watch the launch (Score:1)
Summary (Score:2)
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A small summary of the planned mission:
The mission will deliver to the International Space Station (ISS) the second starboard truss segment (the S3/S4 Truss [wikipedia.org]) and its associated energy systems, including a set of solar arrays [wikipedia.org]. During the course of the mission the crew will install the new truss segment, retract one set of solar arrays, and unfold the new set on the starboard side of the station. STS-117 will also bring Expedition 15 crewmember Clayton Anderson to the station, and will return with ISS crewmember Sunita Williams.
For more information, see also the Wikipedia STS-117 [wikipedia.org] article.
Don't update your calendars just yet (Score:1)