Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off For Space Station 133
Gwmaw writes "The space shuttle Endeavour bolted off its seaside launch pad on Monday on a voyage to install the last two main pieces of the International Space Station. The 4:14 a.m. EST (0914 GMT) blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center shattered the predawn tranquility with a deafening roar and a brilliant tower of flames that momentarily turned the dark Florida sky as bright as day." HD video of launch attached.
Extended? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that the return to the moon has been cancelled, I wonder if NASA will extend Shuttle missions beyond this year? They have already hinted they may extend the life of the ISS, but are they going to rely on the Russians for the next ten years?
Re:Extended? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Extended? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they do extend shuttle flights it will only take a few years to blow up the ones they have left....
It may be modded funny right now, but its also correct. If an orbiter is destroyed every 50 flights, and they launch ten times per year, and they've only got two available (because of the need for a ready to go rescue orbiter).
The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches. So now that the shuttles are going away, the "almost finished" station will be deorbited in 3... 2... 1...
It's kind of the spacecraft equivalent of "dig a hole and fill it back in, repeat". No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing. But you can make lots of money by building a station.
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's weird. I could swear the shuttle performed a rather significant mission [guardian.co.uk] recently that did not involve going to the space station.
I have to confess, while watching the launch this morning I didn't really care about what's practical or needed. A night launch of the shuttle is the most impressive feat of human engineering I have ever witnessed. When I was a kid working on an aircraft carrier I thought that was pretty cool, and it is to some extent, but the shuttle is in a completely different league of awesome. Lighting up the night sky is not hyperbole. I live an hour drive from Kennedy and it looks like the sun is coming up when they fire the engines. Then, when the shuttle lifts from the pad, it gets even brighter. Which my head has a difficult time taking in. I'll be sad to see it go, even if it does make sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, the shuttle went to fix the Hubble, and it was great. But remember for how long before then NASA was waffling on whether to allow this mission, or cancel it because it's too dangerous to go someplace where you can't bail out to the space station? Even though this kind of missions are exactly what the Shuttle was designed to do?
I think it's pretty clear that even if the Shuttle stayed in service, it would only be going to the ISS from now on. Which would be as much a shame as them canceling it, if not
Re: (Score:2)
That's because you never saw a Saturn V launch at night.
rj
Re: (Score:2)
I don't doubt that this is true.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there was only one night launch of a Saturn V -- Apollo 17. And yes, it was impressive as hell.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw all the shuttle launches before the Challenger tragedy (we moved back to Illinois prior to that), and indeed they were spectacular. I was surprised that I could see the night launch even when visiting my mom's house in Tampa.
However, the most spectacular technological sight I've seen is an SR-71 taking off. It may be that I was a lot closer; the closest I ever was to a shuttle launch was maybe five or so miles.
The shuttle talkes off gracefully, gaining speed as it rises. The SR-71, otoh, builds speed
Re: (Score:2)
I thought that Hubble was totally cancelled - there won't be any more repairs or enhancements made. So the parent is correct that 'due to budget crunches' the only place a shuttle would go is the ISS and the only reason the ISS is there is to dock a shuttle.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In theory, but actually, if Hubble had been launched the same way KH satellites are, once the optical flaw was found Congress would have never budgeted the money to NASA to build one that worked. So we'd be stuck with the joke that Hubble couldn't see and no one would have floated another space telescope.
Hubble isn't an excuse for the Shuttle, the Shuttle was an excuse to upgrade the only astronomy space telescope.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Now that the return to the moon has been cancelled, I wonder if NASA will extend Shuttle missions beyond this year?
Extremely unlikely; Congress zeroed out the money to do that, and so the parts simply aren't in the pipeline and the facilities to prepare for flights beyond 2010 have shut down. If they wanted to keep the shuttle flying, they needed to have kept that option open (with funding) several years ago.
If they do extend shuttle flights it will only take a few years to blow up the ones they have left....
It may be modded funny right now, but its also correct. If an orbiter is destroyed every 50 flights, and they launch ten times per year
I don't think any of these assumptions are correct. It was about a hundred flights between the first shuttle loss and the second, so it's hard to justify an estimated loss rate much higher than about one in a hund
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches. So now that the shuttles are going away, the "almost finished" station will be deorbited in 3... 2... 1...
It's kind of the spacecraft equivalent of "dig a hole and fill it back in, repeat". No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing. But you can make lots of money by building a station.
Now that the station on longer has to be in a shuttle-accessible orbit, could we not fit it with a nifty little ion engine and slowly boost it to a higher altitude?
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. Much higher and the other vehicles (Soyuz, ATV, etc...) won't be able to reach it either. On top of that, while under thrust the micro gee environment aboard the station will ruined, ruining practically every experiment onboard.
Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISS uses thrust to adjust it's orbit already. It won't 'ruin' anything. The Zvezda module already has two main engines used for orbital adjustments.
The station loses speed continuously due to atmospheric drag (yes there is still a tenuous atmosphere up there). Using thrusters is part of it's existence.
Read and learn Grasshopper. (Score:5, Informative)
Those thrusters operate for short periods of time at great intervals. Considerable effort is expended to set up the schedule such that usage of those thrusters, docking and undocking visiting ships, station attitude changes and other such events occur in clusters with lengthy intervals between them in order to provide the maximum time of 'uncontaminated' micro gee. (There's even a vibration isolation system on some experimental racks to minimize disturbance in between those events for experiments that require an even higher level of micro gee.)
So yes, continuous usage of an ion thruster will ruin the micro gee environment, and yes this will be a great disruption to experiments onboard.
Re: (Score:2)
Only nobody said anything about continuous thrust, just using thrust to move it to a higher orbit.
Not quite correct, read and learn Grasshopper. (Score:4, Informative)
The original poster [slashdot.org] specified an ion engine, which must operate continuously or nearly so in order to have any significant effect on the station's orbit.
Now, you could use normal thrusters (preferably from an external source to conserve Zvezda's fuel) to raise the orbit, but you cannot raise it significantly without affecting the ability of other servicing craft (Soyuz, Progress, ATV, HTV, Dragon) to utilize their full design capacity. (The higher the orbit, the lower the delivery capacity.) You can't raise it high enough to significantly reduce atmospheric drag without getting into the region where those craft, at best, no longer have a useful cargo capacity or may not be able to reach it at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While certainly you could operate an ion thruster to 'balance' atmospheric drag (AIUI) that won't raise it to a higher altitude as specified by the OP. However, it consumes a great deal of power (and the ISS doesn't have all that great an excess over requirements). It would also potentially contaminate the environment around the ISS and reduce the usefulness of the experiments requiring exposure to space. (Not that evaluating the effects of an ion engine local contamination wouldn't be useful mind you.)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, will you be paying by debit card or bank transfer?
Re: (Score:2)
Just take all the money I'm promised by the several Nigerian bankers and kings that have been offering me cash over the past month, There's at lease 2.2 billion right there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are a couple good reasons to place it at the altitude it is. One is the higher it is the less cargo you can ferry there (you trade height for fuel mass). Another is space junk. If it is in a height that needs regular boosts to stay there, it also means junk that happens to be in that altitude will fall down to Earth, rendering that space relatively junk free. The station would need more bulletproofing if it were to go higher.
Re: (Score:2)
The Artist formerly known as the USSR will never allow it. Cripes they kept Mir in orbit with duct tape and chewing gum for 5 years after expected life, They could keep ISS up there operational well into 2020.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, that's 100% backwards. The original purpose of the Shuttle was to supply and support a space station performing research in space. (The orbital equivalent of an Antarctic research station or something like Sealab [wikipedia.org].) Which is why it's called a shuttle [thefreedictionary.com] in the fir
Re: (Score:2)
So?
Some soldiers never return... why so afraid to kill a few astronauts in the name of science?
Keep sending the shuttles up until they don't return. Those rovers on Mars kept running for 6 years rather than 90 days - the remaining shuttles might surprise us.
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Informative)
Shuttle supply chain is winding now for quite some time, I wouldn't be very surprised if continuing it would be end up similarly costly to pushing Constellation and both Ares rockets forward...but with only three orbiters and not much to do with them.
Shuttle is past its time; it wasn't really used as intented (landing quickly after launch to escape shutdown attempt), bringing down satellites was quickly abandoned, new space telescopes are beyond its abilities anyway, and we can launch space station modules performing rendezvous by themselves. We just need it this last few times to launch modules...designed to be launched by Shuttle.
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, without the new Constellation Program, we're looking at what, fifteen years before the US has manned spaceflight capability again? Even if NASA spends time doing research for Mars, a lot of practical and institutional knowledge is going to be lost during this period. There was already going to be five years of depending on the Russians to get to the ISS, now if this is extended, we could be looking at ten years or more. I hate to say it, but this really looks like the death of US space exploration, not a refocusing as the Obama administration is trying to spin it.
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/future-of-space-exploration.html [watchinghistory.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Extended? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the number of "Space Camps" is increasing...
The biggest camp is the "Every decision NASA makes is wrong"
- The Shuttle is the biggest boondoggle ever, we never should have dropped the Apollo-era Big Dumb Booster.
- Dropping the Shuttle is the dumbest idea ever, we've set our technology back 40 years.
- Etc, with every decision NASA makes
Then we have the closely related camp, "Everything the government does is wrong, and the private sector can do it better and cheaper."
Now that we're about to test that theorem, at least with LEO access, a new camp has emerged, saying that by dropping LEO access, NASA has abandoned human space travel for the US. Interestingly enough, it has taken Aries from "can't possibly work" to "can't do without it" status.
This of course is closely related to the "Obama (and Democrats, in general) is ALWAYS wrong" and "Bush (and Republicans, in general) is ALWAYS wrong" camps.
I prefer to belong to none of the above camps. Through my career I've noticed in general that killed projects tend to develop a sunny afterglow, problems forgotten. Projects that are killed before ever being tested in the real world get a particularly sunny afterglow.
Re: (Score:2)
More seriously, decision making for both such a large group of people and the variety of possible goals is going to be extremely difficult. A lot of private efforts have better organization simply because goals are decided at the start. People who don't want the goal don't join the group. With a country, everyone belongs for other reasons, so cons
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the "NASA robot 'helps' boy by launching him into space" Space Camp! Not as popular as it used to be, but I'm sticking with it.
But seriously. I'm not convinced that the private sector will succeed, but I do think taking the chance is a better idea than continuing with the Shuttle or Constellation. I'm somewhat heartened by the fact that pretty much all of the rocket engineering was already being done by private companies. So as far as the process of developing launch vehicles go, the shift
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest camp is the "Every decision NASA makes is wrong"
- The Shuttle is the biggest boondoggle ever, we never should have dropped the Apollo-era Big Dumb Booster.
- Dropping the Shuttle is the dumbest idea ever, we've set our technology back 40 years.
- Etc, with every decision NASA makes
Then we have the closely related camp, "Everything the government does is wrong, and the private sector can do it better and cheaper."
Yes, the Shuttle was a monumentally stupid idea. The space capsule method of Apollo a
Re: (Score:1)
To my way of thinking the biggest issue is that we don't give NASA a goal and then get out of the way.
During the early days of the space program, they had designs, and then they made them work. If a design was bad, such as the first Apollo, they went back and made it work. The made their goals. It was obviously a political move, but they were allowed to do their thing.
The "Git 'er done" is not always the perfect solution, witness the shuttle
Re: (Score:2)
I think some of the "good old days" of NASA were the nostalgia of imperfect memory. Even were I to grant your point during Apollo, that era didn't last much beyond Apollo 11 - the program was mostly on inertia by that point. Apollo 13 was a fantastic triumph yanked from the jaws of failure, and I'm really glad that Apollo 17 made it, so we could actually watch lift-off from another world. But 18-20 were all canceled, and Skylab/ASTP basically used the spare parts.
The way I heard it, Nixon really disliked
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That assumes the only goal is science.
Re: (Score:2)
Serenity is sitting stuck on Mars. This isn't hypothetical, it's happening _now_. If we had humans there, someone could literally walk over and pull it out of the sand so it could be on its way.
Tell me again what the insult to science is?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, I love Firefly too, but get the name right!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a bit of an absurd statement. Even if absolutely every aspect of the Area I program went according to plan it wouldn't see a manned mission until 2016. Even then it will only do a handful of launches per year (IIRC only two Orion missions are scheduled per year once they begin) with each costing about a billion dollars. Since the Ares I can barely launch the Orion with a crew on board the only thing it can do is send crews to the ISS. Until the Ares V is finished and actually working the Ares I is a
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on what you define as "US manned spaceflight". If you mean NASA owned and operated spacecraft, the answer is likely "never". If you mean indigenous US crewed launch owned and operated by one or several commercial providers, the answer is "in a few years but no later than 2015". Bolden and Obama are pushing to make space accesss common and much cheaper by fostering private providers. After 40 years of kicking and screaming, NASA is being forced to adopt the air-mail model of space development.
Re: (Score:2)
People have been promising private spaceflight for decades. I admit, it's getting closer, but the level of experience and capability is still very limited. I hope you're right and we have a new renaissance in space travel, but I'm very skeptical. But, I guess we just have to wait and see.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So, without the new Constellation Program, we're looking at what, fifteen years before the US has manned spaceflight capability again?
Incorrect. With the Constellation program, the estimated time to completion was 7-9 years. With the new commercial LEO crew access program, with Boeing, SpaceX, ULA, and Sierra Nevada, the time to develop manned spaceflight capability ranges from 3-5 years, depending on the company, after which we'll have multiple redundant ways to get to orbit instead of just one. Their time and cost estimates are much lower because they're using rockets which already exist (and in the case of Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and UL
Re: (Score:2)
Right, but these are guys that have never delivered before. And there have been many delays. Didn't SpaceX *promise* they would have humans orbit by several years ago? Now, I don't mean to lay blame, this is hard stuff, and it takes a lot of money. But you run into the same problem as with many other tech companies. Yet get vapourware that often never shows up.
Now, if *Apple* was into space exploration, they would remain completely silent, then one day they would actually launch Steve Jobs into space,
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I take that back. Apple would never be happy just getting to orbit. Steve Jobs would be giving his presentation from the moon, if not Mars. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Right, but these are guys that have never delivered before.
Huh? Boeing's been operating the Delta rocket family [wikipedia.org] since 1960, with over 300 orbital rockets launched. The United Launch Alliance has just announced that they've launched 36 consecutive successful missions in 36 months [spacefellowship.com]. Never delivered before, you say?
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, obviously I meant delivering on *manned* spaceflight. Of course private companies have been providing launch services for decades.
two pre-order for Shuttle parts (Score:3, Interesting)
Boom rumble rumble rumble (Score:1, Interesting)
First?
Best part was the sound... oh the glorious rumble.
My dog loved it too.
Paul's Steakhouse Rocks the block and Arby's sucks... you know why!
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why someone marked this as Off Topic. Boom Rumble Rumble Rumble is true to the sound the the Shuttle on lift off. It's a great sound that just bowls one over.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why someone marked this as Off Topic
I would guess it was the "Paul's Steakhouse Rocks the block and Arby's sucks... you know why!"
He was obvioudly going for "funny", and posted AC because he knows how dangerous to your karma trying to be funny can be.
Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of it as a wake instead (Score:3, Insightful)
Try thinking of it as a wake for the US manned spaceflight program.
It saddens me to see the US lose it's manned spaceflight capability.
You sir have just won /. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
It is perfectly possible to be censored on one topic while not on another. It happens all the time. For example the Bettendorf Iowa school newspaper (The Growl) was recently censored because of a supposed disclosure of identifying information in an article about jocks getting preferential academic leniency. The students are complaining. But by your logic, we should never have heard about the censoring because they were censored. The paper was censored, sure, but now they've got the Streisand effect to deal
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
And we should not continue farm subsidies, wars in obscure places for no strategic interest or gain, enormous financial support for incompetent bankers, stock traders, real estate mavens and a host of other dumb things the government does.
NASA is a really cheap date when you look at the totality of the US budget.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just learning cool things about space, other planets/moons, and how to keep people alive in space (though those are all very worthy goals). NASA has pumped billions of dollars back into the economy due to spin-off technologies. I've seen estimates between 7 and 40: for every dollar the US spent on NASA back in the Apollo days, it gave back 7 to 40 dollars in economic benefits, mainly from advanced technologies. Miniaturized surface-mount circuit board technology, for instance, was invented for t
Re: (Score:2)
wars in obscure places for no strategic interest or gain
Exactly! We should switch to wars in highly visible locations prosecuted for pure strategic self-interest and naked greed.
Re: (Score:2)
You're ready to deliver a fully competent human-level AI to NASA then right? Otherwise you need to read up on all the delays and similar problems with Spirit and Opportunity before you talk about robots being the clearly superior advantage. Until the robot can take some brains with it, it is vastly inferior to a human. Sure, Spirit and Opportunity have done a fantastic job. But stop and ask when they measure movement in a few meters per day, max, how much more could have been done if there was an iss-alike
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And how would YOU suggest we proceed? Last I checked for a mission to Mars we are talking about a craft the size of the Empire State building to get a crew there and back
How about a vehicle smaller than the Empire State building? Another Slashdot problem... boo dah dah boo dah dah boo dah BOOM ... fixed.
We humans are simply fragile creatures that need a whole lot of resources to survive, and when you are talking the vast distances of space every pound counts.
Spend some of that health care money on making HARD human bodies! Another Slashdot problem... boo dah dah... etc
Seriously, it's a hard problem, but you're not adding anything. Even with zero recycling of resources, humans don't consume that much, perhaps 5-10 kg of stuff a day. For a three year trip that's up to 12 metric tons of stuff per person. Sounds like a lot, but i
Re: (Score:2)
While we're at it, we should close McMurdo Station [wikipedia.org], Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station [wikipedia.org], and cancel the plans to reopen the Byrd Station [wikipedia.org]. It is a colossal waste of money to send us weak-ass little humans, who need protection for our weak bodies, plus food, water, a place to go to the toilet, etc., instead of robots. The robots are cheaper, take up less resources, can stay longer and thus get more work done, just better all around.
In case you're missing it, I'm being sarcastic.
I don't necessarily disagree wi
Re: (Score:2)
Our grandkids aren't paying shit off. The US will default.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know, sucks doesn't it. I'm not advocating it by any means, but it's a lot more plausible than actually paying everything back.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last." - JFK. Solving the national debt issue may be important, but so is securing the future. In any case, if you were serious about ending debt then you should be looking at the war expenses first anyway - it is several orders of magnitude higher than anything else you are spending money on.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather my tax dollars go into the space program then all this other shit:
http://foofus.com/amuse/public/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg [foofus.com]
Made in Italy (Score:1)
It's always very nice when made in Italy stuff reaches (literally) the top of the world.
It's not very nice that I have to learn it reading here (and it's not a /. fault this time).
No one in Italy (television, newspapers and so on) gave a decent review of this important achievement.
Information system in Italy is TFU.
Help us! We need CowboyNeal at government!
Re: (Score:2)
No one in Italy (television, newspapers and so on) gave a decent review of this important achievement.
Probably because we launched "San Marco 1" for you guys way back in '64, and your "sky italia" service rents space on "Hot Bird 8" launched by the french. I have no idea why wikipedia claims sky italia runs on HB7A which is no longer at 13 deg E but moved to 9 deg E when they launched HB9, but thats wikipedia for you. Maybe they used to use HB7A before they replaced it with HB8. My point is its kind of 'been there done that'
Last Night Launch (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a glorious morning when my alarm beeped at 4:10am. I awoke, turned on the TV to the pre-set NASA channel, checked to make sure the launch was still 'a Go'. I then donned a bathrobe over my birthday suit, watched the last 10 seconds on TV until I heard "We have Liftoff" and stepped out on my back porch. I looked to the east and the tree line was shadowed in a orange glow that was beautiful during the pre-dawn hours. The sky was clear and the air was crisp and the sight of the flames was facinating even at 50 miles away. I watched at the shuttle began to head in a northward direction. It was around 6.5 minutes later that the sound waves rumbled through the still night air. It was more of a low rumble, but it was distinctly felt and heard. At aroun 7.5 mintues, between my screen porch, the trajectory and my poor vision I could no longer see the bright spec of light that was the shuttle that was now a couple hundred miles away. I stepped back inside watched NASA TV until about the 9.5 minute mark during the last separation, and knew our astronauts doing ok. I hung up the robe, climbed back into bed, turned off the TV and went back to sleep.
What a beautiful way to wake up in the pre-dawn hours. And to think, /sniffle that was the last manned night launch we'll see for quite some time. Oh how I wish everyon could have seen this first hand.
Re: (Score:3)
I had to leave the house with about 7 minutes to go. They've added some new houses to our neighborhood and I like to walk past them to get a better view. When the sky to the east lights up, I think that is my favorite part. Though I do enjoy when the boosters separate as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry I didn't have a camera. And to be honest, until you can feel the real-life effects, the footage would have seemed a bit hollow by comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with realsilly. L4t3r4lu5: you have to watch a launch first hand.
Actually, if more people did, manned space flight would be much more supported.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry about the mis-spellings, I re-read what I wrote and my poor typing made me kick myself. Hopefully, it doesn't diminish the beauty that I tried to convey.
Re: (Score:2)
not in the least.
I saw it from New Jersey! (Score:3, Interesting)
I was watching on NasaTV and knew when to look. I didn't really expect much, if anything.
It was Awesome! At least as bright as Jupiter, and it rocketed (heehee) right past an airplane that was on the same line of sight. I saw from about six minutes after launch to cutoff, apparently at twice the height of the houses around mine.
Awesome - I saw a real spaceship launch. I DO believe!
Decommission the shuttles in space? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just had a random thought, would it be useful to just decommission shuttles in space, meaning just leave them up there, possibly integrate them into the ISS?
Re:Decommission the shuttles in space? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Decommission the shuttles in space? (Score:4, Funny)
Now the ISS will have shuttles up on blocks in the yard.... a mangy pitbull in a space suit tethered by the front porch..
Rednecks in spaaaaace...... Nope the other countries wont put up with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Fallen Angels? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Decommission the shuttles in space? (Score:5, Informative)
Not in the slightest. There's two big hurdles using the Shuttles as long term space stations or hooking them up to the ISS. The first is the electrical power systems of the Shuttles. To provide power while in space the Shuttle uses hydrogen fuel cells where the ISS uses solar panels. While the fuel cells provide a lot of power to the Shuttle they do have a finite fuel supply. The life support system aboard the Shuttle is also a short duration design using chemical CO2 scrubbers. At best a Shuttle station would need to be refueled and resupplied every few weeks. Besides power and life support the Shuttle doesn't really carry its own scientific payload. If you were going to leave one in orbit you would need to send it up with a SpaceLab [wikipedia.org] module or something to be able to do anything useful.
Hooking a Shuttle up to the ISS for long periods would also not be very useful since without the weekly resupply of hydrogen and oxygen the Shuttle would be a power and life support vampire for the ISS. It would also affect the ISS' atmospheric drag such that it would require more reboosts than it already does. These could not be performed by the Shuttle because it carries a limited fuel for its OMS/RCS system which can't be refueled in orbit. A Shuttle plugged into the ISS for a long period of time would end up being a dead weight with no real scientific utility of its own.
The Shuttles were designed for relatively short term missions and for resupply and refurbishment on the ground. Leaving them parked in orbit is a nice thought but ultimately impractical.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, those would not really be problems if the shuttle were just shut down and kept around for whenever it might prove to be useful. Or if it were adapted (by stuffing it full of solar panels for example) in order to solve those problems before becoming a part of the ISS. But that's not done either for the one and only real reason: in order to stay in orbit, the ISS needs a boost every now and then. That takes a tremendous amount of energy and since the Shuttle is really heavy because it has to withstand t
Re: (Score:2)
Any way they could send one into a high orbit as a floating museum? Just in case we destroy ourselves, we'd at least leave something behind in good shape (besides the lunar lander) that visiting alien archaeologists could investigate.
This would probably take too much fuel though.
Re: (Score:2)
They can practice HALO jumping [wikipedia.org].
I'm a rocket scientist, but... (Score:2)
Re:I'm a rocket scientist, but... (Score:4, Funny)
There is of course a better solution: they should give up voice altogether and start using IRC.
Re:I'm a rocket scientist, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Many people talking at the same time can be confusing, they probably can talk at the same time but don't to keep the confusion to a minimum.
I've taken a tours of both Kennedy's Control Room and Houston's Mission Control. There are several voice loops that NASA uses and they can be individually enabled or disabled at a headset. There are only a couple of people of people listening to more than a few loops at any one time during launch. The majority of the staff is focused on the particular system or sub-system assigned to them, and therefore only listening to the applicable voice loop(s).
There is of course a better solution: they should give up voice altogether and start using IRC.
I almost literally cut my teeth on MSDOS 2.0 (Dad gave me his old Eagle 81 computer when I was 5), so I have no fear of scrolling text. However, I don't think that would be net gain for NASA to drop the voice loops in favor of IRC. Remember that most of the people working in the control rooms are monitoring more than one screen already. The switch to IRC would require split their visual focus to yet another batch of visual information. Also, most people can listen to someone talk while watching something simultaneously without much difficulty because audio and visual information are processed in different parts of the brain. Thus using an audio feed is complementary rather than competing sensory input.
The first shuttle launch......today (Score:1)
I actually saw the shuttle in the morning sky... (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally amazing.
I love the Shuttle (Score:1)
NASA TV (Score:3, Interesting)
As usual the NASA TV channel (well, the stream since that's all I can get from it here in Australia) provided me with the last three days and will provide me in the coming days with untouched unhyped `just the facts' 24x7 reality TV. Just the way I love it :-)
Did not know there was even a shuttle launch today (Score:1)
I still recall fondly the days when all (3!) TV stations would cut to live shuttle takeoff coverage.
The wondrous has become the routine.
godspeed (Score:2)