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Underground > Laboratory >

NASA, their budget, and space program safety.

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20:46 / 26.07.05

OK, so now, over two years later, we've finally got another shuttle up.

It's set to dock at the International Space Station.

And...they spotted debris peeling off the thing at takeoff. They don't know yet if it's caused any damage... like it did the last time.

CNN: By Sunday, the mission management team will have enough information from the cameras to know whether Discovery is in safe enough condition to return to Earth, a NASA spokesman said before the debris video was released.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

01:01 / 27.07.05

Hopefully they're just being cautious- it says in the article elimination of debris is impossible.

I'm well made-up they've finally launched another one. I was getting scared the whole thing had been given up.

07:30 / 27.07.05

I need to look at the dates on these threads more often, I was halfway down Page 1 before I realised it was talking about events two years in the past.

Whew!

13:23 / 27.07.05

I'm well made-up they've finally launched another one. I was getting scared the whole thing had been given up.

So were the aerospace contractors. They were afraid in equal parts of (a) losing fat contracts and (b) actually having to come up with some new ideas.

13:48 / 27.07.05

I most say that this shuttle thing is a bit of a joke.

I was taught Space Science by a guy how worked occasionally for NASA and he used to harp on about how useless and unsafe it was. I've also heard that after each flight all of the heat-proof tiles have to be replaced which sort of makes the reusablility aspect a bit of a misnomer.

I was fairly amused to see the Bush on the news last night explaining how this was a new dawn and that 'we' will move on to colonise space and Mars. As the shuttle has cost $140bn in the last 30 years, I'd like to see the spending plans for a Mars mission.

16:12 / 27.07.05

the interesting thing is that NASA and ESA seem to be moving in opposite directions in regards to space exploration and space science. ESA largely favours robotic missions as a cheaper, more cost effective way to accomplish more science. NASA, under political pressure from the current administration is cutting funding for unmanned missions in favour of grand projects in the shape of manned missions.

All Acting Regiment

20:15 / 27.07.05

What's this new shuttle doing? Is it basically a supply drop?

22:44 / 27.07.05

I heard that Bush senior was told it would coST HIM £450 billion for a manned Mars mission, which deflected him slightly from his election claims.

Although I am hoping that the latest team make it back and they don't need to launch shuttle "Atlantis" to rescue - them. A mythical island that may have sunk is surely not the most positive choice of name for a dodgy shuttle.

23:53 / 27.07.05

NASA, under political pressure from the current administration is cutting funding for unmanned missions in favour of grand projects in the shape of manned missions.

Yeah, but theres something to be said for big, show stopping stuff that captures the imagination. A manned mission to Mars is surely what everyone is hoping to see in their lifetime.

Having said that, a bigger priority for NASA is probably replacing the space shuttle.

00:17 / 28.07.05

Well they probably will replace the shuttle, because it's no use any more and was never was as reuseable as so far claimed. But how can it be justified to the people unless it's an, at least, landing on Mars with a "view to colonise for future generations (of Americans)?

Otherwise it#s just another ship shooting off into "Space"

And it's all lies, just like most things coming from the "president" who really has no idea about these things. Unless it's popular for a while, then he'll revise space shit.

My hope and fears rest with the European space program. although when China take their role as the World's largest richest economy in the next 5/10 years then it's all another story

08:10 / 28.07.05

It's not looking good for this mission: The BBC reports that the Shuttle fleet has been grounded again in view of the foam incident during Discovery's launch - even the rescue plan using Atlantis seems to be in jeopardy... NASA are working round the clock on a solution...

If worse comes to worst the crew could be brought back on a series of Soyez rockets (at an immesurable blow to the prestige of the US space programme, so this is probably less likely than an attempt to effect a repair in space and fly the shuttle home with a reduced crew)

But I really feel for The Discovery's crew, who are currently continuing with their mission unsure how they will get home. NASA (under severe political pressure) has already taken risks with this flight and breached its own safety protocols - it begs the question, what other risks will it take with its astronaut's lives?

09:45 / 28.07.05

Just a small point, they were discussing making an exception to the safety protocols if they had another problem with the fuel tank sensors. But they didn't have any problems with them, the work they did on electrical grounding faults fixed the problem they it appears.

16:00 / 28.07.05

What's this new shuttle doing? Is it basically a supply drop?

Yeah, in essence that's what the SS fleet was built for. Thus "shuttle".

At best, a way to get supplies up to build a space station that can then be used to put other, better, more interesting things in space.

Like most construction projects, it's over budget and way past schedule.

16:47 / 28.07.05

New Scientist has more on what the current mission is, and what's up with the missing fragments of tile.

03:21 / 30.07.05

Tiles have always fallen off the shuttle. Birds have always dented it. Difference is now, they have enough cameras and sensors to notice when it happens, and the crash makes it newsworthy, so we hear about it. Same old shit, new wrapper. Wake me when we get to Mars.

Tryphena Absent

22:30 / 02.08.05

it should be a straightforward task to remove ceramic strips sticking out between Discovery's heatshield tiles.

So they've done a few space walks and it turns out that they're going to have to perform a simple repair on the shuttle in order to take it through the atmosphere again.

Tiles have always fallen off the shuttle

Lord Morque tiles have not always fallen off the shuttle. If tiles fell off the shuttle everyone on board would die every time they re-entered and the shuttle would disintegrate because an aluminium part of it would be exposed to temperatures between 370 and 1,200 degrees.

Tryphena Absent

22:31 / 02.08.05

And by the way Columbia didn't crash, it burnt up.

Tryphena Absent

01:13 / 08.08.05

If anyone's interested Discovery's touchdown time, weather permitting, has been set for 0446 EDT (0946 BST; 0846 GMT).

07:42 / 08.08.05

SNORE.

08:24 / 08.08.05

It's been delayed by a day because of bad weather...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:45 / 08.08.05

God, I hope they make it down okay. Other than the obvious tragedy for all concerned were they not to, it would pretty comprehensively spell the death of the spage programme for quite some time to come...

11:24 / 08.08.05

I echo Stoaties concerns for the crew and the mission but disagree tht it would spell the end for a manned space programme - it would have a massive impact on the US space programme and a knock-on effect on Russian and Chinese manned space programmes, but there is too much political capital and posative public interest in it for another disaster to bring the whole project to a halt.

Hopefully this is justy idyl speculation though...

Tryphena Absent

15:13 / 08.08.05

Morque why are you posting here?

I think it's unlikely that there's going to be a tragedy, they found a problem and fixed it and the sense of impending doom is really linked to the lack of awareness of a problem last time. The weather delay makes it a bit more suspenseful but if anything does go wrong they'll be a completely different reason. When you think about the amount of times this could potentially have happened to a shuttle and it didn't...

10:05 / 10.08.05

There was plenty of warning both times, but the culture of buck-passing and penny-pinching at N.A.S.A. ensured warnings were ignored. The widower of one of the victims of the last crash was quoted as saying, that as soon as they needed to save money, they'd take most of the new safety features off.
Nina, my name is Morgue, with a G. If you keep misspelling my name, I'll have to assume you're trying to bait me.

10:11 / 10.08.05

Here is an interesting article on the ongoing folly of NASA's manned space programme A Rocket To Nowhere...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:36 / 10.08.05

[ OFF-TOPIC ] Morgue, the hotlink under users names makes your's appear to be Morque, this combined with your thankful habit of disappearing for months between one set of largely irrelevent posts and the next is quite possibly the reason why Nina mis-spelt your name. The sensible solution is for you to try and contribute some substance to the threads you decide to grace with your presence so that people bother to remember both you and how your name is spelt. [ /OFF-TOPIC ]

The newspaper report I read this morning said that NASA think there is only an outside chance of the next shuttle launch in mid-September going ahead but they hope to be running by the end of the year. If they don't, where do they go from here? Although Bush's 'to the moon' policy has reportedly had a negative effect on exploration, I'm starting to think he's maybe done them a favour by forcing them to start thinking of alternatives to the shuttle, as there is no way one of those can land anywhere then take off again...

Tryphena Absent

13:45 / 10.08.05

but the culture of buck-passing and penny-pinching at N.A.S.A. ensured warnings were ignored.

Evidence of this raher than hearsay please, you'll forgive me if I don't believe your word as you seem to be unaware of the basic necessary safety structure of the shuttle. As for the culture of penny-pinching at NASA, it occurs because NASA is not allocated enough money. I'm the first person to say the technology is defunct but they can't afford to design and build a new one.

Nina, my name is Morgue, with a G. If you keep misspelling my name, I'll have to assume you're trying to bait me.

Sorry Morgue, I'm not trying to bait you, I didn't know that.

09:53 / 11.08.05

Nina: No blood, no foul. I've been shuttle-watching since I was a kid, and I'm sure tiles have been shed since the first launch, and it wasn't treated as a big deal then, that was before the new tiles were introduced, maybe things are different now. I also recall lengthy news articles (after the fact) that there had been expressions of concern over the O-ring seals that ruptured on Challenger that had been ignored, and something similar when anti-rust paint was eating away the insulating foam on the fuel tank.

(offtopica) Lady, nice to see Barb mods still follow the pre-emptive strike philosophy of conflict management- start a fight before one can break out. Don't ever change. Love ya. (ontopica)

There've been a few projects to develop a replacement vehicle for the Shuttle, the Single-Stage-To-Orbit (S.S.T.O.), the X-33, the Space Taxi, Space Cruiser, Heavy Lift Vehicle, but for various reasons nothing came of them. Looks like it's on again, with the Crew Exploration Vehicle concept. Maybe now that we've seen an actual privately-built spaceship launched, we'll see a viable alternative to the "flying brick". Pity N.A.S.A. never bought Buran when it was for sale, we had a spare lying around Darling Harbour, rotting away and covered in graffiti, for awhile.

15:53 / 11.08.05

Mmm -- I think *stuff* has fallen off during launch, but not tiles.

Although this dude (who seems like he knows) disagrees.

Any way you slice it, the thing that got broken by foam debris on the Columbia (tile/heat shielding "panels") isn't the same kind of thing that gets sloughed off in a typical launch.

This rather unpleasant Space.com story admits that maybe engineers were getting laissez faire about the potential for disaster:

A study of NASA documents and photographs by Florida Today showed that foam came off the fuel tank on at least 71 missions to date and debris of some kind battered the ships during every launch since the program began in 1981 -- despite design requirements that say the orbiter's delicate heat-shield tiles should not be hit by anything.

NASA has made minor improvements to reduce foam shedding over the years, but never solved the problem. More than 20 years of ships returning home safely despite damaged tiles, and inconsistent tracking of the problems, colored managers' decision to accept the risk over the years, continue flying and ultimately to determine Columbia was OK too.

21:26 / 11.08.05

I would like to say, somewhat off topic, that the idea that there are still sentiments like this blog entry out there pleases me immensely.

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