Space Shuttle

[soubriquet 0]

It's hard to say. As a teenager in the sixties, I was pretty gung ho. When the shuttle first came out I was still keen. It looks like the real deal, and flies like a brick. Cool. My 8yo son has a lego model which he loves, so it crosses generations. As NASA is publicly funded, I'd guess there is public and political support. My beef is that finite resources are being spent on the vehicle instead of the science.

 

The solution I expect to emerge is to separate the crew from the cargo, and send the latter up unmanned.

[NutteyCubey 0]

I used to get excited about the shuttle when I was young. I have quite different thoughts about it now.... my major beef being the same as soubriquets above.

[scouser 4]

Are those dudes going to make it back ok then?

 

soubriquet - are you from the US?

[soubriquet 0]

From the tone of the comments from NASA, I'd say they are pretty confident of a successful return. Loss of tiles was a big issue for the early flights, and there is clearly a safety margin of allowable damage in non-critical areas.

 

Funny isn't it. IMO the shuttle design is fatally flawed and the vehicle unsafe. I'd go tomorrow if NASA offered me a seat. WooHoo.

 

I'm from near you scouser, grew up in the Midlands.

[merryJim 1]

Some shuttle factoids:

 

219

The number of orbits of Earth made by Discovery on the mission

 

5.8 million

The number of miles traveled

 

30

The number of months that NASA spent trying to fix the problem that doomed Columbia

 

2

Number of year's worth of rubbish brought back from the ISS

 

17000mph

The speed of the shuttle as it returned to Earth

 

1m

The number of $$$s NASA will spend to return the shuttle to Floride ( how they do that then??)

 

535,000

Number of gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen carried in shuttle's fuel tank.

[soubriquet 0]

Attach it to the top of a 747 and fly it home.

[yodel 0]

Like in Moonraker?

 

Lets hope no-one decides to steal it.

[soubriquet 0]

There's an article in today's Australian:

 

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16257338-38198,00.html

 

"Two and a half years after the Columbia tragedy and 500 million dollars to fix the problem that caused it were not enough to prevent foam from falling off Discovery, which recently returned from space to the relief of many.

 

When Discovery was launched on July 26, its huge external fuel tank shed pieces of insulating foam like the one that ultimately downed the Columbia, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

 

On Wednesday, NASA said that the fuel tank needs to be redesigned, scratching a planned launch of Atlantis in September.

 

"When your design stinks, Engineering 101 says admit your mistakes and go back to the drawing board," said retired NASA engineer Homer Hicham.

 

"The space shuttle is never going to be reliable no matter how much money, time and engineering careers your throw at it. Let's put the shuttle on the shelf right away and give engineers the gift of designing new ships to carry humans into space," he said.

 

Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder agrees.

 

"NASA is rolling the dice with the future of the US space program by continuing to hold unrealistic expectations for shuttle performance.

 

"If history is any guide, then we should expect that the shuttle will fly less and cost more than we think. It is unclear what would be gained by continuing to fly the shuttle rather than moving to the next phase of US space policy sooner rather than later," he said.

 

"There is going to be no room for margin of error in terms of flying again if there is not a high level of confidence that the problems we know about are solved," said Representative Bart Gordon, leading Democrat on the House Science Committee.

 

His Republican counterpart, Sherwood Boehlert, who chairs the committee, said the tipping point comes when problems take too long to fix.

 

"Then we have to rethink everything. Maybe the shuttle will be no more," he said.

 

The shuttle's last flight is actually slated for 2009. To have a replacement on line by 2011, NASA wants to launch a three-astronaut capsule, reminiscent of the Apollo program that reached the moon, but launched atop a rocket derived from the one that lifts the shuttle. Cargo would launch separately.

 

"We have ways to construct such vehicles using shuttle solid-rocket motors and external tanks and shuttle main engines," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

 

"We think the existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper. That's what I have proposed doing," he said. "

 

It gives me great pleasure to say "told you so, nyah nyah nyah nyah na"

[BagOfCrisps 24]

If I remember correctly, yodel, the blokes flying the jumbo that Moonraker was nicked off were speaking perfect Queens English. Wonder how they got there? (Unless Moonraker is not true).

[intermittent anomaly 0]

I think Moonraker may well be a work of fiction, bag.

 

Interesting posts again sobriquet. I see the shuttle has now returned after wasting another $1 on just moving its great big lumbering body across the states.

[@tokyo 14]

I think it is our duty and our destiny to explore further and further afield. And we must. Maybe not in that shuttle though.