Well, that was short-lived. The shuttle program is grounded once again due to problems with the foam insulation. Fortunately Discovery's crew is not in harms way -- it seems -- but future crews could be with things the way they still are.
holy crap cosmoNut i just got your nickname. damn. too much partying. i used to be smart. or at least i used to think i was smart. waitaminute, maybe i'm smarter now because...
AH NEVERMIND.
okay, well this is bewildering and dissapointing news, but overall i think this is good.
FUCK THE SHUTTLE. game over. time to put their 4 (??) remaining orbiters in the museum.
I just wish godspeed and all the best to the crew, hope they return safely to earth. Man will one day walk among the stars, but for now, I think the message is we need a bit of housekeeping to do first :=
The agency spent about $1.5 billion on modifications after the loss of Columbia, with most of the work focused on the fuel tank. Officials said they were confident that the tank was safe to fly.
''You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong,'' Parsons said. ``We're telling you right now, it should not have come off. It did come off. We have to do something about that.''
this is where i be a smartass dick and say, I wonder what Burt Rutan would have done with the $1.5 billion?
i sincerely hope our brave astronauts make it back to earth safely. they're just poor bloody lab rats working for government scale salary \
Isnt that the truth, folks should check out the tSpace home page to see some of their next idea's. As it was said for the 1.5 billion they pumped into shuttle Rhutan would have us a vehicle that could go to the moon and back. This is the U.S. philosophy. Why soak the govt for millions when they can soak the tax payers for billions? How hard can it be to pop a capsule on a rocket? they were doing it in the 60s yet its going to take Nasa and its beauracratic paper makers until the year 2014 to build a rocket ?? we need a replacement for NASA and its papermaking ways with someone who builds real rockets and not more paper. Bring on tSpace and lets stop the low orbits no science loops and lets start exploring. They have been studying folks in space now for 30 years its time to move on with the technology.
. . .This is the U.S. philosophy. Why soak the govt for millions when they can soak the tax payers for billions? . . .
The biggest problem with NASA is that the engineers designing stuff aren't great engineers, there are a lot of them, and the giant corporations they work for aren't really interested in progress.
There are several around the corner from my office. . . Rockwell, Harris, Northrop Grumman. . . I haven't been impressed by their personnel or their "TPS-heavy" workflow.
The biggest problem with NASA is that the engineers designing stuff aren't great engineers, there are a lot of them, and the giant corporations they work for aren't really interested in progress.
There are several around the corner from my office. . . Rockwell, Harris, Northrop Grumman. . . I haven't been impressed by their personnel or their "TPS-heavy" workflow.
Big Business combined with Govt have taken innovation out of the picture. Shuttle should have been replaced as soon as they found out it was costing 100 times what it was suppose to. When companies like Rockwell or Northrop or Boeing look at space projects they see $$$. When someone like Rhutan looks at space projects he sees Space Exploration.
"They should stop the program. Its excessive spending. I mean, strapping on a 100.000 dollar camera on the fuel tank that isn´t reused"
"The foam problem, I have a solution. Just use double stick dutch tape"
idiotic comments, indeed.
however, i did realise during watching the live launch broadcast that it was a bit weird. a lot of the shuttle program was 'newer safety measures', and what i believe to be an excessive (100+) amount of cameras just to monitor the launch.
including this dude in this bigass vehicle thing with double scopes for watching the launch, that looked like it came out of a japanese manga. it was pretty slick, but you can bet your ass one of those TPS-heavy military-industrial-aerospace contractors fucked NASA good to build one (or more!) of those...
i have long been a fan of NASA, in fact one of the astronauts on this mission (Andy Thomas) did his first degree at my alma mater, University of Queensland Australia......
but, in recent years, i dunno, something ain't jiving... i would strongly encourage all american taxpayers (I WAS one during 2000 and 2001 and 2002 years) to put an end to this rubbish. honestly. something is not right.
Days later we learn that crap is still falling off, stuff has come out of shuttle seams, tiles with slight damage,,,,,,,Its a big old fashion space tug that still can only make low orbit. Nasa needs to get out of building rockets and let tSpace do it better,cheaper and safer. Lets just face it the American Tax Payer was screwed,is getting screwed and will continue to get screwed with this Shuttle.
Days later we learn that crap is still falling off, stuff has come out of shuttle seams, tiles with slight damage,,,,,,,Its a big old fashion space tug that still can only make low orbit. Nasa needs to get out of building rockets and let tSpace do it better,cheaper and safer. Lets just face it the American Tax Payer was screwed,is getting screwed and will continue to get screwed with this Shuttle.
damn dude... that sucks huh... it just keeps getting better
so the point of this mission was to test if the shuttle is safe, which it is not, and to test safety repair procedures, which they may not be able to do because they may not be able to 'risk' a spacewalk, and also the purpose of this mission was to be able to document the launch, which shows it's all back to the drawing board
WTF
i think this particular journalist was adding salt to the wound
"August 1, 2005
BY MARTIN MERZER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Two scraps of insulation dangling from shuttle Discovery's fuselage could pose a danger to the crew and might have to be removed or poked back into place during a spacewalk, mission managers said Sunday....."
if/when aliens invade we are going to be royally FUCKED.
No shit the best we can do is jets\ It doesnt give me much confidence looking at Govt's Space Program,,,,yeah its a little better then most but using a 25 year old killing machine that still doesnt work,,,,,,,after countless billions and retrys??? We need new thinking and it aint going to come out of Pork Barrel Politicians mixed with Space. Why is it so hard for NASA? Its a bloated agency ran by programs created by your favorite Congressman in his home state. Who cares if it flys? This has to be removed with the "IDEA" of exploring SPACE.
BTW, Virgin Galactic is/was considering building a SPACEPORT in my home country of Malaysistan... (near the equator, so that is good stuff for launches and all that) Malaysistan is also near Singapore, has a bigass airport (KL International) so if the local government got wise space tourism could be big.
Is it just me or a commerical "Spaceport" sounds cool. Because in RTS games whenever you got one of those you had some killer tech and you felt proud that you got that far in the game to really start to kick some ass. Ref: Dune2, for example.
Anyway, here is an interesting article on our 5-year WTF to do with the bloody shuttle? Current mission notwithstanding, something that has a almost 2% failure rate
Basically it's the bloody international space station that's the pain in the ass now for NASA. and sounds like they can't hack/mod Russian tech to get the parts up there to finish it...
Get this part of the article though... anybody feel like spending up to 1/3 of a trillion govt. dollars?
"...NASA's formal plan to return astronauts to the moon and then on to Mars will be unveiled in a few weeks. One version, leaked to the Orlando Sentinel, shows the space agency spending more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. It would use modified shuttle rocket boosters with small capsules attached for the crew, which would hook up with unmanned ships riding larger rockets on the way to the moon....."
"
Space shuttle future creates quandary for NASA
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Owners of older cars wrestle with this choice: Spend more money on repairs and nurse their beloved old vehicles along for a few more years, or swallow hard and buy something new - and better.
NASA is near that point with the space shuttle.
Construction started on NASA's three remaining shuttles in 1979, 1980 and 1982. The basic shuttle design dates back to 1969, making it older than four astronauts who hope to ride aboard.
Now with Discovery's latest flight, not only has the nation's space agency found that it hasn't completely solved the shedding-foam problem that doomed Columbia two years ago, but it's also got some impromptu repairs to do in space. Wednesday an astronaut will take an emergency spacewalk to try to remove or clip some cloth filler that's jutting between two tiles on the ship's belly, lest it catch fire on re-entry and endanger the flight.
That's got some people - including a former astronaut - wondering if the shuttle should be put out to cosmic pasture sooner than NASA's planned 2010 retirement. Then, they say, the nation can move ahead on President Bush's ambitious agenda to fly astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and on to Mars in a new spaceship.
"If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't fly the shuttle again," said astronomer and former astronaut George "Pinky" Nelson, who flew on Discovery after the Challenger accident. "They're 10 years behind already. We're going to have to bite the bullet ... and somehow keep the agency viable."
But that's not so easy.
One big complication, filled with international intrigue and a price tag of many billions of dollars, especially gums up decision-making: the international space station. The United States has committed to complete construction of the half-built orbital complex, which is a partnership of 16 countries. Japan and the European Space Agency have built and paid for new station additions that are ready or near ready to launch.
Only the shuttle can take them up.
NASA already has spent $21.4 billion on space-station hardware, not including nearly a billion dollars for each of the 16 shuttle launches flown so far to build the seven-year-old complex. NASA has scheduled 24 more shuttle launches to complete the station's construction. The bulk of the European Space Agency's multibillion-dollar station components are supposed to start launching next year.
"We need it (the shuttle) for a few more years," said former NASA Administrator James Beggs. "We have commitments to our foreign partners to finish up what we started."
That's what's keeping the shuttle alive, said American University professor Howard McCurdy, who has written several books on NASA. "Without the space station, we'd roll those things into the Dulles annex (of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum) right away."
John Logsdon, space policy director at George Washington University and a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said the space station is "a perfectly fine half-built facility. Do you just walk away from it?"
Then there's another problem. Building the shuttle's replacement is at least five years away.
Deciding what to do with the shuttle is "clearly one of the existential crises of the agency," Logsdon said. "Because it (NASA) has this exciting future, but it can't get to it without solving this issue."
To be sure, the shuttle has its defenders.
The shuttle "is probably the greatest spaceship that man has ever made," said NASA's legendary former manned spaceflight chief Chris Kraft, who oversaw the shuttle design as well as the Apollo lunar missions. "The space shuttle has taken a bad rap."
NASA plans to fly its three shuttles until the space station is finished, then retire them in 2010. That year or the next, NASA would test-fly a new crew vehicle and kick Bush's space-exploration plan into gear.
NASA's formal plan to return astronauts to the moon and then on to Mars will be unveiled in a few weeks. One version, leaked to the Orlando Sentinel, shows the space agency spending more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. It would use modified shuttle rocket boosters with small capsules attached for the crew, which would hook up with unmanned ships riding larger rockets on the way to the moon.
For now, officially, the space agency is "not looking to change any of the plans we have in place," said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. "Retirement of the shuttle is still five years from now."
But that would require the shuttles to fly reliably for the next five years. And Discovery's problems this week - and how NASA deals with them - leave the shuttle program's fate in the hands of astronaut Steve Robinson and his spacewalk repairs.
"Now it seems to be that the vehicle performance is driving the movement toward ending the era," said Valerie Neal, a space-history curator at the Smithsonian. "A lot of people are saying we're at that (retirement) point; my guess is that it's all going to hinge on how this mission turns out. We really are at a pivot point right now."
There's less tile damage on this flight than previous missions, but because that's what downed Columbia, there's a lot more scrutiny that brings problems to light. That makes decisions about what to do next a lot tougher, said Carnegie Mellon University decision-science professor Paul Fischbeck.
NASA says it can keep flying the shuttle at a few billion dollars a year even as it develops the shuttle's replacement using other funds.
But NASA's spending history proves otherwise, said American University's McCurdy. Like an old car, keeping the space shuttle in working order so it can keep going is eating into the down payment for its replacement.
"The longer NASA spends money on the shuttle, the less money it has on the launcher for the crew-exploration vehicle," McCurdy said. "Except for the international commitment, and we've got an asset that is on its way to weighing a million pounds in orbit, it's time to move on."
Get this part of the article though... anybody feel like spending up to 1/3 of a trillion govt. dollars?
Spread over 20 years, $200B isn't that much money. NASA's current budget is about $15B/yr, so $10B/yr represents just 2/3 of that. The Shuttle/ISS (and all the ancillaries involved) probably eats up 2/3 of NASA's current budget, so it seems disappointingly reasonable for the next phase of manned missions to continue to do so. If we were serious about manned exploration, we'd double NASA's budget and be willing to invest closer to a half-trillion dollars into R&D and various off-Earth projects over the next 20-30 years.
For comparison, I'll risk pointing out that the war in Iraq is likely to have a 20-year cost of a trillion dollars or so. And that doubling NASA's budget would put a dent in the treasury less than 1/6 the size of the now-annual "emergency" supplemental defense bills. 1/30 the size of the overall defense budget. 1/2 the size of repealing the estate tax. Less than what we spend to subsidize agriculture.[/rant]
Comments
Originally posted by addabox
No-one ever suspects...... the space elevator!
heh. arthur c. clarke is bloody OBSESSED with space elevators.
(space odyssey 3000), ummm... another book as well...
Originally posted by CosmoNut
Well, that was short-lived. The shuttle program is grounded once again due to problems with the foam insulation. Fortunately Discovery's crew is not in harms way -- it seems -- but future crews could be with things the way they still are.
holy crap cosmoNut i just got your nickname. damn. too much partying. i used to be smart. or at least i used to think i was smart. waitaminute, maybe i'm smarter now because...
AH NEVERMIND.
okay, well this is bewildering and dissapointing news, but overall i think this is good.
FUCK THE SHUTTLE. game over. time to put their 4 (??) remaining orbiters in the museum.
I just wish godspeed and all the best to the crew, hope they return safely to earth. Man will one day walk among the stars, but for now, I think the message is we need a bit of housekeeping to do first :=
''You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong,'' Parsons said. ``We're telling you right now, it should not have come off. It did come off. We have to do something about that.''
this is where i be a smartass dick and say, I wonder what Burt Rutan would have done with the $1.5 billion?
i sincerely hope our brave astronauts make it back to earth safely. they're just poor bloody lab rats working for government scale salary
Originally posted by sunilraman
this is where i be a smartass dick and say, I wonder what Burt Rutan would have done with the $1.5 billion?
Rutan would have a summer place on Mars for that kind of money.
Originally posted by dmz
Rutan would have a summer place on Mars for that kind of money.
heh. aint that the truth
Originally posted by Aurora
. . .This is the U.S. philosophy. Why soak the govt for millions when they can soak the tax payers for billions? . . .
The biggest problem with NASA is that the engineers designing stuff aren't great engineers, there are a lot of them, and the giant corporations they work for aren't really interested in progress.
There are several around the corner from my office. . . Rockwell, Harris, Northrop Grumman. . . I haven't been impressed by their personnel or their "TPS-heavy" workflow.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
The biggest problem with NASA is that the engineers designing stuff aren't great engineers, there are a lot of them, and the giant corporations they work for aren't really interested in progress.
There are several around the corner from my office. . . Rockwell, Harris, Northrop Grumman. . . I haven't been impressed by their personnel or their "TPS-heavy" workflow.
Big Business combined with Govt have taken innovation out of the picture. Shuttle should have been replaced as soon as they found out it was costing 100 times what it was suppose to. When companies like Rockwell or Northrop or Boeing look at space projects they see $$$. When someone like Rhutan looks at space projects he sees Space Exploration.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...f120609D22.DTL
Originally posted by dmz
Put the frelling shuttle in a museum -- that's where they belong. And do it quick before more people get killed.
It is the astronaut's choice so don't speak for them.
"They should stop the program. Its excessive spending. I mean, strapping on a 100.000 dollar camera on the fuel tank that isn´t reused"
"The foam problem, I have a solution. Just use double stick dutch tape"
Originally posted by Anders
Stupidity of Wasington journal viewers:
"They should stop the program. Its excessive spending. I mean, strapping on a 100.000 dollar camera on the fuel tank that isn´t reused"
"The foam problem, I have a solution. Just use double stick dutch tape"
idiotic comments, indeed.
however, i did realise during watching the live launch broadcast that it was a bit weird. a lot of the shuttle program was 'newer safety measures', and what i believe to be an excessive (100+) amount of cameras just to monitor the launch.
including this dude in this bigass vehicle thing with double scopes for watching the launch, that looked like it came out of a japanese manga. it was pretty slick, but you can bet your ass one of those TPS-heavy military-industrial-aerospace contractors fucked NASA good to build one (or more!) of those...
i have long been a fan of NASA, in fact one of the astronauts on this mission (Andy Thomas) did his first degree at my alma mater, University of Queensland Australia......
but, in recent years, i dunno, something ain't jiving... i would strongly encourage all american taxpayers (I WAS one during 2000 and 2001 and 2002 years) to put an end to this rubbish. honestly. something is not right.
Originally posted by Aurora
Days later we learn that crap is still falling off, stuff has come out of shuttle seams, tiles with slight damage,,,,,,,Its a big old fashion space tug that still can only make low orbit. Nasa needs to get out of building rockets and let tSpace do it better,cheaper and safer. Lets just face it the American Tax Payer was screwed,is getting screwed and will continue to get screwed with this Shuttle.
damn dude... that sucks huh... it just keeps getting better
so the point of this mission was to test if the shuttle is safe, which it is not, and to test safety repair procedures, which they may not be able to do because they may not be able to 'risk' a spacewalk, and also the purpose of this mission was to be able to document the launch, which shows it's all back to the drawing board
WTF
i think this particular journalist was adding salt to the wound
"August 1, 2005
BY MARTIN MERZER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Two scraps of insulation dangling from shuttle Discovery's fuselage could pose a danger to the crew and might have to be removed or poked back into place during a spacewalk, mission managers said Sunday....."
Originally posted by sunilraman
Originally posted by aplnub
No shit the best we can do is jets
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...ure_of_vision/
Is it just me or a commerical "Spaceport" sounds cool. Because in RTS games whenever you got one of those you had some killer tech and you felt proud that you got that far in the game to really start to kick some ass. Ref: Dune2, for example.
Anyway, here is an interesting article on our 5-year WTF to do with the bloody shuttle? Current mission notwithstanding, something that has a almost 2% failure rate
Basically it's the bloody international space station that's the pain in the ass now for NASA. and sounds like they can't hack/mod Russian tech to get the parts up there to finish it...
Get this part of the article though... anybody feel like spending up to 1/3 of a trillion govt. dollars?
"...NASA's formal plan to return astronauts to the moon and then on to Mars will be unveiled in a few weeks. One version, leaked to the Orlando Sentinel, shows the space agency spending more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. It would use modified shuttle rocket boosters with small capsules attached for the crew, which would hook up with unmanned ships riding larger rockets on the way to the moon....."
"
Space shuttle future creates quandary for NASA
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Owners of older cars wrestle with this choice: Spend more money on repairs and nurse their beloved old vehicles along for a few more years, or swallow hard and buy something new - and better.
NASA is near that point with the space shuttle.
Construction started on NASA's three remaining shuttles in 1979, 1980 and 1982. The basic shuttle design dates back to 1969, making it older than four astronauts who hope to ride aboard.
Now with Discovery's latest flight, not only has the nation's space agency found that it hasn't completely solved the shedding-foam problem that doomed Columbia two years ago, but it's also got some impromptu repairs to do in space. Wednesday an astronaut will take an emergency spacewalk to try to remove or clip some cloth filler that's jutting between two tiles on the ship's belly, lest it catch fire on re-entry and endanger the flight.
That's got some people - including a former astronaut - wondering if the shuttle should be put out to cosmic pasture sooner than NASA's planned 2010 retirement. Then, they say, the nation can move ahead on President Bush's ambitious agenda to fly astronauts back to the moon by 2020 and on to Mars in a new spaceship.
"If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't fly the shuttle again," said astronomer and former astronaut George "Pinky" Nelson, who flew on Discovery after the Challenger accident. "They're 10 years behind already. We're going to have to bite the bullet ... and somehow keep the agency viable."
But that's not so easy.
One big complication, filled with international intrigue and a price tag of many billions of dollars, especially gums up decision-making: the international space station. The United States has committed to complete construction of the half-built orbital complex, which is a partnership of 16 countries. Japan and the European Space Agency have built and paid for new station additions that are ready or near ready to launch.
Only the shuttle can take them up.
NASA already has spent $21.4 billion on space-station hardware, not including nearly a billion dollars for each of the 16 shuttle launches flown so far to build the seven-year-old complex. NASA has scheduled 24 more shuttle launches to complete the station's construction. The bulk of the European Space Agency's multibillion-dollar station components are supposed to start launching next year.
"We need it (the shuttle) for a few more years," said former NASA Administrator James Beggs. "We have commitments to our foreign partners to finish up what we started."
That's what's keeping the shuttle alive, said American University professor Howard McCurdy, who has written several books on NASA. "Without the space station, we'd roll those things into the Dulles annex (of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum) right away."
John Logsdon, space policy director at George Washington University and a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, said the space station is "a perfectly fine half-built facility. Do you just walk away from it?"
Then there's another problem. Building the shuttle's replacement is at least five years away.
Deciding what to do with the shuttle is "clearly one of the existential crises of the agency," Logsdon said. "Because it (NASA) has this exciting future, but it can't get to it without solving this issue."
To be sure, the shuttle has its defenders.
The shuttle "is probably the greatest spaceship that man has ever made," said NASA's legendary former manned spaceflight chief Chris Kraft, who oversaw the shuttle design as well as the Apollo lunar missions. "The space shuttle has taken a bad rap."
NASA plans to fly its three shuttles until the space station is finished, then retire them in 2010. That year or the next, NASA would test-fly a new crew vehicle and kick Bush's space-exploration plan into gear.
NASA's formal plan to return astronauts to the moon and then on to Mars will be unveiled in a few weeks. One version, leaked to the Orlando Sentinel, shows the space agency spending more than $200 billion over the next 20 years. It would use modified shuttle rocket boosters with small capsules attached for the crew, which would hook up with unmanned ships riding larger rockets on the way to the moon.
For now, officially, the space agency is "not looking to change any of the plans we have in place," said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel. "Retirement of the shuttle is still five years from now."
But that would require the shuttles to fly reliably for the next five years. And Discovery's problems this week - and how NASA deals with them - leave the shuttle program's fate in the hands of astronaut Steve Robinson and his spacewalk repairs.
"Now it seems to be that the vehicle performance is driving the movement toward ending the era," said Valerie Neal, a space-history curator at the Smithsonian. "A lot of people are saying we're at that (retirement) point; my guess is that it's all going to hinge on how this mission turns out. We really are at a pivot point right now."
There's less tile damage on this flight than previous missions, but because that's what downed Columbia, there's a lot more scrutiny that brings problems to light. That makes decisions about what to do next a lot tougher, said Carnegie Mellon University decision-science professor Paul Fischbeck.
NASA says it can keep flying the shuttle at a few billion dollars a year even as it develops the shuttle's replacement using other funds.
But NASA's spending history proves otherwise, said American University's McCurdy. Like an old car, keeping the space shuttle in working order so it can keep going is eating into the down payment for its replacement.
"The longer NASA spends money on the shuttle, the less money it has on the launcher for the crew-exploration vehicle," McCurdy said. "Except for the international commitment, and we've got an asset that is on its way to weighing a million pounds in orbit, it's time to move on."
Originally posted by sunilraman
Get this part of the article though... anybody feel like spending up to 1/3 of a trillion govt. dollars?
Spread over 20 years, $200B isn't that much money. NASA's current budget is about $15B/yr, so $10B/yr represents just 2/3 of that. The Shuttle/ISS (and all the ancillaries involved) probably eats up 2/3 of NASA's current budget, so it seems disappointingly reasonable for the next phase of manned missions to continue to do so. If we were serious about manned exploration, we'd double NASA's budget and be willing to invest closer to a half-trillion dollars into R&D and various off-Earth projects over the next 20-30 years.
For comparison, I'll risk pointing out that the war in Iraq is likely to have a 20-year cost of a trillion dollars or so. And that doubling NASA's budget would put a dent in the treasury less than 1/6 the size of the now-annual "emergency" supplemental defense bills. 1/30 the size of the overall defense budget. 1/2 the size of repealing the estate tax. Less than what we spend to subsidize agriculture.[/rant]