Nasa to resume shuttle missions

[brap]

Discovery is being readied... most interesting shot IMHO is this one - larger version here, near the bottom. You can clearly see the discolouration of the heat-resistant pads -- and more worryingly, all the 'generations' of replacements.

Some of these must have been on for the life of the vehicle (I wonder how many re-entries that is?) - and there seem to be quite a few new ones above the left-hand, as we look, undercarriage.

*shudder*

Brave souls, brave souls.

 

[wdlove]

My hope is that safety will be at the forefront. I'm looking forward to a launch in May or June, it is always an awesome site.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

That's not that bad, actually. If you knew the condition of some of the planes you fly in, you'd not want to go.

I look forward to the next launch, and hope to be down in Florida to see it.

D

 

[brap]

That's not that bad, actually. If you knew the condition of some of the planes you fly in, you'd not want to go.

In my 22 years, I've flown 3 times. Last time was, IIRC, a 737-300. Bus with wings! Bloody awful.

But yeah, I take your point -- designed as reusable. Still, makes you wonder how many of those were replaced after damage on lift-off, and soldiered on through re-entry. Knife-edge stuff

I think that picture just brings home the fact that these vehicles are really, really old. She looks like a beaten old jalopy in some of the shots, poor thing.

 

[jane doe]

Replacement

They need a replacement and I hope that some work has been done on them past the drawing board. But I also think it will be up to the President after the election to handle directly and might be one reason nothing major has happened yet on that.

Especially in light of the X-Prize recently, there should be some renewed interest in keeping NASA ahead of the future competition.

D

Check out the following:

http://exploration.nasa.gov/

 

[jane doe]

Heavy Lift.

What is needed is human rated heavy lift. The space station is in too high of an inclination for missions to the moon. We need to develop some sort of heavy lift if we want to return to the moon, travel to Mars or any other body in the solar system.

SpaceShip one is great for travel into suborbital space and there are others in the testing phase that are going to be even better, however the cost to lift materials is not getting any cheaper due to the the X-prize.

In a few years the technology developed by the X-prize contestants will improve the cost of orbital delivery but it will still rest in the hands of NASA and we may find ourselves with a return to "Apollo era" craft. This was also looked into for crew evac. from the ISS, They wanted to expand the Apollo CSM to hold 5 people for up to 4 days for a return to Earth if needed.

 

[RacerX]

As for a shuttle replacement I think we would get more for our money buy just paying Lockheed or boeing to build it rather then letting the government.

That was how the shuttle was built in the first place. Rockwell International won the project and designed and built the shuttles. They weren't built by NASA, they were built by contractors.

In a few years the technology developed by the X-prize contestants will improve the cost of orbital delivery but it will still rest in the hands of NASA and we may find ourselves with a return to "Apollo era" craft. This was also looked into for crew evac. from the ISS, They wanted to expand the Apollo CSM to hold 5 people for up to 4 days for a return to Earth if needed.

So far very little new technology was used by any of the X Prize contestants anyways. The abilities of SpaceShip One are about the same as the North American X-15 from more than 40 years ago.

The one interesting technique used with SpaceShip One was the re-entry, which guarantees that the ship remains controllable when it drops back down to an altitude where it's flight abilities are useful again.

One of the X-15s was lost when it fell out of control just out side the atmosphere and wasn't able to regain control before it plummeted to earth.

Sadly, even though this is a very interesting and innovative approach, it does nothing for shuttle type spacecraft which must re-enter the atmosphere at orbital velocities. These spacecraft require some form of heat shielding where as SpaceShip One didn't.

Another example of the X-15 technology being used today is the Pegasus launch vehicle.

The thing that should be noted (if it has already) is that a lot of these technologies stem directly from the work done with the X-15 in the late 50's and early 60's. Had we not been in a cold war in the 60's, there would have been a very good chance that rather than missle-like launch vehicles we would have plane-like launch systems today.


As for return to flight for the shuttles, more than anything I hope that the human element at NASA has been fixed. Columbia, more than any other shuttle, was in a position to save her crew.

When all the shuttles were refit, Columbia (being a pre-Challenger body design) was heavier than any of the other (space-ready) shuttles (Enterprise was not refit for space after improvements were made to a test body that made it far lighter than Enterprise and Columbia, this test body was used instead and became Challenger). Because of this, NASA felt it wouldn't make a good shuttle for assembling the International Space Station. So Columbia was not fitted with a docking ring and was instead outfitted for extended orbital missions (Columbia holds the record for longest duration in space thanks to this ability).

What would this have meant? Had the damage to Columbia's wing been taken seriously early, it could have been used as a lifeboat for up to thirty days. And there was a Russian cargo ship ready for launch during that time that might have been able to extend that even further.

While the External Tank may have been the physical catalyst of the problem, the human element was, in the end, what let that crew down.