Shuttle to Launch Despite Objections 314
sam0ht writes "NASA has just named July 1st as the launch date for the space shuttle Discovery, a year after the last shuttle mission. Last July's mission was the first since the break-up of Columbia in 2003, but after foam again broke away from the main tank, the shuttle fleet was grounded. More foam has been removed from the main tank, but NASA staff are divided over whether this is enough to ensure the flight's safety, with some reporting that both the lead engineer and top safety official are against launching again so soon. Managers want to make only one major change at a time, and plan that if damage does occur, the crew would be able to stay in the International Space Station, to which they are delivering supplies, rather than trying to land a damaged shuttle."
A somewhat less alarmist version of the story: (Score:5, Informative)
Two senior NASA managers - chief engineer Chris Scolese and Bryan O'Conner, the associate administrator of Safety and Mission Assurance - did have concerns over the potential risk of foam debris posed by a number of insulated ice frost ramps along Discovery's external tank, NASA officials said.
About 34 foam-covered ice frost ramps line the shuttle fuel tank, insulating brackets that connect a cable tray and pressurization line.
"From their particular discipline, they felt they wanted their statement to be No-Go," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations said. "But they do not object to us flying and they understand the reasons and the rationale that we laid out in the review for flight."
Re:The Space Shuttle or STS will never by safe (Score:4, Informative)
Bad! (Score:5, Informative)
Every time the Shuttle flies, we fall about six months further behind where we could be. We still have not started to think about replacing it with a system that will deliver reliable, inexpensive and frequent access to space. The capsule replacement on the drawing board won't be inexpensive and it won't fly frequently. It's a stop-gap measure to provide access to the International Space Station, assuming the Shuttle can fly without disaster something like 18 more times to finish the construction. That is definitely not certain. The loss of only one more orbiter -- even in a ground accident as has nearly happened -- will make it all but impossible to finish construction of the ISS.
If you think human and other activity in space is important then you should be in favor of immediate cancellation of the Shuttle program. I don't know what sort of wake-up call that Congress and NASA need to get the hint, but we really need to start working on a next generation system right now.
For christ's sake (Score:4, Informative)
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02
This is the same damn problem they've had since the beginning--only they've continued to make changes without enough testing. The fact that they recently altered the foam is good cause to be even more cautious.
And to the people denouncing the engineers and gov't workers and accountability on this thread, get a clue and pick on another agency. NASA -- the entire agency -- is highly accountable for failed missions from the top on down because it relies on image and public support. The higher ups are accountable to a congress that wants more frequent launches and toys with the budget and priorities--and has a short memory with regard to why we have such a moronic shuttle design. The engineers are doing their job, they did it during columbia, they did it during challenger. In both cases management failed and senior management was fired/retired/encouraged to leave. So spare me the covering-their-asses mentality.
Re:What's the Problem Lately? (Score:1, Informative)
The early shuttle flights had all of the problems of the later flights. A large number of flights came close to the catastrophic failure of Challenger. In fact, the engineers knew it was going on, told management that there was risk of the thing blowing up if the weather was too cold, and management ignored them. Then one day the weather was too cold and they launched anyway and it blew up.
Likewise the ice problem has been there since day one. But nobody realized it was enough to kill the ship (or possibly, the people who did think so never figured out a way to prove it to their boss) until one of them actually did get killed by it.
The simple fact is that the risks they're protecting against now just aren't that great. The shuttle currently has a historical accident rate of about 1 flight in 60, with two accidents over 100+ launches. The fixes that are going in now are supposed to mitigate known causes for accident #2 (#1's problem were considerably simpler to fix and have not been an issue since) after the original fixes were shown to be inadequate during the first post-accident flight.
The shuttle seemed safer before because we didn't know about these particular problems, even though they still existed. This is much like why people get scared of planes but they have no fear during the car ride to the airport, even though they probably have ten times the chance of dying during that phase of their trip as they do on the airplane.
Rocket to Nowhere (Score:2, Informative)
A quote: "Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with little concern for their personal safety, and requiring extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this primitive space plane must have been a sacred artifact, used in religious rituals to deliver sacrifice to a sky god.
As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process."
Re:grow a pair (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's the Problem Lately? (Score:3, Informative)
It's probably more accurate to say that the public's ignorance is bliss. Only the public has been, by and large, ignorant of these problems. The engineers knew about all of them right away and made sure to inform management who then did little.
I just finished reading Mike Mullane's book "Riding Rockets." I highly recommend it to anybody interested in NASA and the shuttle program. His account of his career as an astronaut paints NASA as a far more enjoyable and human organization while at the same time not avoiding the harder issues like the terrible management and disasters like Challanger.
On Mullane's first flight (something like the 15th shuttle flight, I think) mission control saw a large piece of the foam come off and strike the orbiter. That flight had the robot arm installed so they used it to inspect the damage. To the crew the damage looked very bad, but mission control said, repeatedly, not to worry about it. Upon landing they looked at the underside of the orbiter where the foam had hit. The damage was, in fact, very bad. It was the worst tile damage until that which did in Columbia. Mission control later said that the quality of the downlink video from the robot arm was not very good, so to them the damage did not seem as extensive.
None of the problems which led to the loss of either Challanger or Columbia were new or unknown. Engineers had seen them, had been worried about them, and attempted to make a case to management. But, as Mullane describes it, management took the view that if damage this bad had not caused a shuttle loss, then having it happen again was an acceptable risk. And we all know how the story turns out.
You're right. What a difference a comma makes... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSFA
Re:they have pushed their luck enough (Score:1, Informative)
I like your water etc plan, but if you're just going to launch cargo into space it'd be cheaper to use Arianes or other bulk launch vehicles, especially since water or photovoltaic panels won't have any trouble with the accelerations. The shuttles are cool, but science and space exploration would both be better served by selling them to theme parks
Men Wanted for Hazardous journey... (Score:1, Informative)
-- Ernest Shackleton, 1900