Shuttle Launch Delayed 146
fizzix writes "Weather has delayed the launch of Discovery to tomorrow (Sunday the 2nd), but not everyone thinks it is ready to go. CNN reports both the chief engineer and the chief safety officer gave it a 'no go' for launch. Despite their reservations, barring inclement weather the shuttle is planned to liftoff at 3:26 ET." Update: 07/02 05:00 GMT by Z : I said launch not lauch. Fixed headline.
End the damn program already (Score:0, Insightful)
Holiday Shot? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it eventually goes up successfully July 4 it'll either be a triumph or a complete PR disaster. I'm sure the engineers and administrators are taking this into account.
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the fact that foam striking the side of the Columbia during takeoff wasn't considered dangerous, I'm suprised they didn't stop to recheck everything before hand. When it comes down to rechecking everything and delaying the mission for a little longer vs. the millions lost and the following PR hit, the answer pretty obvious. You could say "it could never happen", but try and tell that to the crews of the Changeller and the Columbia.
Lauch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, Slashdot is read by millions of people and yet it lacks the basic courtesy and professionalism that any media outlet should have. How can this thing be taken seriously?
Chief Safety Officer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everybody says no-go... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally...I think the greatest irony would be God, Jesus and friends standing on some remote place far on the other side of creation saying "Geeze dad, I woulda thought they could have made it here by now..."
Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:End the damn program already (Score:5, Insightful)
Really. And has anyone else on the planet done any better? Going into space is hard, if you haven't noticed.
The Russians? Ok, they can launch Soyuz. Literally, a taxi. 3 people and not much else.
The Chinese? Recreating a 40 year old, 1 man orbital flight.
Commercial efforts so far? Almost, but not quite, recreating a 57 year old X-15 flight, courtesy of a couple of very rich angels. Commercial efforts will get there, but not anytime soon. Gotta satisfy those shareholders.
You got anything better?
Re:Lauch? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
The safety guys are worried about the foam, but there is no risk until re-entry, and the problem occurs during launch. If the problem does occur (with very low probability, considering that it only happened once before and steps have been taken to make it less likely since), the astronauts can take refuge in the space station and send the shuttle down on autopilot. Waiting to launch now could actually force NASA to take more risk later as they cram in the 16 lauches necessary to finish the ISS before the shuttle program ends in 2010.
Personally... (Score:2, Insightful)
With the hard date set for the retirement of the current shuttle fleet, I think NASA is wasting its efforts and budget on the dying program instead of trying develop alternate space vehicles faster. (Of course, I admittedly know very little about NASA budgetary constraints. For all I know, they may be forced by congress to use that part of their budget on the shuttle fleet or lose it. I've seen beurocracy do sillier things.) Doing so may be the only way to revitalize a space program that's been in decline since the end of the cold war.
However, like many, I believe that the real future of space travel lies in the private sector. With privately-funded quasi-space-progams like Virgin Galactic (is that what it's called?) which may someday fund private research and exploration (all in the name of commerce, of course, as opposed to pure science or strategic advantage), and state-funded programs failing to keep up, what other course could there be?
Of course, this is just be rambling, feel free to tell me I'm full of it. But this is the way I see it: private space progams will continue to make space travel more affordable and accessable, and that can only be a good thing in the long run.
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:3, Insightful)
So I figure the "no go" was a combination of CYA and posturing for influence. The chance of a failure is miniscule, but if something does happen to go wrong, their asses are covered by being on the record as objecting to the launch. Also, if a failure does happen, there's a good chance that someone will need to fill the vacant offices of the folks who overruled them.
Re:I was there ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes, folks who think they know a whole lot need to just sit back and trust the folks who REALLY DO KNOW A LOT.
How could he ever approve a launch? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, the CSO probably can only approve if an unreasonable (for what they have) level of safety is achieved. Hence, they are likely to be ignored because their requirements cannot be met.
July 4th Reschedule - Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Everybody says no-go... (Score:3, Insightful)
When you have professionals assigned with the task of evaluating whether the conditions are safe or not and they are ignored by an administrator it should be a criminal liability issue.
If you think a couple of companies doing things like what Virgin Atlantic has proposed will keep the industry moving forward for the next 30 years you are sadly mistaken.
There is very little profit in the industry, even with launching communication satellites there is significant government funding because of profitability issues.
Re:From the article ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is another reason - if you get a week and decide to recheck everything, chances are good that you will find a lot of things out of calibration, if not outright defective. And even if you replace them all, by the time you are ready to check again something else will be broken, and so you do some more replacements... ad infinitum. That is because when a machine has 1,000,000 components, each component has to be exceptionally, impossibly reliable.
This particular machine flew to the orbit and back many times already, and many parts may be approaching their failure points. But you can't know that - modern science can't see a future crack in a turbine's blade, and once the crack develops you have about 0.001 seconds before a major destructive event.
That's why many airplane parts are tested on the ground until they start failing, and then a service life is set for them that is way lower than what was seen during the tests. And these parts are replaced after certain number of hours not because they are faulty, but because they might be faulty, and we can't check if they still have some life left in them or not.
But in case of STS there is only very limited knowledge about many parts, as technicians keep discovering totally unexpected wear-related failures all over the orbiter, whenever they get to service it. So we don't really know how long this cryogenic pump or that high pressure pipe or that O-ring can last, since Shuttles are the test article in itself. That's why two missions were lost - because there was no good understanding, beyond a few guesses, of what the materials and the parts are capable of. There -still- is no understanding of many parts, aside from the tiles and RCC panels who were tested exhaustively and hopefully well enough by now.
So, for example, when they say "this thermostat in that thruster does not matter..." they likely only evaluate some expected fault scenario, assuming things that they don't know for sure. For example, if a sensor is misreading the fuel temperature it's one issue. But if it does that because there is an intermittent short, and it may ignite the fuel, that's a very different issue.
This way if they don't check everything they at least can launch, and we already know that the chance of failure should not be higher than 2% - likely less, since the previous problems had been fixed. But if they check for everything they will never fly, and if they ever do then something else will break just after they finished checking. It's just statistics, and game of chance.
Re:My 50 Kopek (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the Japanese? They don't have much of a space program and certainly no manned vehicle. The US and Russia are far ahead in that respect and currently only the Russians have a relatively high frequency manned vehicle (the Soyuz).
The Russians are a different story, but even there, I think the Soyuz and Proton aren't launched in sufficient volume and they have limited access to equator launch sites (Sea Launch [wikipedia.org] being a notable exception).
My take is that we really don't have proper access to space, mostly due to low launch frequency.Re:Chief Safety Officer (Score:5, Insightful)
Griffin is taking a calculated risk -- he knows the shuttle might be lost, but has taken steps to make sure the crew isn't.
So basically, they object and think it's the wrong decision, but they believe that having gone on record as saying that is sufficient -- they don't think there's a need to override the person in charge of risk assessment since what's at risk is only the spacecraft and not the crew. Whether to risk the craft is legitimately a monetary / political decision, not a safety one, since the crew should be fine either way.
Re:Lauch? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think "editorial oversight" normally has a function that is a bit different than detecting typos, and it has more to do with what Slashdot Editors (gasp!) are doing in a binary fashion: reviewing content for quality, style and fact-checking, to decide what gets published.
Spelling, or even a basic respect of grammar, IS a question of professionalism, in and out of media publications.
I agree that the function of the Slashdot editor is not to convert every post into a masterpiece of wit and literary style, but a run on the spell-checker wouldn't hurt anywhere near what you describe.
I'd expect it would take less time than a dup-check, which is badly needed as well.