Shuttle Launch Postponed To July 4th 122
mkosmo writes "NASA has yet again delayed Space Shuttle Discovery from launching due to growing weather conditions. Next launch attempt is the afternoon of the 4th of July." From the article: "Windows of opportunity are determined by the path of the orbiting international space station, the shuttle's destination. With each passing day, the time for a launch gets earlier by 22-1/2 minutes. That could be good news for NASA because summer thunderstorms are less likely to be a problem earlier in the day."
In Soviet USA, Shuttles launch you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the shuttle can take a much, much larger payload than anything else currently available (I think).
I imagine the weather is a bit different... (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine weather patterns in Florida are a lot more difficult to predict than they are at Russian launch sites.
Re:In Soviet USA, Shuttles launch you? (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead, the balls were manufactured in East Germany (which was under communists not as long as Russia).
Even then, one sometimes had to file away a little metal at the end of the tube so it does not scratch paper when writing. This got resolved with time - either they fixed the process or (just as likely) switched to imports.
Re:Tempting Fate (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:In Soviet USA, Shuttles launch you? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or at least when they try to stop the countdown and management refuses to do so, they'll resign in protest [abcnews.com]...
Re:In Soviet USA, Shuttles launch you? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's one thing that basing your launchers on ICBM technology gets you. After all, if it comes down to it, you can't hold up your ICBM launches for a little inclement weather.
Designing a vehicle with a safe abort mode in all phases of flight would help too (think "commercial aircraft") -- but vertical takeoff/horizontal landing just doesn't do it, and especially not when you've got SRBs that have to burn for two full minutes once lit -- and you can't separate them (or from them) while burning.
lightning is the problem .. Re:In Soviet USA .. (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't rain but lightning that is the problem. The column of ionized gases ejected from a vehicle in assent is highly conductive and makes for a very good earth. Apollo 12 [wikipedia.org] was hit twice in just such an incident. The strike affected the parachute deployment system among other things. They didn't know for sure if it would actually work until the final moments of the descent.