Safe Landing For Space Shuttle Discovery 106
dylanduck writes "Discovery is back safe and sound, despite minor problems with a leaky power unit and a last minute change of approach direction to the runway. The mission tested some post-Columbia safety changes, and also set up the space station for future construction. But in some ways, the tough job starts now - NASA has just 40 days or so to get Atlantis up."
Good news indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Congratulations! (Score:4, Interesting)
post-CAIB mission over (Score:5, Interesting)
In the next flight, the shuttle program resumes the construction of the ISS (not just delivery of the supplies and take back some garbages). So until the next mission is complete, I wouldn't say that we are back on track with this mission.
It's good to have her back safely, nontheless.
Re:Good news indeed (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? That's pretty bad news for all these space-tourism schemes. No way in hell I'm taking a vacation where there's a one-in-fifty chance of not ever coming back. It would be safer to take a vacation in Iraq.
Re:Good news indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Orbital Decay? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2% is a meaningless number (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Journaists and public perception (Score:2, Interesting)
You have to be kidding. (Score:3, Interesting)
Shivetya is right. The reason for the ultraconservative behavior with regards to NASA is because they can't afford another failure until the CEV is ready to fly. It would very likely result in the termination of the shuttle program altogether. Now many people here would applaud that, thinking that it would free up money for the CEV, but it wouldn't.
One of the major costs of any rocket program is the maintainance, launch, and support crews. There is no CEV related work for them to do right now as it is still on the drawing board, and you can't just fire all those people, and then expect to hire them back once there is work again. They will have moved onto other jobs, and the people you hire as thier replacements wouldn't have the working knowledge of the system that they current staff does - remember that the new launcher will be heavily based on shuttle technology.
So NASA has to keep flying the shuttle, in order to justify these jobs, and they can't be to risky about it, lest they lose another. I have the luxury of saying that we should just accept the risks, and finish the ISS with the shuttle as quickly as possible, but NASA doesn't. So we will continue to see slow sheepish behavior until the replacement is ready, and NASA is poised to do things that the public finds worthy of risk.