Shuttle To Fly Without Safety Revisions 174
HaloZero writes "In the face of safety concerns, NASA has decided to proceed with launching the Space Shuttle Discovery in July without changes to the external fuel tank. The article states that even though Discovery's last launch shed a huge 1-pound chunk of potentially devastating foam, they're willing to wait to change the spec on the disposable tank. The changes would modify the Ice/Frost Ramp assemblies, which prevent a buildup of ice on fuel lines and cables (as a side effect, they also have a tendency to dislodge large chunks of insulation)."
Proposal (Score:5, Funny)
Yes folks, I believe we should coat the tanks and shuttle body with politicians and lawyers.
Before you deride my concept as mere rambling, consider that they are now running the show anyway so we might as well make them useful.
I did a quick survey amongst the remaining engineers and technical folks at Nasa and they all consider my proposal double plus good.
Re:Proposal (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Proposal (Score:1)
Re:Proposal (Score:2)
Adopting the credo of Mexican bus companies (Score:5, Funny)
Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)
After the loss of Columbia, NASA removed a foam ramp from the tripod area that holds the external tank in place. This is where the piece that caused the damage came from. In Discovery's last flight (and I believe in some older launch videos), foam was also observed to come off the proturbence air load (PAL) ramp, which is another aerodynamic feature. This was also eliminated. Additionally, NASA is going to be flying a gentler flight profile on remaining missions (listed as "Low Q"). They lose a little bit of load capacity doing this, but the acceleration is lower and their speed is slower in the denser levels of the atmosphere.
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:2)
Assume chunks of equal area peal off the shuttle, so that the drag forces are equal (actually, as the foam slows down faster, drag force on it decreases a bit faster).
drag.force = mass * drag.acceleration. So if the mass of the ice is 1/10th as much as the foam, a.foam = 10a.ice.
The kinetic energy gained by falling some distance is mass*distance*acceleration. So with 10x the mass and 1/10th the acceleration and the same distance fallen, ice and foam should end up with almost the same kinetic ene
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:2)
Actually, he may have a good point. Ice, being denser than foam, will have less surface area for the same mass. Less surface area means less drag, which means it slows down less in the air when it comes loose. Slowing down less means that its velocity relative to the speeding shuttle will be less, so it could well do less damage.
For similar reasons, if you drop a point of nails and a pound of feathers, the nails will hit the ground first. It's all about drag, not weight.
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:2)
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:2)
What's heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers? "
Depends on if one of them is in orbit...
Re:Flying without some of the safety changes (Score:2)
I have an easy solution... (Score:3, Funny)
Here's an idea (Score:5, Interesting)
But I guess you get the idea.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:2)
Have the guy responsible for shuttle safety fly with 'em. I hold any bets that those shuttles will be safer than driving through downtown NY rush hour
Or indeed get a politician to ride in one.
Rich.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:2)
Re:Here's an idea (Score:2)
Just like little kids...
Re:Here's an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
managing risk is art and science (Score:3, Insightful)
The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up. For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic. So given an unreliable shuttle program depending heavily on Soyuz, the painful decision to stop station construction and maintenance needs to happen. This makes the July launch akin to a make or break demonstration. If there is a serious problem, or another disaster, then NASA really can't look Congress in the face and make an argument for the station. Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained. As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments.
Re:managing risk is art and science (Score:2)
I think you just summed up most government research...
Re:managing risk is art and science (Score:2)
Not really. Supply flights have been flying at exactly the same rate for years now.
The bottleneck is in station construction - except for the vaporware Russian ones, all the remaining hardware has to ride the Shuttle.
Ask the Astronauts and Don't Get Confused by PR (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean given how many safe flights the shuttle has made without the foam causing a problem, and given the extra in fight safety measures (cameras and stuff) that have been implemented it isn't clear that the foam is the biggest risk the astronauts face. Flying into space is a very risky, unsafe buisness especially on old equitment like the space shuttle. It would be a shame if the publicity of the previous disastor meant that we spent tons of money fixing the foam problem when the total risk could have been reduced more for the same money/time by fixing other safety issues.
It is a general problem that things we have seen cause disastors seem more dangerous than those that have yet to cause any problems. However, we should not let that emotional effect get in the way of making the best safety choices. If the next shuttle blows up because we insisted on reducing the foam risk to 0 rather than doing a cost benefit analysis then the blood of the astronauts is on the hands of everyone who flipped out about the foam but wasn't going to care about other safety issues. On the other hand if fixing the foam really does decrease the risk the most per unit of money/time we than we bad better focus on that. However, as laymen the only thing we can do is trust the experts and second guessing them risks doing more harm than good.
Re:Ask the Astronauts and Don't Get Confused by PR (Score:2)
Unfortunately, they are a very BAD choice of person to make the decision as to whether to fly at all, because they are typically very much risk-taking personalities, and many are likely to say "oh, so there's probably a 1 in 100 chance of a fiery death, but I get to go into space? Ok, let's do it!"
While that may be OK for an astronaut on a personal level, every accide
Misleading (Score:2)
slashdot exaggerating again (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Give us engineers some fucking credit please.
Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:3, Interesting)
Every disaster-fated structure or system anyone's ever seen fail, was built by an Engineer.
Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:2, Insightful)
Other examples of this theme would be the cargo hatch on the DC-10 [wikipedia.org] and of course, the Columbia disaster
Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:2)
Re:I'd Simply Like to Point Out... (Score:2)
Hmmm...Slashdot and cars do not mix? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have been a slashdotter for around 8 years (I do have an ID in the 500,000s), and this is the first time in all that time that I have seen relatively insightful posts modded as "troll" or "overrated".
As an automobile fan, who owns a '51 Merc, a '73 Nova, an '87 Buick Grand National, and a '03 Suburu WRX...
YOU ARE ALL CAR IGNORANT!!
Cars of today cannot be compared to cars of 10, 30, or 50 years ago.
I have learned what I needed to know for each of my vehicles, and I f
Falcon 1 (Score:2)
The related problem was the rapid boil-off of LOX in the tropical heat. So they covered the LOX section of the booster with a thermal blanket, designed to fall away at launch with cables. Apparently, the blanket did get hung-up on the ill-fated first launch. But perhaps thi principle would be okay for the Shuttle. There's no reason the Shuttle needs to drag all that foam up into space. The only need for the foam was to protect against ice fo
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:2)
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:2)
Sanity Check (Score:3, Interesting)
We need to have a frank national discussion. If we are going to stop being spacefaring, stop. If we are going to develop cislunar space and beyond, we nee
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:2)
Yes, the issue is known. But the "fix" might be worse than the known issue. The only way to make sure that fix is "safer" is to test, and by that I mean lots of test. This particular foam has cause failures in a percentage that might be considered statistical noise.
There was a known issue with the o-rings at low temperature that eventually
Re:Murderers!! - Hold on (Score:2)
Sure, payload would be decreased by a few thousand pounds because of the mass of the paint, but at least the existing tank design was safer when painted with the coating it was originally designed and flown with.
That's not the half of it! (Score:5, Funny)
I just can't stand all that smoke that the shuttle produces! Can't they use smokeless fuel?!? An the fact that they're using salmon to fuel those things! Yes its true! They use LOX to power it! See, they take Salmons and cream cheese to send the shuttle into space! It burns up soooooo many Salmon, that one day, they'll be extinct!
the shuttle supposedly did kill a salmon (Score:2)
You might argue the salmon was probably dead from the eagle or the impact, but...
I don't know about salmon, but there actually are lots of bald eagles at the space center. They build whopping huge big-ass fortress-like nests in the trees.
Re:That's not the half of it! (Score:2)
Step 1: Buy Nukes
Step 2: Nuke Whales
Step 3: ??????
Step 4: Profit!
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, foam loss was experienced long before the switch, including incidents which caused serious damage. Quoting from the above.
The new foam did initially suffer from more loss and popcorning, however, it was the old foam that destroyed Columbia.Re: (Score:2)
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:1)
So you're an asshole who likes to call people names and doesn't want even the minor conscience pang that would come from having a serious, well-reasoned reply explaining what you're doing? Figures
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2)
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:3, Interesting)
But instead of returning the much safer, politically incorrect, Freon-based foam for Discovery's launch, the space agency tinkered with the application process, changing "the way the foam was applied to reduce the size and number of air pockets," accordi
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2)
Priceless. Not particularly politically correct, but priceless nevertheless.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got a better idea: Forget the damned foam. Put the Shuttles on flatbed trucks and tow them straight to the Smithsonian. Then pledge to never design or fly another rocket where chunks of loose ice are perched high above critical components.
It'll save the US taxpayers countless billions, and we'll finally get this 35-year episode of kludges, budget overruns and broken promises behind us.
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, dimwit. I'm just proposing that they don't strap the friggin payload onto the side of a 200-foot popsicle. Mounting it on top will do the trick. That does seem to be the lesson that they've learned from the shuttle program, and the shuttle replacement will do it that way. I'm just saying that they should kibosh the shuttle now and wait for the replacement. It's not like NASA is doing anything vital with manned missions right now.
Shuttle Retirement in 2010 (Score:2, Insightful)
You're a troll (Score:2)
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:1, Flamebait)
My older cars from the 1970s didn't have nearly as many problems as newer cars do with their advanced computer systems and emission control systems.
This sounds like old-wives-tale-ism. New cars require less maintenence and are much safer. A 1980 Chevrolet Caprice required annual tune ups and took up more space / weighed more than today's Toyota Corolla, which needs a tune up every 100,000 miles.
The difference is computer controlled cars that are smaller, lighter and more efficient don't affect t
The older cars did not have as many problems. (Score:2)
Sure, a modern care won't need that. When the modern car starts to fail though, you need to go to the dealer. Only the dealer has all the secret electronic codes needed to deal with the car.
Re:The older cars did not have as many problems. (Score:2)
I have a Nissan 180sx, will full electronic ignition, fuel injection, etc.
It currently has 120,000km on it, and I have done all the servicing since 60,000km myself.
It has never servicing other than a clutch replacement, oil changes and a spark plug change or two (iridium plugs, supposedly good for 50,000km).
So, i can take all that money that I would have spent on "tuning" (say, 12x$200AU), and buy a damn replacement ECU *if* it screws up next week.
However, being a member of nume
Re:The older cars did not have as many problems. (Score:2)
*sigh*... i did even preview once too....
AS to modern cars being hard to get to stuff - depends on the car.
300ZX TT - pain in the ass, major major pain in the ass (but shit, what do you expect with 2 turbos and all the associated plumbing packed into that little engine bay). 350Z is pretty intimidating too.
180sx, skyline, many other cars - easy as.
smash.
the Chevy Celebrity (Score:2)
In the neither-new-nor-old category we have the Chevy Celebrity. From the top, you could just barely see the oil filter. You couldn't touch it. From the bottom, you could just barely touch the oil filter. You couldn't see it. An oil filter wrench could just barely go on, even in theory. From the bottom, you'd have no leverage to move the wrench. (in any case, it'd only rotate a few degrees before hitting an obstruction) You could pull on the wrench from above if you attached a cord to the handle, but of
the codes (Score:2)
NEWS FLASH: all but the most basic codes are proprietary
The public codes are just generic ones mandated by law.
In related news:
Saturn has/had a cute little trick involving the oil light. The reset procedure was proprietary. You could have anybody change your oil, but only the dealer could reset the indicator.
Statistically, they had many more (Score:2)
The reason, IMHO, is computers. Not the ones in the engine compartment, but the ones in the dealership that record all the warranty repairs. Manufacturers today have a much shorter turnaround to address defects. The Japanese will iron out the bugs in a new
Re:old wrench geezer calls you on the FUD (Score:2)
I own a Mazda Tribute with 120K Km and have opened the hood maybe twice, and that was to put windshield fluid in it. I take it back to the dealer on schedule (works out to average $70 per visit, two visits per year) and they take care of everything.
If I tried to do it myself. with the cost of tools and a pessimistic $50/h that I value my time at, it would cost me more to do it myself. I'd much rather b
1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one! (Score:5, Insightful)
What those cars had was that they were ***easy to fix*** - easy to diagnose, easy to get the parts out and in, easy to obtain the parts, in fact. These days, the simple diagnostic tests do not work or cannot be performed, and as a result, you can't fix your own car. But cars today break down far less than they did back then, at least that's my recollection of it.
Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one! (Score:1)
Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one! (Score:2, Informative)
You're comparing a Chevy to a Dodge!?
Re:1970's cars more reliable? Pull the other one! (Score:2)
I had a 1973 dodge dart with a slant 6. Except for regular maintenance (plugs, rotor, cap, oil) that car never broke down, never stranded me, drove me about 100,00 miles, and then I sold it to another college student. And I had bought it -used- with 80,000 miles already on it!
The 1965 mustang I bought in the 80's with the -original engine- still in it with over 150,000 miles on it ran great for the 4 years I had it, (I was restoring it), when I sold it I had not done a
Numbers Game (Score:2)
now, how many shuttles have we ever had?
A teaspoonfull of salt will not kill you, but if you eat an entire cylinder of morton's, you're gonna have some health problems.
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:1)
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've owned older cars. They need a lot of TLC to keep running reliably - my old Mini needed new points/condenser every 6 months (with the oil change), frequent spark plug/HT cable replacements, and I had to have the cylinder head off twice in the time I owned it. Although it was a fun car to drive (and had lots of character), it needed a LOT of maintenance to have any hope of reliability. There was actually a very noticable performance difference afte
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2)
That doesn't make all older cars similarly flawed. Some engineers actually designed cars to be driven, not just to be looked at (though Morris' weren't even designed that well).
Re:Go Back to the Old Foam? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:1)
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:1)
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2)
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2, Insightful)
Leaving foam design to those rocket scientists (Score:2)
The Saturn was a modular family of rocket stages and various rocket engines coming from those German ex-pat rocket scientists in Huntsville, Alabama. Their first rocket, the Redstone, was in some regards a hot-rodded V-2 in terms of its capabilities, and then they had a Jupiter rocket (not to be confused with the Redstone-derived Jupiter C) that used an engine from the Atlas, developed by an entirely different
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:3, Informative)
Two possible factors (I don't know enough about this, but I suspect they would cause problems) are (3) - The foam is porous. If fuel seeped into the foam, it would significantly reduce the insulating value of the foam allowing the fuel to heat up and boil off or ice to form on the outside of the tank as well as reduce
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2)
An interesting aside, for those who care: I ran into an interesting tech
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2)
You'd think Captain Kirk would know more about space travel.
Re:Stating the OBVIOUS (Score:2)
Re:Holy crap! Space travel is dangerous? (Score:2)
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Grow up.
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2, Insightful)
Conform to social norms and forget about your dreams.
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Are you kidding?
The shuttle is the main reason that we do not have a base on the moon, or are on our way to Mars.
It was simply an underhanded militarazation of space, and a huge waste of money.
We can't even build Saturn V's any more.
I say junk the thing, and then with a few hundred million more dollars, we might be where we were in 1969.
Oh, and whiule we are at it, trash the Hydrogen / LOX engines and go back to the more powerfull, safer Kero/LOX ones.
We would have rovers on Europa, and have mapped
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now). I also want to point out that this "obvious mistake" was copied almost directly by the Russians with their Buran shuttle, which flew perfectly but was abandoned because of their limited resources, not because of the drawbacks (which we are now more keenly aware of) of a mixed cargo/crew vehicle in a side stack configuration.
My final point is that you incorrectly posit that the safety chief wanted to veto launching without the changes. He would've preferred the changes, but will apparently accept their omission since the major concern (the PAL ramp) was addressed. The decision to move forward was also endorsed by Griffin, who is a very accomplished engineer himself (a very different background than Keefe's, the former administrator). This is the way engineering works (in fact, life in general). You will never eliminate all the risks, so you figure out which ones can be addressed reasonably with your resources and you keep going.
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Since apparently you hadn't heard, the space shuttle is being retired. Criticizing it changes nothing now. The future of manned spaceflight is not tied to the shuttle as you claim.
Actually, I'm well aware of NASA's proposals for replacing the shuttle fleet, and I whole-heartedly support these proposals. Griffin seems to be putting the space agency in the right direction, and I have no serious dispute with his leadership. The main thrust of my argument - if you'll pardon the obvious pun - is that NASA c
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Where is Werhner Von Braun [nasa.gov] when you need him?
I note this part from the link on Von Braun:
After the Apollo space program, von Braun felt that his vision for future spaceflight was different than NASAs, and he retired in June 1972.
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
That's not even remotely true. It's vastly cheaper now.
Besides that, your whole post seems extremely one-sided. You talk about billions of dollars "wasted" because they didn't set-up the colony on the moon and mars that you wanted. You completely ignore ALL accomplishments of NASA and the Space Shuttle in the past 30+ years, etc.
Re:Same old story at NASA... (Score:2)
Of course, NASA management ALWAYS overrides concerns the engineers might express.
The problems with delamination of the foam insulation on the external fuel tank could
easily be corrected, merely by switching BACK to the originally used foam insulation.
The formula was changed in order to be "politically correct" when Congress mandated
a reduction in the use of CFC's in order to help protect the ozone layer. An exemption
for NASA's shuttle program could have been politically acceptable.
Somehow,
Re: (Score:2)
Hold on there a darned minute (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, where did you and so many others get the hooked on the delusion that space travel is or can be made completely safe? Or that astronauts/cosmonauts expect it to be completely safe? None who climb into the shuttle or a Soyuz capsule are under the delusion that they are climbing into the car for a jaunt down to the corner store. Getting up and moving at 17,500 miles per hour is dangerous, pure and simple, and for you to call any machine a "death trap" for tackling this hugely complex task is to ignore reality.
Can the shuttle be safer? Yes. Can the shuttle be made safer with the tiny budget NASA is being given and the critical ISS supply timeline and the "we must be absolutely 100% safe" political attitude being imposed? I propose that it cannot be. And if it cannot be, I concur with the others who have pointed out that we have to get this vehicle flying again so that we can "get back on the horse" and continue with the progress of our society into space.
And yes, I would fly on the shuttle today. No, it's not 100% safe. It can't be. Yes, I could well die. But I would still fly on it. And you can damn well rest assured those flying on it know they could die too and are adult enough to have made that choice consciously and willingly. It is not up to you to think you know better than they who have been training for decades for their missions.
-Kurt
paint it black!! DUH!! (Score:2)
Also have some giant IR radiators spot lights to warm it up any way.
use some genetic bio paint that doesnt freeze
Re:Environment and space exploration don't mix wel (Score:2)
Amazing that we can get out of this deep gravity well at all with 300-450 ISP fuels.