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.
SpaceFlightNow (as usual) has great coverage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SpaceFlightNow great coverage (Score:2)
I was there ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm almost surprised they even decided to proceed to the point that they did today (the hold with T-9 minutes to go). Standing on the ground at Kennedy, if you looked West, the sky was almost black with storm clouds over the runway at the Shuttle landing faciliity. You know, the one that needs to be clear for the Shuttle to land if there's an emergency? Seems like a bit of a waste.
Just my two cents.
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.
Re:I was there ... (Score:2)
Re:I was there ... (Score:3, Informative)
I was about 35 miles to the northwest, flipping back and forth between CNN and NASA TV being fed from my laptop. I was under darker clouds, and was afraid that the clouds were going to block my normally spectacular view. Then they scrubbed it, and I packed up and went over to the track for the race. True Florida vacation, this one.
Re:I was there ... (Score:2)
Weather reports indicated that today was the most likely launch date weather-wise for the next few days. Tomorrow is only r
Re:I was there ... (Score:3, Informative)
The parent was talking about weather specifically. But to address your argument, t
it's not just for emergency landings (Score:2)
Yes -
the shuttle really is THAT fragile!
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.
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:1)
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:2)
I would imagine Karl Rove is careful enough not to make the president wing it if he has to address the nation after such an event. God help us if that happens.
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:3, Funny)
I would imagine that such a speach is relatively easy to write: "Great tradgedy....yada yada....American heroes....yada yada....hold hands in prayer....etc". It's a fairly standard general eulogy. If you have the talent to write, a short, 5-10 minute adress shouldn't take a good speechwriter more than an hour or so to compose. I don't imagine the speech part would be a big issue in case such a tradgedy strikes.
PS. I'm gonna feel awful if something does happen, and I've just been making sarcastic comments
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:2)
Reagan's speech [americanrhetoric.com] after Challenger
Bush's speech [americanrhetoric.com] after Columbia.
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:2)
These speeches arn't any huge feats of oratory. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but a talented writer could probably crank out these kind of speeches without much difficulty. They're fairly short, they contain not much original thought, they are filled with platitudes (like "Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand", what does this even mean?) and some fairly meaningless but deep-sounding religious truisms ("The same Creator who names
Re:Holiday Shot? (Score:2)
ian
Everybody says no-go... (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, the paranoid might think that this is somewhat intentional as a number of republicans would probably like to get in on private industry taking over NASA role in space exploration.
(Too bad there is no money in space right now.)
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..."
Re:Everybody says no-go... (Score:2)
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 is
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:2)
The decision is overridden because the crew can camp out in the space station.
The "no go" people claim to accept this. (they damn well knew too)
So...
Why say "no go" in the first place? Why worry about foam damage if
you know that you ultimately won't care?
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:1, Informative)
They said that there is little risk to the crew, but there is excessive risk to the orbiter itself.
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:3, Insightful)
Government bureaucrats invented and perfected it office politics. Imagine the nastiest most political back-stabbing corporate environment you've ever been in - that's kindergarten compared to even the most laid-back government office.
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 as
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:2)
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.
There are a lot lower profile and safer ways to do that. Ie, strenuous object and then cease to make waves once you've acquired enough prot
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:2)
I was referring to the two engineers who recently did just that. They objected, they were overruled, then they issued a statement saying that their concern was potential loss of the shuttle if it had to be flown by remote on re-entry, and agreed with the boss that there very little risk to human lives. If it really hits the fan, it wouldn't surprise me all that
Re:It's a very silly way to do things. (Score:2)
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
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
These astronauts are not signing up for something that is low-risk. It's a highly risky job and then know it... The increased *awareness* of risk doesn't make it more risky than it used to be.
"No go" is such a strong word (Score:2)
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.
Re:From the article ... (Score:1, Informative)
Basically you'll find that the mission plan includes the planned burns for rotation of the shuttle and maneuvering. By firing different thrusters for different amounts of time the same maneuver can be accomplished. Given that the shuttle isn't really flown "
Re:From the article ... (Score:2, Troll)
The obvious answer here is that the president is really, really desperate for PR. There's no good reason for NASA to launch the shuttle over the July Fourth holiday weekend - but to a president who has sent over 2500 of his own troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths, risking the lives of a handful of astronauts is nothing if ther
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
Admittedly. But no more so, I think, than NASA has been 'pushed around' by any other high-ranking political figure throughout its history. NASA is a PR organization that happens to occasionally have the happy side-effect of scientific exploration.
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
I've got one - a kick-arse fireworks display (though preferably not of the Challenger variety.)
Re:From the article ... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure there is, the launch window is 10 minutes a day from June 30 to July 19. The two previous sets of launch windows were March 4 to 19 and May 3 to 22. Nasa missed both of those so now they are trying this one. I am not sure why a launch on June 30 was not tried, but that still would have been part of the 4th of July weekend. Generally speaking you want to try launching early in the set of launch windows so if you have a delay you might be able to launch in the next day's window. More info on launch windows here [spaceflightnow.com], here [spaceflightnow.com], and here [spaceflightnow.com].
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
For anyone (like me) who was wondering why the launch windows were so narrow and infrequent, this is from the parent's third link:
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
I've never quite understood that. What does patriotism have to do with approval of the incumbant? Aren't people proud of the fact that if the people in power screw with them, they have the power to oust them?
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
Rechecking "everything" "by hand" on the launchpad? With cryogenic fuel in the tanks? I think that's unreasonable given the mildness of the problem. It would not be a little delay.
Also, I think people underestimate how much is lost while the shuttle isn't flying. As I understand it, the Shuttles currently suck up $5 billion or so a year whether or not they fly. So a month delay is on the order of $400 million. And little delays when combined with the vagaries of the weather and other problems can become b
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:From the article ... (Score:2)
Re:From the article ... (Score:2)
The foam problems are probably a result of the delay as well. Things break while you're sitting on the pad!
Check that radar. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm close enough to see the space shots, and there were some storms west of the Cape this afternoon, a few more out to sea. Forecast for tomorrow is less of a chance of thunderstorms in the area and downrange.
I have my thermos of coffee ready. "I always have coffee when I view radar". (Dark Helmet, Spaceballs.)
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?
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Re:Lauch? (Score:1)
Re:Lauch? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
http://www.dragon-tails.com/comics/archive.php?da
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
You must be new here.
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Re:Lauch? (Score:2)
Chief Safety Officer (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
Probably be scrubbed tommorow, also... (Score:2)
Slight confusion over the submital (Score:5, Informative)
The details in the Slashdot posting are slightly incorrect. Todays/yesterdays launch (the scheduled on on the 1st of July) was postponed at T-9minutes after a 40 minute scheduled hold (if it's scheduled, why didn't they add it into the count down?) and approximately 3 minutes of 5 into an "extended hold" (after they "polled" all the various sections of the launch team). Then the decision was made the "scrub" (abort) the launch due the weather being too unpredictable and there being storm clouds (anvil clouds) within 20 miles of the emergency landing strip (although they have got backup landing strips in France and Spain). They will retry the launch tomorrow, and can abort for any reason up to 31 seconds before main ignition.
At the moment, they are still "go" for the launch tomorrow.
BTW: You learn a lot from watching the live stream on nasa.gov [nasa.gov]!
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:5, Informative)
The folks in the firing room can abort up to 31 seconds before T-0, but the onboard computers can abort anytime before the SRBs light. Once those puppies light, you're going whether you like it or not.
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:1)
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:2)
Currently the clock is holding at 11:00 hours for a launch on tuesday.
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:1)
Well from what I understand the T-9 minutes hold is scheduled but the duration is not scheduled. The official countdown clock seems to try to account for the several scheduled holds as it currently reads over 9 hours to launch while it is scheduled for around 3:30 EDT about 15 hours from now. Maybe someone who actually k
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:5, Informative)
Just a small correction there; the strips in France and Spain aren't backup strips, the two locations serve different purposes. If there is a failure early in the launch sequence then they can in theory just ditch the attachments, turn around, and land at the emergency strip near the launch site. ("In theory" because this maneuver is so insanely difficult that it's been said to require about seven different miracles to be successful.) Past a certain point the shuttle can no longer make it back to Florida, so then the abort procedure changes to continue approximately on course and land on the far side of the Atlantic. This part is where the sites in France and Spain come into play. There are few, if any, scenarios where either side could be used, so you end up with a weird situation where bad weather in a place four thousand miles away can scrub the launch because you need to be able to abort there if something goes badly wrong.
Today was the opposite. The transatlantic sites were clear but the strip in Florida itself was too cloudy, so they couldn't go.
This is yet another advantage of simpler capsule systems. The abort modes for those are all extremely simple and reliable compared to the Shuttle's. You fire the escape tower, get away from the rockets, ride down and open the parachutes when you get to the right altitude. As long as the weather isn't so horrible that it sinks the capsule in the ocean, everything should be pretty much fine.
Apollo 12 got hit by lightning during launch and still landed on the Moon, but the Shuttle can't launch if there are storm clouds within 20 miles. The wonders of modern technology.
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:2)
In history there have been two aborts of capsule systems, (specifically Soyuz). In the first, the abort system wasn't fired at the first warning of a fire in the booster (on the pad), but was delayed until almost too late. (Less than a
Re:Slight confusion over the submital (Score:2, Informative)
You are right that they have e
Hold on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hold on (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hold on (Score:5, Informative)
Free, OSS video stream? (Score:1, Troll)
Thankfully, Ubuntu made it easy to add a extra repository and install RealPlayer 10 in less than 10 minutes. Just in time to catch them scrub the launch.
Yahoo (Score:2)
Shows just dandy in a browser window.
Re:Free, OSS video stream? (Score:2)
Sorry, live on the space cost. Free and high quality streaming launch.
A cursory glance turned up these
http://countdown.ksc.nasa.gov/elv/public/ [nasa.gov]
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/ksclive/kscv0 9.html [nasa.gov]
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/ksclive/kscv0 3.html [nasa.gov]
java, not quite streaming.
But since you got real player installed you might enjoy this site.
http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/live/archive/ [unitedspacealliance.com]
or http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/ [nasa.gov]
All of these (and more, like European Space Br
Lauch (Score:2, Funny)
Before his Senate service, Faircloth was a prominent and wealthy hog farmer. One impetus for his political activism was his disagreement with the increasing regulations targeting large hog farming operations such as his, fueled by an environmentalist and populist backlash.
Faircloth once joked that he wanted to be known as the conservative senator from North Carolina. Since the state's ot
Personally... (Score:2, Insightful)
With the hard date set for the retirement of the current shuttle fleet, I think NASA is wasting its effort
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Interesting)
Things get even worse when it comes to actual research in space. That dinky little rocket you use to send two people into space on isn't going to get a large telescope or space station into orbit. The bigger the rocker the bigger the infrastructure costs, and that isn't linear. NASA pays up the wazoo for its infrastructure, much of it due to the Apollo program I believe (those Saturn V rockets were BIG).
Keep in mind that a government can deal with a 1% failure rate, a private company would be gone before a tenth of the lawyers even get there.
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
As for doing research in space, I would also point out that the Satu
My Photo Op!! (Score:2)
Re:My Photo Op!! (Score:2)
Please tell me that was tongue in cheek...
July 4th Reschedule - Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Morning Edition Report (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=5503182 [npr.org]
They interview the two senior officials who have reservations about the launch. What I found most interesting were the odds that one NASA employee mentions, which are definitely in favor of the launch and mission succeeding based upon the track record of the shuttles. Yes, it's a dangerous mission and NASA cannot guarantee that falling foam will not damage the
Re:Morning Edition Report (Score:2)
Not 3:26 ET , it's 15:26 EDT (Score:3, Informative)
Real Time Updates vs. News Articles After the Fact (Score:2, Informative)
I'm happy to hear this (Score:2)
The real reason: they're not ready (Score:5, Interesting)
************
For the record, speaking as someone who can see the goddamn launch pads from
my roof: there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the last lightning had been
over four hours ago (gave me an excuse to quit mowing), and the nearest drop
of rain was in west Orlando, some fifty or sixty miles away.
I was a member of the "go / no-go" team during Return To Flight in 1988.
There was no hesitation or wimpiness in our hours of pre-poll discussion, and
when Safety was called on during the poll, we all but cheered and danced
yelling "GO!" You could cut the tension with a damascus sword, but there was
no greasy sweat and shifty eyes.
Friday, I made a snide prediction to the local paper: they were gong to count
down to the built-in T-9 minute hold and sit there until they got a weather
excuse. I should have made it for money, but there would not have been many
takers among the spaceflight-savvy. It's practically a ritual.
I'll go out on a limb on this one, since I'm up against the bushitsta's "You
WILL launch so George can give his speech and distract attention from the
Iraq disaster" orders, but if they have anyone with any balls at all on the
launch team, this time they'll count down to the five minute mark and call it
off after a five-minute hold on some computer-glitch excuse. (At T-5, they
start the APU recorders, which puts them on an MFP -- the APUs are strictly
limited on run time.)
(Sorry, MFP isn't in the NASA handbook. That's Major Fuckup Point.)
Then they'll try again on July 4th, just for #$%!ing show. Goddess of fire,
protect the astronauts. But it wouldn't break my heart if John Ellis and
company were doing a photo-op on Monday and a tetroxide valve blew.
************
it ain't the weather they're afraid of. That's their EXCUSE.
Put it this way -- the ten minutes of cross-chat I bothered to listen to
sounded like full-blown panic. "O-ten-six is a negative" means nothing to
anyone who hasn't worked countdown, but what that means is THEY COULD NOT GET
A SENSOR RESPONSE FROM THE MAIN ENGINE TURBINES. As in, the fucking engines
weren't saying yes or no as to whether they would even turn on. Flood a
system with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and hit the "on" button, and if
the turbines don't spin up, you have a very large bomb with the fuse burning
down fast.
And that was only ONE of the "re-check" (means "no fucking response") calls
that I heard, and I only bothered to turn on the TV to win a bet.
Rain and lightning here as of 0900. Clear sky by noon. Bets on the T-5 stall
still better than a lotto ticket.
Relative risk factors (Score:2)
Update: Scrubbed again. Retry on Tuesday (Score:2)
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:End the damn program already (Score:5, Informative)
Don't sell SpaceX quite so short -- they've attempted one *orbital* launch, and will be trying again in a couple months. There's good reason to believe it will work -- the failure was a procedural one, not a design one, and they've added multiple checks to prevent it and similar problems. The current rocket (Falcon 1) is a small TSTO semi-expendable launcher; they have a larger Falcon 9 and some variants also already in production, and a much larger rocket (codename: BFR) and manned (!) capsule in development. I'd lay better than even money they repeat the Sputnik flight (with a useful payload) this year, and even money they do a manned launch in 5.
Commercial will get there, it's just a matter of putting enough investment in to get to the point that there's a market, and SpaceX has already sold 10 launches -- strongly suggesting that there is in fact a market for better, cheaper, more reliable vehicles.
Re:End the damn program already (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:My 50 Yen (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My 50 Yen (Score:2)
Actually the Japanese have a kickass space program. No manned stuff, but they have quite a few space telescopes and other missions like asteroid rendevous do some great science. Hayabusa, Suzaku, Akari - some very cool stuff.
I'm aware of most of this. My take however, is that they need to have a couple orders of magnitude more probes in action before I'll consider that program "kick-ass". Pretty high standards, but it would mean among other things that someone has abandoned the "one-off" (using a design
Re:My 50 Kopek (Score:2)
We aren't going to get there unless one of two thinks happens: First -- Chinese manned mission to Mars or Moon (Just like when the Ruskis kicked our asses in Space Race 1, it will make space an issue of national urgency). Second -- private companies sending rockets up themselves for various investments (mineral mining, space tourism, etc.) Competition is the only thing that's going to drive space exploration. The greed to make money is about the only thing that's going to have people launching rockets with
Re:Shame. No goes - just to cover their ..... (Score:2)
I agree, but not in the way you think.
Re:Waitling for all lights to turn green (Score:2)