I, for one, am enthused.
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For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.
The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.
"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.
The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.
The Discovery's astronauts are to make a spacewalk tomorrow to fix a potentially hazardous problem with cloth filler on its belly.
Future missions have been indefinitely suspended while NASA tries to solve the persistent shedding of foam from the external fuel tank at liftoff.
The plan for new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month. Its outlines were gleaned from interviews and reviews of trade reports, Congressional testimony and official statements. Some details were reported on Sunday in The Orlando Sentinel.
On Friday, Dr. Griffin emphasized the plan's safety, telling reporters that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed the Columbia two and a half years ago and threatened the Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel tank shortly after liftoff.
"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long."
Congress would have to approve the initiative, and many questions remain. John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.
Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."
But supporters say it will let astronauts move expeditiously back into the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet, and do so fairly quickly.
"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. "It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."
Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.
The three remaining shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which is intended to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat altogether, and its supporters say they would have other advantages as well. The larger of the vehicles, for lifting heavy cargoes but not people, would be some 350 feet tall, rivaling the Saturn 5 rockets that sent astronauts to the Moon.
The smaller one, for carrying people, would still dwarf the shuttle, which stands 184 feet high with its attached rockets and fuel tank.
The spaceships would no longer look like airplanes. Their payloads, whether humans or cargo, would ride in capsules at the top rather than alongside the fuel tank - standard practice until the shuttle era. Rather than gliding back to Earth, they would deploy parachutes and land on the ground in the Western United States.
"The goal is not how good the stuff looks," said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "It's results. The goal is to get people back to the Moon and eventually onto Mars. And this system, given the budget constraints, is a reasonable way to go."
A main advantage, supporters say, is that the big rocket could lift five or six times as much cargo as the shuttle (roughly 100 tons versus 20 tons), making it the world's most powerful space vehicle. In theory, it would be strong enough to haul into orbit whole spaceships destined for the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Just as important, officials and private experts say, the small rocket for astronauts would be at least 10 times as safe as the shuttle, whose odds of disaster are estimated at roughly 1 in 100. The crew capsule atop the rocket would rendezvous in orbit with gear and spaceships that the bigger rocket ferried aloft, or with the International Space Station.
"It's safe, simple and soon," said Dr. Horowitz, an industry executive since he left the astronaut corps in October. "And it should cost less money" than the shuttles. Their reusability over 100 missions was originally meant to slash expenses but the cost per flight ended up being roughly $1 billion.
"We need to get this as simple and affordable as possible," Dr. Horowitz said, "because there's a lot of other things we need to spend our money on when it comes to exploration."
Asked whether the new designs meant NASA was going back to the future, he replied, "You can say, 'Hey, that looks pretty retro,' " but he drew an analogy to passenger jets from decades ago and those of today. "They look the same," he said, "but are completely different."
By drawing on existing technology, the plan is meant to speed President Bush's goal of revitalizing human space exploration. At the same time, it would upend the strategy of NASA's previous administrator, Sean O'Keefe, who wanted to discard the shuttle in favor of military rockets, which would have required costly upgrades to make them safe for humans. And their payloads would have been relatively small, requiring strings of multiple rocket launchings.
Dr. Horowitz said he and two fellow astronauts ended up endorsing the traditional idea of putting payloads atop the rocket instead of on its side, as far as possible from the dangers below. They also envisioned an escape system that would lift the crew capsule out of harm's way if serious trouble arose.
After January 2004, when Mr. Bush announced a national effort to "extend a human presence across our solar system," Dr. Horowitz hit on the idea of using the shuttle's booster rocket as a first stage. He did the math and found it ideal. Moreover, the booster rocket was already approved for human flight and - despite its role in the 1986 Challenger disaster - had earned an excellent safety record.
The second stage of the crew rocket would feature a updated version of the J-2 engine, which in the 1960's and 1970's helped propel the astronauts to the Moon.
Dr. Horowitz said industry studies put the risk of catastrophic failure for the newly envisioned crew rocket at 1 in 1,000 to 3,000. "It's never going to be like driving your car," he said. "But it's a huge step in the right direction."
After leaving the astronaut corps, he went to work for the booster maker, ATK Thiokol, where he now leads the company's effort to develop the new family of rockets. An ATK Web site, www.safesimplesoon.com, discusses the shuttle-derived vehicles. The giant cargo rocket would feature a large fuel tank atop throwaway shuttle engines and, hanging on its side, a pair of shuttle booster rockets.
Several analysts said that retaining the shuttle contractors would probably help the effort not only financially, but also politically. In Florida alone, a state with blood ties to the White House, the shuttle program employs some 14,000 technicians and engineers, managers and contractors.
The Shuttle is long overdue to be replaced. It was scheduled to start being phased out a long time ago (somewhere in the ballpark of 20 years after it's inception). NASA has had an up and down relationship with the design of the "successor" vessel. I think it was the X-33 that was the front runner; sort of a delta-shaped flying wing thingy, that never got past the design stage because NASA was busy ricocheting insanely expensive rovers off of Mars and so forth (as opposed to the relatively cheaper probes and so forth they're trending towards now).
They were buying time for the Shuttle, in theory, by upgrading elements of the system. The problem with the Shuttle is that before they implement any sort of hardware upgrade, it has to undergo rigorous testing. As such, the processing capabilities on the Shuttle's major systems are insanely low in comparison to how complex a machine it really is. There's a reason why the Shuttle fleet relies so heavily on ground control for everything. The obvious interests of the country aside, the Shuttle fleet needs the ground to do a lot of it's work for it.
Likewise, the Shuttle was built on an almost impossible plan: Send it up so that nothing goes wrong. This is the first flight a shuttle crew has taken a look at the ship's own belly. This is the first time the shuttle crew has been ordered to do any sort of orbital repairs to the shuttle (and according to NPR's news, the orders to do so weren't exactly well-received). The shuttle's been in use what? Twenty five years? More? It's been like 20 since Challenger and we're only just now getting around to even experimenting with fixing the sucker in orbit?
A lot of people criticize the idea of scaling back the way we get into orbit (splitting the duty between crew and cargo vehicles), but I think it's absolutely the right way to do things right now. Task vehicles to capability and necessity first, and idealized notions later. We'd all like to fly the X-Wing or Millennium Falcons, but frankly we have better and safer results with little steps.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
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This one time, at Azizza camp:
A major step backwards if you ask me.
I disagree. The shuttle was a poorly designed piece of equipment from the get-go. A space ship shouldn't resemble a fighter plane, they are nothing alike.
Obviously all of the details aren't presented in this article, but it looks quite a bit safer than the shuttle from what I've seen.
"It's safe, simple and soon," said Dr. Horowitz, an industry executive since he left the astronaut corps in October. "And it should cost less money" than the shuttles.
That's what really matters.
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Don't feed the Azizza:
I am not defending the shuttle, although its record isn't that bad when you consider the age, etc. What I am saying is that going back to disposable craft with limited usage is a big mistake. In my opinion it is like trading a ford taurus in on a Geo Metro when you could have a new Lexus instead.
The geo metro cost alot less to get from a to b than the lexus does.
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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
NASA has had an up and down relationship with the design of the "successor" vessel. I think it was the X-33 that was the front runner;
The X-33 was scrapped a while ago. For some reason everyone thought that it was the "new hotness" that was going to replace the shuttle. Its far more likely that we would have a new system like this. Granted it resembles rockets from the past, but we have cars today that resemble cars from the past, and that doesn't make them the same thing as their predecessors. DrPaintThinner fucked around with this message on 08-02-2005 at 04:23 PM.
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How.... Blindy..... uughhhhhh:
The geo metro cost alot less to get from a to b than the lexus does.
Cost should mean nothing when you are dealing with something like this. Pinching pennies is all fine and dandy for many things, but space flight and the advancement of the technology used in space flight costs money. There is no way around it.
The planet can't support the human race forever. That is a cold hard fact. We either look up or we give up.
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Azizza thought about the meaning of life:
Cost should mean nothing when you are dealing with something like this. Pinching pennies is all fine and dandy for many things, but space flight and the advancement of the technology used in space flight costs money. There is no way around it.The planet can't support the human race forever. That is a cold hard fact. We either look up or we give up.
That's awesome. Now stop spending to send our troops overseas and start spending to send people into space. Then you can quityerbitchin'.
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Azizza was listening to Cher while typing:
Cost should mean nothing when you are dealing with something like this. Pinching pennies is all fine and dandy for many things, but space flight and the advancement of the technology used in space flight costs money. There is no way around it.The planet can't support the human race forever. That is a cold hard fact. We either look up or we give up.
While the goal may be lofty, it still doesn't give anyone the excuse to start spending money irresponsibly. It becomes a lot easier to get money if you're not asking for as much.
Generic, semi-related CubeSat pimp.
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Delphi Aegis had this to say about dark elf butts:
That's awesome. Now stop spending to send our troops overseas and start spending to send people into space. Then you can quityerbitchin'.
This skirts the line of the rules.
General good rules of thumb: If it's not a Politics thread, you shouldn't talk about the Iraqi war, presidency, governmental spending or religious criticism.
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Mr. Parcelan had this to say about the Spice Girls:
This skirts the line of the rules.General good rules of thumb: If it's not a Politics thread, you shouldn't talk about the Iraqi war, presidency, governmental spending or religious criticism.
I once got a petition to a GM through in WoW in record time by describing my problem then adding "KAZZAK GRIEFING SANTA CLAUS PORNOGRAPHY" at the end.
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Azizza stopped lurking long enough to say:
Cost should mean nothing when you are dealing with something like this. Pinching pennies is all fine and dandy for many things, but space flight and the advancement of the technology used in space flight costs money. There is no way around it.The planet can't support the human race forever. That is a cold hard fact. We either look up or we give up.
So what would be the benefit of spending more money for a reusable platform when the disposable one gets the job done just as well?
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Azizza had this to say about Optimus Prime:
Cost should mean nothing when you are dealing with something like this. Pinching pennies is all fine and dandy for many things, but space flight and the advancement of the technology used in space flight costs money. There is no way around it.The planet can't support the human race forever. That is a cold hard fact. We either look up or we give up.
We are almost entirely certain that no planet in our solar system can support life as we know it here on Earth, without massive terraforming.
This would mean we must seek a suitable planet outside of the solar system.
Currently, we have no means of propulsion fast enough to get anyone outside of the solar system within a human lifespan.
So if your goal is to find a new planet to live on, you should be glad that the new shuttle design is cheaper, this leaves more money for reseach for those super fast space ships will we need to achieve that goal.
Though the Earth would be a radioactive wasteland. 
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Quoth Blindy.:
The geo metro cost alot less to get from a to b than the lexus does.
And the lexus is safer and does everything better. Cost shouldn't be the issue when sending folks into space.
/rant
That's why business models don't work for certain things--namely the military and space. In business, efficiency is king and cost-effectiveness is the biggest part of that. In warfare, effectiveness is king, because you simply can't afford to fuck it up and have to start over. Space is similar. In both endeavors, it's much, much better to have multiple redundancies built into the system, and aim for overkill from the start, than it is to save a few million bucks here and there and find out you miscalculated a couple of variables.
Fuck efficiency. We need effectiveness, which is a completely different mind-set.
/rant
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
Plus who the hell says rockets are safer because the payload is on top? I don't think it matter very fucking much When the danmed rocket explodes. Shit NASA was danmed lucky for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo that none of the rockets blew up like the ones from the orginal Redstone's did on the launchpad. I feel that they might manage to do it this time because they are cutting corners.
Peter fucked around with this message on 08-02-2005 at 10:22 PM.
--No what it looks like is that danmed European Rocket, or a Titian Reinvented..God those guys at NASA are real tools.
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x--AzizzaO-('-'Q) :
I am not defending the shuttle, although its record isn't that bad when you consider the age, etc. What I am saying is that going back to disposable craft with limited usage is a big mistake. In my opinion it is like trading a ford taurus in on a Geo Metro when you could have a new Lexus instead.
Actually the shuttles weren't nearly as "reusable" as they were intended to be. Shuttles required so much maintenance per flight to remain safe that they were scarecely cheaper than simply building a new craft from the ground up.
The vast majority of the cost in building a spacecraft is in the engines, which are still disposed of with the space shuttle system. The idea for a reusable space craft isn't a bad one, but don't make the mistake of thinking that the space shuttle was cheaply reusable just because a bigger piece of it came back.
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Everyone wondered WTF when Sarudani Miolnir wrote:
I don't see it as a step backwards, so much as a step back on track. They'll be using the shuttle's boosters, which are reusable, and a disposable upper stage. In doing so they're gaining 5 times the cargo capacity, and eliminating the most of the maintainence needed to reuse a shuttle. If they can do so and drive down the cost of getting stuff in orbit, how can that not be a good thing?
Uh... correct me if I'm wrong, but don't disposable rockets tend to, you know... disengage from the payload and kinda fall a couple of miles back to earth? If the boosters can be reused after that, then sure, it's fine, but I would think that Physics would be kinda against that.
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Mooj had this to say about Duck Tales:
Uh... correct me if I'm wrong, but don't disposable rockets tend to, you know... disengage from the payload and kinda fall a couple of miles back to earth? If the boosters can be reused after that, then sure, it's fine, but I would think that Physics would be kinda against that.
The boosters aren't disposable, they're designed to be reused 25 times before they're retired. They burn out about 2 minutes after launch, at an altitude of around 29 miles up. They seperate, deploy parachutes, and fall back into the ocean where they're recovered and towed back to the Cape.
The disposable upper stage will be discarded much like the shuttle's fuel tank, at an altitude where it'll burn up on reentry. I haven't seen whether the actual crew section will be reusable or not, but something like the X-39 would be ideal and NASA could recoop the money they've already invested in developing it.
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So quoth Sarudani Miolnir:
something like the X-39 would be ideal and NASA could recoop the money they've already invested in developing it.
I assume you mean the X-33, and they wont develop it. It was scrapped March 1st 2001 along with the x-34.
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The X-33 experimental vehicle ran into myriad technical woes, tossing time schedules for getting the spaceplane airborne out the window. Building the X-33 had proven far from trouble free. Stability of the sleek looking wedge-shaped craft at various speed ranges, as well as its overall weight, has plagued designers. Novel "linear aerospike" engines that would have powered the rocket plane also proved troublesome to build.In November 1999, an X-33 composite liquid-hydrogen tank ran into difficulty while undergoing tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Long considered a major engineering hurdle, the tank lived up to that reputation, causing a major launch slip and forcing NASA and Lockheed Martin to take a second look at the entire program.
For Lockheed Martin, lessons learned in building and flying X-33 were seen key to validating new technologies and reducing risk for the commercial VentureStar -- the firm's fully reusable, single-stage-to-orbit vehicle.
"Getting to a single-stage-to-orbit was viewed as being very difficultÂ…and it's still viewed as very difficult," Stephenson said.
"What we're hearing from industry and our own evaluation is that we believe a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle for a second-generation vehicle [a follow-on to the space shuttle] is not viable at this time. We are focusing on multi-stage, beginning with a two-stage vehicle," Stephenson said.
This is the next step forward. It would be interesting to see if the technology in deep space one's ion engines is developed further. Along with nuclear propulsion. Maybe even wormhole technology. DrPaintThinner fucked around with this message on 08-03-2005 at 05:55 AM.
quote:
x--DrPaintThinnerO-('-'Q) :
It would be interesting to see if the technology in deep space one's ion engines is developed further. Along with nuclear propulsion. Maybe even wormhole technology.
Ion engines are impractical for manned missions, and always will be. The amount of force they exert is miniscule at best, and they can literally take decades to get up to speed.
Sure, it's fantastic for deep space probes, but it simply isn't a technology that will lift a rocket off a pad.
As for wormhole technology... you're deep in sci-fi territory there bud. Even black holes were only a theory until very recently. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-03-2005 at 06:26 AM.
For one thing, take a look at the shuttle. Admirable vehicle. I'm not saying it's not an amazing accomplishment of technology. The problem is that they're going well out of their way to make something work that may not be the most efficient method of accomplishing their goals (specifically, sending personnel and cargo into space, and bringing the personnel back safely). They're using the same basic design to the shuttle that they've been using for years. Those tiles aren't anything new. The heat-absorbant fabric dangling out from between the tiles isn't new. It's all essentially a "this works, don't need to fix it" sort of mentality. NASA was so lazy about things that when they canned the X-33 and X-34 that was it. They were, to paraphrase a quote from one of the NASA techs in 2002 after the X-33 was canned, "shelving the idea of retiring the shuttle, and focusing on upgrading it to expand it's use life". Umm...riiiight...
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
Bloodsage must think they're pretty smart:
And the lexus is safer and does everything better. Cost shouldn't be the issue when sending folks into space./rant
That's why business models don't work for certain things--namely the military and space. In business, efficiency is king and cost-effectiveness is the biggest part of that. In warfare, effectiveness is king, because you simply can't afford to fuck it up and have to start over. Space is similar. In both endeavors, it's much, much better to have multiple redundancies built into the system, and aim for overkill from the start, than it is to save a few million bucks here and there and find out you miscalculated a couple of variables.
Fuck efficiency. We need effectiveness, which is a completely different mind-set.
/rant
According to the article the new rockets are 10 times safer than the current shuttles, so...
And as for "being safer at the top of the rocket"? It doesn't matter WHERE you are in relation to the fuel if you're still within the range of its blast should it cook off.
And frankly... I'd rather trust myself to a landing vehicle that can land under its own power, rather than rely on a parachute that is far more subject to nature's wrath.
I, personally, am of the mind that this is a HIDEOUS direction for the space program to be going in.
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Mooj had this to say about (_|_):
And that news article and the person quoted made up those figures. People can die just as easily in rockets as they can in the space shuttle. A stray heat tile on the capsule will have just as catastrophic consequences as a stray heat tile on the shuttle.And as for "being safer at the top of the rocket"? It doesn't matter WHERE you are in relation to the fuel if you're still within the range of its blast should it cook off.
And frankly... I'd rather trust myself to a landing vehicle that can land under its own power, rather than rely on a parachute that is far more subject to nature's wrath.
I, personally, am of the mind that this is a HIDEOUS direction for the space program to be going in.
In the shuttle, the heat shield was vulnerable to falling debris from the various apparatus for the launch. In this design, the heat shield is protected from mishap by being shielded by the module beneath it.
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Quoth Blindy.:
According to the article the new rockets are 10 times safer than the current shuttles, so...
Which has nothing to do with what I said in response to your stupid comment about the Geo vs. the Lexus.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabits doth run and play while Alaan gently hums:
Remember. In all the years of shuttle service, only one SRB(Challenger) has ever let loose. They figured out why that one exploded, and now the risk is pretty small. And this new craft will be on top of those same SRBs.
It's not the mechanical problems that are dangerous; it's the culture of bad decision-making that led to that disaster--and the last one--that is dangerous. And that culture hasn't changed.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Naimah booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Space should be deregulated and allow corporations to compete for contracts sending government research projects into space. If we did it that way we could probably get a man to Mars in 20 years.
I agree, sadly though there's too many people with an irrational enmity for the private sector.
SUBSIDIZE EVERYTHING!
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Pvednes had this to say about (_|_):
In the shuttle, the heat shield was vulnerable to falling debris from the various apparatus for the launch. In this design, the heat shield is protected from mishap by being shielded by the module beneath it.
Leaving, instead, the risk of damage to the heatshield by a mishap at separation from the lower module.
Also, Mortious makes a point both for and against the safety of the capsule. With less time for reentry, there's less time for things to go wrong.
However, a faster reentry will have much higher levels of friction based heat than a slower reentry. If we're going to be having a capsule large enough for crew and equipment for the crew, it's not going to be that much smaller than the shuttle in overall size.
I wholely expect that the cargo portion of the new vehicles will be disposable, but unless every mission is going to be to the space station, the capsule is going to need to get much larger, or the standard of living on missions is going to get significantly worse for the astronauts.
The first one blew up because it got below 30some odd *F the night prior to launch. The O rings that held the joints of the rockets together had frozen and exceeded their temperature threshold the desginers planned for. The engineers objected to going ahead with the launch, but could provide no solid proof that the O rings would not function properly. So NASA guys said "Lets do this!" and watched a fireball.
When the second shuttle went boom on re-entry it was because a peice of foam fell off the rockets and knocked the underside of the shuttle as it was taking off. The foam hitting the shuttle more than likely broke a few of the tiles off, which thusly caused the hull to melt when a section of it was unprotected on re-entry.
I think what NASA is trying to do is odd. I'm glad they're going to get away from the shuttle, because it's really too old for them to use the way they want to. But on the other hand, I'm sure they're going to screw up the first few launches with whatever they start to make instead. It's gotten far to politically driven on the inside, and the people that make the decisions have no one to awnser to when something goes wrong so they don't care about any screwups.
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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent BetaTested said:
When the second shuttle went boom on re-entry it was because a peice of foam fell off the rockets and knocked the underside of the shuttle as it was taking off. The foam hitting the shuttle more than likely broke a few of the tiles off, which thusly caused the hull to melt when a section of it was unprotected on re-entry.
It was actually when a piece of foam fell from the tank and hit the leading edge of the wing. And on the most recent mission they realized that foam was still falling off the tank only that it was glancing off the vertical tiles. Not hitting the leading edge. So its entirely possible that the foam was always falling off just never in a place to cause structural damage. Boeing, and USA (United Space Alliance) engineers suggested several ways to fix this problem but NASA doesn't want to do anything about it. Its hard to convince people what they want is not always what they need.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Blindy. who doth quote:
I heard the foam was changed to a new compound a few years ago, because the old one used freon or something, and the new stuff sucks.
Chloroflourocarbons, which damage the ozone. They're heavier than air and seldom get to the ozone, but goddamn it don't confuse enviro-weenies with facts.
Sure they might make an exception in the case of the shuttle, but we're only talking about human lives here. It's not like there's a cute puppy going up on the shuttle. (aw!) Maradon! fucked around with this message on 08-05-2005 at 04:15 AM.
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Maradon! thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
Chloroflourocarbons, which damage the ozone. They're heavier than air and seldom get to the ozone, but goddamn it don't confuse enviro-weenies with facts.Sure they might make an exception in the case of the shuttle, but we're only talking about human lives here. It's not like there's a cute puppy going up on the shuttle. (aw!)
Psst...
1. Chlorofluorocarbons
2. It's the chlorine, released by the decomposition of CFCs in the stratosphere that catalyses ozone depletion.
3. Atmospheric gases are not sorted by molecular weight.
Perhaps you should join the Cato Institute. You and Stephen Milloy would get on well.
[Edit: Oh and for the record, freon-12 was the haloalkane in question.] Pvednes fucked around with this message on 08-05-2005 at 01:44 PM.
