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Home Front: Tech
Shuttle grounded until pigs have wings 2006
2005-08-19
Parts which duplicate article posted by Shipman deleted.
NASA said Thursday it is pushing the next shuttle flight into 2006 to give engineers time to understand dangerous fuel-tank foam loss and to avoid the string of unrealistic launch dates that preceded Discovery's just-completed mission.

NASA's three remaining space shuttles are grounded as the agency investigates why a large, potentially catastrophic chunk of foam insulation broke off Discovery's fuel tank during liftoff last month — the same problem that doomed Columbia in 2003. Discovery's tank lost sizable pieces of foam from five areas, in fact.
Even My '77 Nova did better than that.
The space agency wants to understand and stop this kind of foam loss before the shuttle flies again. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's new space operations chief, said the next mission will not take place before March and will be carried out by Discovery. Atlantis was supposed to fly next, in September, but managers decided to switch spaceships so Atlantis can be ready for scrapping a heavy-lift space station assembly mission once Discovery returns.

All three external fuel tanks at Kennedy Space Center, meanwhile, will likely be returned to the manufacturing plant in New Orleans for repairs.

Both Griffin and Gerstenmaier said they will avoid setting multiple launch dates for the next mission. By the time Discovery blasted off July 26 on the first shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster, it had gone through 15 launch dates. Some safety improvements that could have been made were not because of the push to meet a launch date that was always just a few months away.

"That's why we're going out as far as March and giving ourselves what we hope is plenty of time to for people to forget the Shuttle even exists evaluate where we are," Griffin told reporters.
This is just depressing. My childhood heroes have feet of clay. Maybe the Chinese will colonize space. Americans won't.
Posted by:Jackal

#7  Tony real capitalism? You think Washington DC wants to allow real capitalism?
Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom   2005-08-19 17:19  

#6  Here's a post by Jerry Pournelle on the shuttle.

Here's a really good comment;

What ought to have been done with NASA's billion and a half was: (1) Hire a dozen smart people to design a condom for the Shuttle Tank. Peter Glaskowsky and I discussed this last night: surely the right material for the condom would be America's Cup sailcloth which isn't a cloth but a reinforced carbon fiber film, as light as anything made for its strength. Make a condom of that, encase the tank in epoxy and that condom, and foam chunks won't fall off. It might weigh a few hundred pounds, and so what? (2) use the remaining funds -- a billion at least -- to pay a bunch of small companies out there to work on SSTO, recoverable first stage rocket boosters, and air drop. Get each to build the best X project flying hardware they can build incorporating their approach for the $333 million each will get. Fly those ships. Observe the results and decide which concepts to encourage.


It's all *there* to get people into space (also check out Whiskey Mikes comment today regarding nanotech sheets), we just need to (a) get the government out of deciding what happens in space and (b) let the private sector rip!
Posted by: Tony (UK)   2005-08-19 16:53  

#5  Time to finally privitize space exploration. NASA has been lost in space for decades.
Posted by: Captain America   2005-08-19 13:44  

#4  NASA said Thursday it is pushing the next shuttle flight into 2006 to give engineers time to understand dangerous fuel-tank foam loss and to avoid the string of unrealistic launch dates that preceded Discovery's just-completed mission.

These guys' collective heads are harder than diamonds.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2005-08-19 10:47  

#3  Looks like ima maybe have Oxford fren help me post. We'ent me.
Posted by: Grulet Ulinert8626   2005-08-19 09:51  

#2  NASA said Thursday it is pushing the next shuttle flight into 2006 to give engineers time to understand dangerous fuel-tank foam loss and to avoid the string of unrealistic launch dates that preceded Discovery's just-completed mission.

The very first step in the process is to fire without pause any bureaucratic weenie who changed the formulation and who resists returning to the original formulation. We've had years to get back to it, so time is not an excuse. Off with their heads [the big or little one, fielders choice].
Posted by: Shomonter Threater9114   2005-08-19 08:52  

#1  Americans probably still will Jackal, you're just looking at the wrong ones. The NASA of the moonshots that so inspired kids like me (well, I was then!) is long long gone. This NASA is a bureaucratic nightmare, too afraid to take chances, to tell the American public what *risk* really means - ie people can die doing this stuff, and are too hampered by ridiculous legislation - one of the reasons the foam detached is because it doesn't use CFCs.

The people you want to look at are the Rutans, the people who were involved in the X-Prize and the newer prizes. Richard Branson is also in the frame too. Essentially, entrepreneurs - people who see an opportunity and just get things done.

Don't look to the Government for colonising space, the best thing they can do is to buy services from private firms.

Check out what Rand Simberg, Jerry Pournelle and others have to say on this - it's not all doom and gloom! :)
Posted by: Tony (UK)   2005-08-19 06:51  

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