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2005-07-28 Home Front: Tech

Discovery ~~stranded at~~ docks with Space Station

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Posted by Thromotle Cleting5515 2005-07-28 09:41|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Pics of the external tank just after sep, showing the missing foam:
http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2005/07/shuttle_fleet_g.html

Posted by mojo">mojo 2005-07-28 11:49|| 2005-07-28 11:49|| Front Page Top

#2 Mixed emotions. Shuttle was a mistake from the beginning with compromised designs. Still, it is exerating to watch it go up and it is all we have.

Hopefully the non-government boys will get some orbital space planes in service soon that can get people up and we can send the equipment in unmanned rockets.

Here is a thought, don't ground the shuttle, just run it on autopilot without people and use it to carry bulk stuff up there. i'm thinking water (drink, split for air, and use hyrdogen for fuel) or kerosine (rocket fuel with less bang than hydrogen but also easier to handle and transfer). If the shuttle blows no big whoop, if the shuttle doesn't blow we've got stuff up there that will allow us to build a freaking gas station to tank up and get us out of Low Earth Orbit.

Posted by rjschwarz 2005-07-28 11:52|| 2005-07-28 11:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Are you ready for the really big sick joke?

The shuttle was built so that the autopilots could handle _everything_ from the reentry burn to the landing on the runway.

Except landing gear deployment.

Someone argued that if the landing gear were to deploy at Mach 5, due to some sort of malfunction, it would wreck the craft, so it has to be manual.

(Never mind that if the autopilot starts malfunctioning at Mach 5 there's probably going to be lots of other stuff going wrong too).

Anyway, if you try to land on automatic, the shuttle will do everything flawlessly right up to the point where it pancakes onto the runway because the landing gear didn't come down.

Or so I've heard.

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-07-28 12:49|| http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com]">[http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com] 2005-07-28 12:49|| Front Page Top

#4 If true Phil, that's gotta be cheaper to fix than redoing the entire thing. At least short term.

Posted by rjschwarz 2005-07-28 12:53|| 2005-07-28 12:53|| Front Page Top

#5 Not a bad idea, course the russ gave up on Buran after 1 remote control flight....

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-28 13:54|| 2005-07-28 13:54|| Front Page Top

#6 We had an after-hours talk about the Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini) program at work today. They accomplished so much back then and so little now. I really think government agencies can only last 20 years or so. Then you have completely shut them down and start a brand new one, with new people.

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2005-07-28 22:13|| home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2005-07-28 22:13|| Front Page Top

#7 Jackal, I wouldn't go that far, but I would say a government agency needs competition to stay healthy. The US military has that. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are all in pretty good shape.

NASA has no competition, they should be split up into at least two (manned and unmanned) and they should not be cooperating so much with other nations and the Air Force. It might seem counterintuitive but sometimes cooperation takes longer and costs more, and for some reason the US always ends up paying the lions share of those costs.

Posted by rjschwarz 2005-07-28 22:29|| 2005-07-28 22:29|| Front Page Top

#8 They also need to get over the old "failure is not an option" mantra that has made the entire organization overly safety concious. Why do we shrug when test pilots die in service but freak out and cancel things for two years when astronauts die? Yeah you want to be safe, but it shouldn't be crippling.

Posted by rjschwarz 2005-07-28 22:31|| 2005-07-28 22:31|| Front Page Top

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