Shuttle Discovery Mission STS-121

[Turtle]

15 minutes to lauch & a lot of controversey. The big question is should we have stopped the program after the last blow-up & gone immediately to working on the new heavy lift system we plan to use to go to the Moon & Mars?
Gotta run; launch is on again. Anybody else watching?

[Roadam]

where???????????????????

oh, T-10minutes........

gentle breeze, and they abandon the launch? and some eagles

[Turtle]

Launch scrubbed for today due to lightning danger. Nonetheless, we now have some extra time to discuss the merits of the mission & continued shuttle lauches.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sh...121/index.html

Originally Posted by nasa.gov

During the second spacewalk the crew will replace the detached cable on the MT, which was inadvertently cut, and its reel assembly.

Oooopppssss!
I can't find the NASA channel anywhere on my cable & only FOX was covering the lauch.

[Roadam]

It works on the internet......

By the way, how would you trust a vehicle, that can be detroyed by eagles, to land trough the atmosphere?

[UncleAl]

The Space Scuttle is an exercise in beuarocracy. The Space Scuttle is crap. Mass injected into low Earth orbit costs three times as much in constant dollars in the reusable Space Scuttle vs. the disposable Saturn V. How smart is that?

Management - none of us separately is as stupid as all of us together.

[CraigD]

“Shuttle Columbia Mission…” A weird mental slip has occurred here, as surely every spaceflight enthusiast knows that Columbia, the first of the STS orbiters to fly into space, met a fiery end during reentry on 1 February 2003. STS-121 is being flown by Discovery.

Though it’s tempting to criticize NASA leaders for going ahead with STS-121 before fully solving the external tank insulating foam shedding problem that led to Columbia’s loss – a policy of proceeding when potentially critical defects were known to exist has been shown to be responsible for the loss of both Challenger and Discovery, 2/5 of the total flightworthy fleet, and a huge blow to public and commercial acceptance of the system – this time, I believe they’ve made a correct choice. Key to accepting the risk of flying before the foam shedding problem is corrected is that STS-121 is that, unless Discovery fails to achieve her planned orbit, she’ll rendezvous with the ISS. EVAs are planned to inspect her leading edges and tiles for damage, and if sever damage is found, the crew will be left on the ISS until Atlantis can be flow to return them (likely 9/2006 or later). It’s unlikely that such damage could be repaired, but at least loss of life would be avoided.

It’s saddening to me that late 2010 will likely see the last flight of a winged, runway-landing spacecraft for some time to come. NASA’s next manned system,”Project Constellation”, which it appears will be a 3-6 person, modernized Apollo-like system, seems a step backward from the 8+ person shuttles, even though Constellation’s “CEV” is planned to have much greater flight capabilities than the shuttle – slightly better than the 35-year-old Apollo system. The Constellation CLV+CEV system will be about 1% reusable (by mass), compared to the shuttle nearly 99%.

I can’t help but speculate that the extended leadership of NASA – a group including the US Legislature and Executive – isn’t being backward, and, for lack of a better description, a bit nostalgic in their thinking. While the STS ultimately fell short of its design goals of a highly economical and reliable “space truck”, the CLV+CEV system doesn’t even have the goal – IMHO, it’s just “what Apollo would have look like if it’d been done in the 2010s”. Having been burnt (absolutely no pun intended) by the difficulties of highly reusable systems (the shuttles) and having to date failed to achieve a successful single-stage-to-orbit design, US spaceflight leadership appears to be retreating to a comfortable, proven design, reminiscent of NASA’s glory days.

Perhaps the private sector – or China, or some nation no one expects - will dare where NASA dares no longer. Perhaps NASA will regain its institutional nerve. For an American born in 1960 who joyfully assembled a plastic model of every manned spacecraft NASA has flown, these seem somewhat downbeat times.

Edit: Like the shuttle, the CLV's solid-rocket boosters are recoverable, so the system's reusability by mass is actually about 3%, not 1%.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Glad to see somebody else likes the Shuttles.

Sure, they have design problems - maybe SpaceShipThree or Four will be what the shuttle could have been.

We'll see about the CEV, I'll be surprised if the end of the Shuttle isn't the end of manned spaceflight in the United States.

TFS
[in Burt we trust]

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by CraigD

“Shuttle Columbia Mission…” A weird mental slip has occurred here, as surely every spaceflight enthusiast knows that Columbia, the first of the STS orbiters to fly into space, met a fiery end during reentry on 1 February 2003. STS-121 is being flown by Discovery.

I can only say in my defense that I have a reputation for weird mental slips & this is how I reinforce it. I hope to have the title corrected ASAP.
In the mean time, the launch of Shuttle DISCOVERY is rescheduled for July 4, 2006 2:38 p.m. EDT.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sh...121/index.html

PS

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Glad to see somebody else likes the Shuttles.

Yeah, I like the shuttle. It seemed a step toward a Single-Stage-To-Orbit system, one of the holy grails of spaceflight enthusiasts of my generation. When I daydream of the unlikely possibility of my second career as an aerospace engineer , it’s winged (or possibly rotored), and either multi-stage or single-stage reusable, to orbit or beyond. It’s also either beamed power or antimatter, keeping it well within the realm of science-fiction, for the time being.

Much of the reason for the shuttles awful reputation among people of all professions and political philosophies is, I think, due to NASA’s effort to “sell” it as a stolid, unglamorous “space truck”, when, in fact, it was the most complicated, and arguably highest-performance spacecraft ever flown. Not only did NASA attempt to sell this former image to the public, they appear to have, wishfully, bought it themselves, adopting an attitude that identified dangers couldn’t be real, because the system was supposed to be boringly safe. Once this attitude was discredited, first by Challenger in 1986 then again by Columbia in 2003, there appears to have remained a bias not to find creative solutions to flaws in the system, but to fix blame and fix failures to successfully implement the original design, then throw excessive time and money at the problem in an effort to appease government and popular outrage.

One can’t help but wonder if, a different, better style of management at NASA from the mid 1970s on, the shuttle might not now be considered a successful system, and be of greater influence on future spacecraft design.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by CraigD

Yeah, I like the shuttle.
Much of the reason for the shuttles awful reputation among people of all professions and political philosophies ...successful system,

Me too Craig; in fact, I love the shuttle. Ignore the politics, the professions, the philosophies...the damn thing flies! I have built the models as well that you mention (the LEM was tricky I seem to recall) & blasted my share of Estes powered rockets into flight, watched & listened as Walter Cronkite gave his blow by blow news...
Anyway, I love the shuttle & yet think its time to move on; it is after all considered experimental. The launch is still go for July 4 inspite of a new-found crack in the main tank's insulation.

Originally Posted by NASA

At a Mission Management Team meeting this morning, a decision was made to continue analyzing available data before making a final decision regarding tomorrow's launch attempt. The question is whether there needs to be a hands-on inspection of the area around the foam crack before launch.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sh...ain/index.html