Shuttle Delay

[alexander]

Saw this on the news this morning, and this kind of the news is related both to technology and Astronomy. Space shuttle Discovery was sceduled to take off between may 15 and june 3rd, but while on its way to the launch pad, yesterday a hairline crack was found on the outside of one of the gas tank insulation, launch was resceduled, bad part is going to be fixed. This is the first shuttle sceduled to take off after columbia's crash. I guess this just says that

1) not even NASA's assembly line is perfect and noone really is

2) just how thorough of an inspection does NASA equipment overgo, if they were able to locate a single hairline crack on the outside of the insulation of a gigantic gas tank

[UncleAl]

The Space Scuttle is crap. It began as a low orbit nuclear bomber with woven ferrite core memory resistant to EMP erasure. The Space Scuttle is a mission-less hodgepodge of useless dead weight and porkbarrel politics. Lofting mass into low Earth orbit with the Space Scuttle costs $30/gram. Look up today's price for gold.

 

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/nasa3.htm

A usable heavy lifter

 

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/nasa2.htm

NASA (Not A Space Agency) mission statement

[Kirk Gregory Czuhai]

I AGREE WITH UNCLE AL !!!!

the space shuttle is NOT ONLY a piece of junk!

IT IS A DEATH TRAP!!

statistically > 1/100 chance of dying by taking a ride in it proven so far!!! AT LEAST!!!

WAY OUT DATED!!! WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!!!

GARBAGE!

just look at the thing on the launch pad; are not you amazed that it gets off the ground at all?!?!

love and peace,

and,

peace and love,

(kirk) kirk gregory czuhai (link deleted)

p.s. THIS GOES FOR THE SPACE STATION AS WELL !!!

p.s. AND DEFINITELY FOR ANY MANED TRIP TO MARS!!!

(Link deleted by alexander, reason: link was irrelevant to current subject of discussion)

(Note: You are free to believe whatever you want to, and here at hypography we really encourage people to think freely, nobody has a right to judge you but yourself, but i encourage you to read through the FAQ before posting, please)

[Kirk Gregory Czuhai]

I AGREE WITH UNCLE AL !!!!

the space shuttle is NOT ONLY a piece of junk!

IT IS A DEATH TRAP!!

statistically > 1/100 chance of dying by taking a ride in it proven so far!!! AT LEAST!!!

WAY OUT DATED!!! WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!!!

GARBAGE!

just look at the thing on the launch pad; are not you amazed that it gets off the ground at all?!?!

love and peace,

and,

peace and love,

(kirk) kirk gregory czuhai (link deleted)

p.s. THIS GOES FOR THE SPACE STATION AS WELL !!!

p.s. AND DEFINITELY FOR ANY MANED TRIP TO MARS!!!

(Link deleted by alexander, reason: link was irrelevant to current subject of discussion)

(Note: You are free to believe whatever you want to, and here at hypography we really encourage people to think freely, nobody has a right to judge you but yourself, but i encourage you to read through the FAQ before posting, please)

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[UncleAl]

Space Scuttle foam was originally compromised when its blowing agent was changed from a proven engineering freon to an "environmentally safe equivalent." The ongoing foam obscenity is trivially ameliorated by adding (surface-activated) glass fiber or carbon fiber long tow to the mix as it nears the surface. That is why your fiberglas bathroom fixtures and graphite fishing poles and tennis racquets are fiber-filled. Minor crack failures of the matrix are compensated by fibers spanning the flaw and holding things together.

 

Uncle Al sent a nice letter to NASA telling them about 50-year old technology. NASA sent a nice letter back to Uncle Al telling him to go to Hell. OK - who is burning in Hell right now?

 

(Kevlar fiber won't do it. The stuff anisotropically deforms in moisture. Dyneema/Spectra is kinda slippery unless surface oxidized.)

[Pyrotex]

The Space Scuttle is crap. It began as a low orbit nuclear bomber with woven ferrite core memory resistant to EMP erasure. The Space Scuttle is a mission-less hodgepodge of useless dead weight and porkbarrel politics. Lofting mass into low Earth orbit with the Space Scuttle costs $30/gram. Look up today's price for gold.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/nasa3.htm

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/nasa2.htm

Uncle Al sent a nice letter to NASA telling them about 50-year old technology. NASA sent a nice letter back to Uncle Al telling him to go to Hell. OK - who is burning in Hell right now?

Uncle Al.

You are probably one of the most well-informed people on this site. Your insights, physical, engineerial, chemical and social are often a wonder to behold. And there is little doubt that you have garnered (honestly) the appreciation of many fine folk on this site.

 

If I may be allowed one small criticism, it is this: your mix of 93% accurate, refined scientific truth with 7% utter... well, stuff that is not r.s.t., (like the "low orbit nuclear bomber " quote above; a fabrication of a very angry mind) gives me pause. I wish I had your technical knowledge, but I am also very glad that I don't write the screeds at your website. In fact, I can't even read them to the end. It makes me wonder why you do it. Then again, maybe it's none of my biz-wax.

 

Have a great day and keep them posts coming.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I certaintly sympathize with Al's distrust of the shuttle, but I don't think it's purely an engineering failure. I think that Kirk Gregory Chuzai (mouthful, that) post points to something. "Expensive, dangerous, pointless." Common objections that point to his own personal failures more than any problem with the space program. Are our lives and money so dear to us that they are ends unto themselves? Is a life so jealously defended that nothing is worth risking it for even worth defending?

 

Shuttle failures are not failures of engineering, they are failures of will and imagination.

 

40 years between visits to the moon. What happened? We took one look at that infinite blackness and we came right back on home to mommy. We invented a new toy that allowed us to say we were making progress (and we WERE) but we were careful to never stretch the apron strings. We loved our new space shuttle toy, but we never got rid of it. We're the forty year old man who still collects GI Joes.

 

There is imagination here, and bravery, and we sold it all for an SUV and a little bit of earthly power. Our deal with the devils of risk has stuck us in a mighty deep hole. We worked hard for what we've got, and now we're afraid to risk any of it.

 

In the long run, space is the only important thing we as a species will ever do. If we don't explore space, we will each of us die alone, our childrens children will die alone, and one by sorry one, every memory of any thing that was ever good or worthy about us will die too. We'll die in the cradle because it was warm, and we were too scared to get out from under our atmospheric blanket. Anything we have to offer to the universe will never be offered.

 

The difficulties are insurrmountable, yes, yes, yes. Who gives a damn how much it costs, in lives or in money. The risks are proportional to the reward, and the reward is endless.

 

So - here is the choice. You can have the universe. An eternity of learning, of wonder, of awe, excitement and adventure. It's dangerous, it's expensive, It's hard. Or - you can have nothing. You can die.

 

You can look up one morning from the comfort of your little bed, and you can think - "I never saw anything out there, I don't know what's outside, and noone even knows I existed, but at least I had a long and easy life, without any risks."

 

There is only one word I know for that attitude.

 

TFS

 

edit: not to single out KGC - it's a personal failure of all of us.

[Pyrotex]

...here is the choice. You can have the universe. An eternity of learning, of wonder, of awe, excitement and adventure. It's dangerous, it's expensive, It's hard. Or - you can have nothing...You can look up one morning from the comfort of your little bed, and you can think - "I never saw anything out there, I don't know what's outside, and no one even knows I existed, but at least I had a long and easy life, without any risks."....

Amen. Well said.

[Boerseun]

Amen. Well said.

Ditto. Can't give any rep, unfortunately... I needz to spread around first, Brother Stone...

[UncleAl]

Space Scuttle cargo bay is 60 feet long and 15 feet wide. A B-52 bomb bay is 28 feet long and 6 feet wide (and holds two 9-megaton Mk-53 thermonuclear weapons).

 

The Space Scuttle is too narrow to accommodate anything of importance you'd want babied into, say, geosynchronous orbit. It is too short to accommodate a payload plus serious booster to make it go somewhere. However,

 

http://www.strategic-air-command.com/weapons/nuclear_bomb_chart.htm

 

The Space Scuttle cargo bay is two bombs wide and five bombs long, depending on the device and its external configuration. That's a nice fit for a round number.

[Boerseun]

Bombs might fit, but the Space Scuttle ain't maneuverable. Once it's lanched into orbit, it basically parks there, going round and round, till they decide to ditch it into the atmosphere. Which means that if it was ever utilized as a bomber platform, it can only bomb targets lying directly inline with its orbit - unless they lift rockets with the Scuttle that carry their own boosters with enough juice to take 'em where the bad guys are.

ICBM's worked out cheaper, and were bought for that purpose.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm not coming to the Space Scuttle's defence here, I just think it is very unlikely for it to have ever been conceived as a bomb platform.

[Pyrotex]

Space Scuttle cargo bay is 60 feet long and 15 feet wide....The Space Scuttle cargo bay is two bombs wide and five bombs long, depending on the device and its external configuration. That's a nice fit for a round number.

Coincidences of small numbers don't mean much.

 

The 60 ft by 15 ft came from an earlier system, one with a large telescope, a camera, and several film canisters. This was the same size as the telescope that was go have gone in the DynoSoar, which never was built. But they eventually did fly this payload (on an expendable rocket system) with the film canisters that could be individually de-orbited, re-entered and snagged in mid-air. When the military agreed to help support Shuttle development, they picked the wing configuration (to meet their landing requirements) and they picked the cargo bay size, to fit their more-or-less standard size for recon satellites.

 

This bit of space history was told to me personally by Bob Overmyer, Space Shuttle Pilot, now deceased. He trained for the DynoSoar program.

 

The Shuttle cannot be a "bomber". Any ordinance in its cargo bay would be "in orbit". You drop it out, it just goes around the planet. You would have to put retro rockets and guidance system on every "bomb". Reentry from orbit is far less accurate then the suborbital trajectories that ICBMs take. That, plus the fact that it takes three months to prep a Shuttle for launch, makes the whole scenario pointless and moot.

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to see the Shuttle replaced with something more cost-effective. It has enough real flaws as it is. I don't see the point in making up lies about it.