Head and Shoulders

In 2002 my husband had a job working on prototypes for a new shuttle program. Leading up to the Iraq invasion the idea was scrapped so the funds could be used on defense.

It's a matter of priorities I guess.

Gwendolyn: In 2002 my husband had a job working on prototypes for a new shuttle program. Leading up to the Iraq invasion the idea was scrapped so the funds could be used on defense.

It's a matter of priorities I guess.

I think they have the right idea with the Constellation program... but they need a lot more money. And even with full funding, it still takes a long time to get a new manned spacecraft off the ground.

F*cking war.

Will their diaper supply hold out that long?

Despite the naysayers, I never tired of exploding shuttle headlines.

2010? isn't that the year we make contact?

I have personally been responsible for ripping wires out of the floor of the Johnson Space Center to retire the shuttle. I've got more to rip out. Didn't rip out any last night, we're to busy looking for hurricanes. We've still got two fully working Statmux's and a third spare that should fire up, as well as a if we really had to fourth. Right now I'm having to baby those things. A four channel 50 Mbps (yes Mega-bit) analog modem from 1984 just isn't meant to still be running now! A post on it

NASA also studies Manbearpig.

My next door neighbor is a retired engineer from Nasa, the amount of waste, featherbedding, and outright stupidity he tells me about is mind boggling. The Shuttle was a flawed design to begin with and has been nursed along about twenty years past its prime.

If there wasn't a 1 in 12 chance of them blowing up it wouldn't be as much fun. It's like Kramer driving with the gas gauge below empty. Live life on the edge Jerry!

Impudent Domain: My next door neighbor is a retired engineer from Nasa, the amount of waste, featherbedding, and outright stupidity he tells me about is mind boggling. The Shuttle was a flawed design to begin with and has been nursed along about twenty years past its prime.

I agree with him, there's only one thing the shuttle does really well that we wont be able to pull off well at first. It's a great work platform with a cargo bay. I could eventually see a permanent dockable work platform eventually being launched however negating that advantage.

pecosdave: A four channel 50 Mbps (yes Mega-bit) analog modem from 1984 just isn't meant to still be running now! A post on it

Why not? Are there weird parts in there that fail? (Holy crap you look like Will Sasso.) Also, what does "50Mbps analog" mean? You either have a digital connection on one end or you don't. Do you think your home ADSL modem is any less analog on the other side? It's all analog.

This is NOT rocket surgery, kids.

I always waited for the day when the shuttle would go up without a spy satellite in it's cargo bay and instead have a fuel supply tank and go cruise around the moon and back.....But it's never going to happen.

The Dogs of War: 2010? isn't that the year we make contact?

No dumb dumb, thats 20XX! All your base are belong to us!

Impudent Domain
The Shuttle was a flawed design to begin with

Nope. It was and is a great design. People who say it's flawed never have any workable suggestions for improving it or for an alternative that can do everything the shuttle can do (and you're no exception, you're not going to reply to this with any good ideas).

People like you just enjoy criticizing *everything* and I'm confident that if the shuttle program had been canceled by Carter, your comment in today's thread would read: "omfg I can't believe they still throw away an entire rocket on every launch when we've had the technology to build cheap, reusable shuttles since the '70s! NASA is so STUPID for not building the shuttle!"

The shuttle is perfect (the best design anyone has ever come up with) for building and servicing space stations. The failure is that after congress gave them the money to build a ship for building space stations, they didn't give them the money to build a space station for 20 years.

Get Lost: I always waited for the day when the shuttle would go up without a spy satellite in it's cargo bay and instead have a fuel supply tank and go cruise around the moon and back.....But it's never going to happen.

Why would you want to send a glider to the moon?

That would be a NO GO...

Get Lost
fuel supply tank and go cruise around the moon and back.....But it's never going to happen.

Rocket engines are pretty violent things. It's actually quite difficult to build an engine that can turn off, then back on again. The shuttle's engines can't - they weren't designed that way because that wasn't one of the requirements. When the shuttle turns off its main engines it can't turn them back on, even if there was more fuel in the tank. For maneuvering, it uses the two small ones that use hypergolic fuel and are therefore simpler, but produce less thrust. To go to the moon on those would require a *long* spiraling trajectory.

Reason two: when you come back from the moon, it takes the same amount of thrust to slow down into LEO. Nobody has ever built a ship that carries anywhere near that much fuel. Apollo didn't do it. Orion wont do it. Instead, at the end of a moon mission, they just dive right into the atmosphere. Apollo's heat shield was quite amazing, but it's only possible to make an ablative shield like that in certain shapes. It simply isn't possible to make one like that for the shuttle, which is why the shuttle uses tiles.

Bottom line, no amount of fuel will get the shuttle to the moon, and there's no way to get it back home safely if you did. So the reason the shuttle doesn't go to the moon has nothing at all to do with lack of desire on NASA's part.

If we spent more money on NASA, we could do wonderful and amazing things. We spend peanuts on NASA. It's like $50 per year per citizen.

Tofu: If we spent more money on NASA, we could do wonderful and amazing things. We spend peanuts on NASA. It's like $50 per year per citizen.

Chart thread?

/inanimate carbon rod

Tofu

No, the Russians correctly figured out that one time use space capsules was the way to go with current chemical rocket technology. If you need a big assed cargo taken up, send it on an unmanned rocket. If you need lots of space, build a space station. If you need a big assed cargo brought down, build it with a heat shield and parachutes. Better yet, you build it so you DON'T need to bring the whole thing back, just the important stuff.

The shuttle is a design that has to work 100% of the time. When it doesn't, you get the Challenger and Columbia. When the Soyuz breaks, you either light the escape rocket or you get an 8G reentry. (Not very comfortable, but you make it back.)

Need
Another
Seven
Astronauts

Well, no surprise here. It had been said among NASA folks that there weren't enough pre-scheduled shuttle launches to cover all the NASA's needs to meet international obligation toward the completion of ISS, etc. At some point, it was either to drop a HST servicing mission or not carrying up a laboratory from international collaborators (Japan or EU). Since NASA is a go with the HST SM4 (and the obligation to the international collaborators met), it was quietly speculated that the NASA had to come up with a new transportation system in line, or most likely, to extend the current STS mission lifetime.

It'd be stupid of NASA not to seek the option of lengthening the current orbiters' life. Considering unforeseeable difficulty to work with Russia, it's the wise choice to keep.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin must be ready to pop an artery, having to face this. He has said, time and again, that extending the shuttle program will only siphon money from Constellation.

I can't see either party in Congress or the White House voting for anything more than a token expenditure toward Constellation while still funding shuttle. Sooner or later, they'll find some excuse to sink Constellation, which is what they did with the Supercollider in Texas.

If we lose another orbiter, they won't need much of an excuse to zero all funding for any human space flight here.

Sorry America, no moon for you. Not yours.

/We need to Get Harriman on the case here, stat!
//obscure?

Enrico Pallazzo: Tofu: If we spent more money on NASA, we could do wonderful and amazing things. We spend peanuts on NASA. It's like $50 per year per citizen.

Chart thread?

Current budget - $17,318,000,000. Population approx 300,000,000.
17,318,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 = approx $57.73 per person.

and yah, i know i linked to Wiki. That doesn't make the figures wrong, tho.

Crosshair: No, the Russians correctly figured out that one time use space capsules was the way to go with current chemical rocket technology.

Yeah, every pound counts and our rockets aren't powerful enough to let us be wasteful. How much of the shuttle's mass is dedicated to atmospheric flight?

Little rocket for people, big rocket for cargo. The little rocket is cheap enough to use more often, and the big rocket doesn't waste mass on anything unnecessary. At least that's how I understand it.

Tofu: Nope. It was and is a great design. People who say it's flawed never have any workable suggestions for improving it or for an alternative that can do everything the shuttle can do (and you're no exception, you're not going to reply to this with any good ideas).

Nope. Strapping your payload and astronauts to the SIDE of the fuel tank is psychopathic and sociopathic and criminally INSANE.

Solution: Like the Saturn V, you put the cherry on TOP with a freaking escape tower. It'll blow up just the same but you have those extra milliseconds and distance between you and the hellfire.

It's not hard to grasp. Oh, and you don't try to reuse things that have been through space travel.

"But geopolitics and political pressure are undermining his position."

'Nuff said.

Impudent Domain: My next door neighbor is a retired engineer from Nasa, the amount of waste, featherbedding, and outright stupidity he tells me about is mind boggling. The Shuttle was a flawed design to begin with and has been nursed along about twenty years past its prime.

The number of lazy alcoholics living on the Space Coast who are employed by NASA is amazing. It is a massive bureaucracy that milks taxpayers on a daily basis. I personally know a guy who was busted twice for being drunk on the job and because of the union cannot be fired. He makes $23 an hour to move parts from one building to another. A zero skill job which requires maybe 2 hours of work per shift. Not to mention the nearly year long strike.

Quantum Apostrophe: Nope. Strapping your payload and astronauts to the SIDE of the fuel tank is psychopathic and sociopathic and criminally INSANE.

But you know, with that logic, riding a commercial jet-liner sounds insane, too...

There's no way they'll have a replacement before at least 2015, probably 2020. What else can they do?

Perfect does not equal "The best design anyone has come up with."

Also, "The best design anyone has come up with" does not equal "The best design anyone has ever built and/or launched into space.

/Fail?

After 2010 we were going to rely on Russian spacecraft for our manned missions until Constellation was ready.


I think I know why the US government changed their mind.

Tofu: The shuttle is perfect (the best design anyone has ever come up with) for building and servicing space stations. The failure is that after congress gave them the money to build a ship for building space stations, they didn't give them the money to build a space station for 20 years

that is pretty damn stupid, PERFECT? you got to be kidding me. As to alternative designs, you can google about a half dozen of them in a few minutes.

Yes Nasa could do more with a bigger budget, but since they are a grossly wasteful, paralyzed bureaucracy I don't see why we should bother. Scrap the whole damn thing and come up with a new government/private hybrid.

How about we built a space elevator instead?

/Yes, I know - current materials aren't tough enough...

Tofu: The shuttle is perfect (the best design anyone has ever come up with) for building and servicing space stations. The failure is that after congress gave them the money to build a ship for building space stations, they didn't give them the money to build a space station for 20 years.

And the Nina and Pinta were the best designs EVER developed to cross the Atlantic.

Are you a member of George Bush's "science advisory team"?

Tofu: If we spent more money on NASA, we could do wonderful and amazing things. We spend peanuts on NASA. It's like $50 per year per citizen.

I think it would be cool if when we file our taxes we were able to 'suggest' where we'd like our fundage to go. Just so that the peeps in Warshington had the data staring them in the eye when they vote more useless appropriations spending. Of course it all comes down to the NIMBY priciple anyway, pork is only pork if you're not getting some.

DeRosso: How about we built a space elevator instead?

/Yes, I know - current materials aren't tough enough...

I just heard a story on TWIS podcast that said they found a way to make carbon nanotubes evenstronger with a course of radiation. Now if we could just produce them cheap and quick we'd all be able to get to space before we die.

accujimmy: Now if we could just produce them cheap and quick we'd all be able to get to space before we die.

The part "Quick" is probably most difficult. After all, you are growing things called "nano".

In 2002 my husband had a job working on prototypes for a new shuttle program. Leading up to the Iraq invasion the idea was scrapped so the funds could be used on defense.
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FAIL.

Illegal immigration has cost more, and killed more people, than the Iraq war.

Illegal immigration has cost more, and killed more people, than the Iraq war.

Not as much as our uncontrolled debt has!

It would be nice if NASA had the funding to have one vehicle in flight AND develop it's replacement at the same time. Though they do suffer from the usual government bureaucracy of other agencies, they still provide more bang for their buck than any other agency. The Iraq war costs us about $400 million a day(at a rate of $12 billion a month). One day of Iraq war funding would cover the cost of the Phoenix mission. A little over two days would cover the Mars rover program. These peaceful exploration missions do a lot to improve our image abroad, but we choose to spend 10 times more money on blowing up brown people.

accujimmy: DeRosso: How about we built a space elevator instead?

/Yes, I know - current materials aren't tough enough...

I just heard a story on TWIS podcast that said they found a way to make carbon nanotubes evenstronger with a course of radiation. Now if we could just produce them cheap and quick we'd all be able to get to space before we die.

You just sent a tingling sensation down my spine - I can't find the podcast, though

Are you a member of George Bush's "science advisory team"?
----

Do you see a robotic arm or cargo bay in a Soyuez capsule?

"Obama wants a detailed review of NASA spending, he stated in the TV interview on WKYC-TV in Ohio. Last November Obama indicated that he would delay an American Return to the Moon for several more years leaving the moon to the Chinese astronauts to explore."

http://spaceports.blogspot.com

No wait, I think I found it: Podcast (new window)

fark80: Illegal immigration has cost more, and killed more people, than the Iraq war.

But illegal immigration isn't new. Mexicans have been flooding over our lax borders for well over a hundred years. At some points there's even common sewer systems between Mexico & US cities, coyotes feed illegals through the sewers, after they're in the US they can pop up damn near anywhere.

Build all the fences you want on land, they'll still stream through due to our continuous lack of common sense in city planning.

The Dogs of War: 2010? isn't that the year we make contact?

Yes, but we only have 2 years to do anything with it...

Quantum Apostrophe: Do you think your home ADSL modem is any less analog on the other side? It's all analog.

Considering the acronym stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line you might want to rethink your analogy. It's a digital signal sent over an analog medium. An analog modem takes a digital signal and converts (modulates) it to an analog signal (tones) where another modem converts it back to digital (demodulates) at the other end. That's what modem stands for, MOdulator/DEModulator.