Shuttle Fleet Grounded (1 Viewer)

[Jack Briggs]

And, Jordan, with luck humans will be traveling again to the Moon anywhere from as soon as 2015 to no later than 2020. Remember, just last week Congress voted on an authorization of NASA's new goals with overwhelming support for returning astronauts to the Moon and, later, sending them on to Mars.

The International Space Station, no matter what the end result is, is being rethought from NASA's perspective. It is to serve as a stepping stone, so to speak, to the so-called Vision for Space Exploration. "Space science," as such, will be lessened even further. Somehow, the orbiting outpost is to serve in the grand vision of the Vision for Space Exploration.

There will be further flights of the current orbiter, but, as I said earlier, Mike Griffin is hoping for no more than about 15.

As mentioned in a previous post, derivatives of the current Space Shuttle launching modes are being studied. In fact, a heavy-lift launch vehicle for use in the "Constellation" program (i.e., the CEV) is based on the Space Shuttle's external tank, SRBs, and Space Shuttle Main Engines (probably at the aft of the vehicle).

Also, "Shuttle-C," another variant, is being studied. "Shuttle-C," in fact, might end up completing the International Space Station.

In the Congressional authorization of last week, a primary point stands out: The United States must have its own access to space in some fashion until the CEV comes online. In other words, the Space Shuttle must continue flying until the replacement is ready (whereas the previous NASA administrator would have retired the orbiter in 2010 and waited an entire five years until the CEV would have been ready; U.S. astronauts would have relied on the Russians' Soyuz spacecraft throughout all that time -- well, no more).

Mike Griffin, though? Accelerate the CEV's development! Make it happen sooner, not later. And he is getting support.

 

[MarkHastings]

But with all this talk about how their super high quality photos will teach them SO much (which has never been a possibility before), you have to wonder how they ever learned about this stuff back in the 70's.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I had not heard about the flowers experiment. That's funny! They do pay through the nose to have that done, though. I mean they really, really pay through the nose.

I think with the way things are going, it might be more cost effective to take the crew out of the shuttle, and redesign the shuttle to carry just cargo. A smaller capsule for the astronauts would gather less heat, and have fewer problems returning just because it is smaller.

Didn't they, at one time, say that the payload carrier would be launched and become part of a space station? I still think that makes more sense, but I will admit to being somewhat ignorant to the problems that would come up.

Glenn

 

[RobertR]

Sigh..yes it was. I miss the sense of true innovation, of pushing the state of the art. Area 51 theories notwithstanding, nothing has really gone beyond things such as the SR-71 or the 60s boosters. Wouldn't it be great to have a true space plane? If only that 60s attitude had been maintained...

 

[Jack Briggs]

Robert, there are those who insist that the U.S. has followed up the magnificent SR-71 with an even faster, more capable vehicle called the Aurora -- and, depending on who you read, the thing sounds like it is nearly a spaceplane. But you're right: We seem to have moved beyond the rapid pace of aerospace development of yore. Now an aircraft is adopted by the military for what seems like more than a generation. Only now is the F/A-22 being readied as a replacement for the venerable F-15.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Jack, I'm curious to hear your opinion on the so-far theoretical 'space elevator'. Think it's feasible in this age of terrorism?

 

[Jack Briggs]

Not really. It's an exciting concept, but I just don't see a so-called "space elevator" happening (apologies to Arthur C. Clarke).

 

[RobertR]

I'm so torn about the Aurora. I wish it was real, but I'm too much of a skeptic to be easily convinced about it. The same goes for the feasibility of a space elevator.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, same here, Robert. But those Aurora stories are coming from reliable sources (including John Pike).

 

[RobertR]

Hmmm, that's such a bright spot, Jack.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I, for one, have very good reasons of my own to believe that there is a replacement for the SR-71, and that it probably does have the kinds of capabilities attributed to it -- capabilities which would make it functional as the lower half of a two-stage-to-orbit combination. Of course, by keeping the programme "black" the Government is essentially cheating the public out of billions of dollars annually which could be earned with this technology, not to mention a contributor to the deaths of the Columbia astronauts. I don't appreciate having that happen over my head; and to think that when I was at Johnson a year before, they weren't allowing visitors in Mission Control because they were afraid of a terrorist attack targteting Col. Ramon! I also have reason to believe the system has serious technical problems, but if it were a little more open a solution would be found eventually. Incidentally, if you ever want to get kicked out of a University engineering programme, try asking questions which get a little too close to the edges of the department head's still-active security clearance!

 

[Jordan_E]

I look at the current space program through the eyes of someone who was eight years old when we landed on the moon and spent the next couple of years wanting to be an astronaut, convinced we were heading for Mars soon, so the disappointment is there knowing that as I start toward my 50s that we may not get there before I take the permanent dirt nap. A lot of talk can't make kids too enthused these days.

 

[Win Joy Jr]

Jack -

Upper stages flew numerous times when the program returned to flight after 51-L. TDRS-3 thru TDRS-7, Galieo, and some DSP payloads were deployed with an IUS. These missions were too far along in design and fabrication to transition them to an expendable launch vehilcle.

Now, the more powerful Centaur upper stage was shelved, but IUS flew plenty of times...

 

[Michael Were]

Christopher,

You state that: "There's a whole Universe out there, innumerable cubic light years full of matter and energy we can use and perhaps worlds we can inhabit -- with a little tweaking at least."

I don't know how we can go light years away from our precious watery rock when the furthest out we've gone is just a hair outside of our solar system and that has taken about 30 years. Other worlds to exploit, we haven't even explored this entire planet (how deep in the ocean has man gone again??).

Come on, the only reason why we like man in space is because we are like Jordan_E (romantics who just want to go into space). I too wanted to go into space when I was a little kid; however, I see that we are not technologically there yet to do it intelligently.

The only thing that man ever did scientifically on the moon was play golf and drive a dune buggy. The pathfinder/spirit/opportunity rovers have done a better job (scientifically) than humans could ever have do and for a lot less money and without risking a human life in space (and spirit and opportunity are still doing it).

The world is truly what we make of it. If we want to make a world where human space travel is common, we need to: A. Figure out what we want from traveling to outer space (and not the crackpot helium-3 thing either); B. Figure out when humans are truly needed in space; C. Teach our children math and science (because, as it stands right now, the majority of American Adults can't even understand algebra, rudimentary physics or the religio-political hotbed of EVOLUTION) ; D. Stop fighting amongst ourselves.

If we can't accomplish these simple things do we even belong outside of the "Cradle" as Tsiolkovskii called the living organism on which we are a geologic/cosmologic insignificant temporal blip.

I'm gonna go play Star Wars Legos on the Xbox cause I wanna go into "outer space."

Michael

 

[Lee ps]

Griffin won't rule out launching another shuttle this year. That's a safe posture.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

To everyone like Michael Were, I have this to say: Do you think that the greatest accomplishments in human history were not achieved by romantics? And surely it is no coincidence that the greatest flowerings of art and philosophy have coincided with a territorial expansion on the part of their parent civilisations!

To those who say that we need to solve our terrestrial problems before venturing beyond the earth, I say: I see in outer space great opportunities to solve the problems of our world. Even in the little we have done with the shallow orbital zone around our own world, we have achieved great benefits, such as the immense increase in safety and agricultural productivity made possible by weather and survey sattelites. If we reach a little farther out, see what we can gather! As many megawatts of electrical energy as we care to capture, constant and uninterrupted, fed from that great furnace the Sun; cubic miles of high-alloy steel, sufficient to serve all the demand of our civilisation for long years to come; platinum, that precious metal, by the tonne; aluminum, titanium, and silicon in profusion, in an environment where refining and fabricating them would be far easier than the clumsy processes we must use in a blanket of life-supporting, oxidizing atmosphere at ambient temperatures; any level of normal force we care to choose, rather than one fixed gravity of ten metres per second squared; for those who object that there is nothing in space, do you know how valuable "nothing" is to many manufacturing processes? There are plenty of manufacturing engineers who would give their working hands for a vacuum chamber a hundred metres on a side, not to mention one [the Moon] the size of Asia!