Space Shuttle's Left Wing May Be Damaged

nbc4.com ^ | 20070612 | NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree

[XBob]

Space Shuttle's Left Wing May Be Damaged Meteorite, Space Junk May Have Struck Panels

POSTED: 5:13 pm EDT June 12, 2007 UPDATED: 7:00 pm EDT June 12, 2007 Email This Story | Print This Story Sign Up for Breaking News Alerts WASHINGTON -- A meteorite or space junk may have struck Space Shuttle Atlantis' left wing, according to NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree.

NASA recorded a hit on reinforced carbon panels 7 and 8 on the left wing. The panels keep heat from re-entry from burning the spacecraft.

...

This is the same area where foam damaged Columbia's left wing and caused it to break up, killing its crew on Feb. 1, 2003.

[gonzo]

“...So at what point does NASA officially become widely regarded as a bunch of dumbasses who should go back to the drawing board?

Seems we crossed that point a while back...”

We never replaced the STS-1 design with a newer and better STS-2 design, so we’re stuck with a Model-T instead of a Cadillac-XLR to do the manual job of going into space.

If we’re not gonna do it correctly, we should go back and improve the old ‘up-and-down’ technology that we first used to take us into space. It worked for us, and has served the Russians and Chinese well. .................... FRegards

[Lancey Howard]

“Big sky, little bullet.”
It would really be lottery-style odds if the shuttle was hit by anything foreign. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was another case of liberal green-friendly foam causing the problem.

[Coyoteman]

To: RadioAstronomer; cyborg

ping 275, one of my better posts.

Radioastronomer was banned last fall.

He can be found on Darwin Central, along with a number of other scientists who were either banned or left in disgust.

[null and void]

LOL! I thought someone would get the oblique reference...

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

“You’re teasing...”

No, not a tease. I have seen some of it. I am a scientist and a sceptic. What I have seen working has me convinced. It is for real.

No links at the moment. The lab I visited is not featured on the net. I have seen a system that produces 40-50 kw without fuel. No solar, no wind, no water fall, no fuel. Dominant energy.

[ReignOfError]

They should have put it at a Lagrange point between the Earth and the Moon and only put a refueling/pit stop in LEO.

Good idea, but I'd reverse it. Keep the ISS in LEO, where it's easier to move crew to and from, and put a permanent way station/rest stop, manned or unmanned, between the Earth and moon. It could be resupplied by unmanned cargo craft like the Progress, or the next generation transport could flit back and forth between it and the ISS.

[ReignOfError]

They should have put it at a Lagrange point between the Earth and the Moon and only put a refueling/pit stop in LEO.

Good idea, but I'd reverse it. Keep the ISS in LEO, where it's easier to move crew to and from, and put a permanent way station/rest stop, manned or unmanned, between the Earth and moon. It could be resupplied by unmanned cargo craft like the Progress, or the next generation transport could flit back and forth between it and the ISS.

[longtermmemmory]

could it be the environmentally “friendly” materials they are now forced to use because of environwackos.

[ReignOfError]

It is possible. Govt does not want any of this. Tesla knew how. Govt destroyed his work and tried to destroy him.

What, just Tesla? C'mon. At least throw in a little Edgar Cayce to make it interesting. Even George Noory mixes it up a little now and then.

[omnivore]

Just my two cents. I love NASA and space stuff, both manned and unmanned. I have watched Shuttles land in California and take off from Florida. That said, the shuttles are pretty old and beat up at this point. They were supposed to be cheaper in the long run than single-shot ships like Apollo, but they are much more high-maintenance than the original concept was claimed to be, so it's unclear if they're really cheaper than one-shot ships would be, whether Apollos or something bigger like the new Orions are going to be.

Soyez ships are one-shot and built new every flight. Very dependable due to having worked the bugs out and improved the design in stages, and no maintenance or refurbs, just discard every one.

The ISS was and is more a political boondoggle than a real research tool, IMHO. Nice for world peace and all, and nice for medical/physiology studies of long-term effects of space flight. Nobody's going to use it to manufacture miracle drugs or alloys that are too difficult to make on earth (due to differential density-driven fractionation during crystalization) or any other production jobs. Research sure. Too expensive for production.

Will ISS ever be a way-station for missions farther out (Moon, Mars)? Probably not. For Moon missions, there's not much point in stopping off there on the way up, and from an orbital energetics perspective, there's no realistic way to stop off there on the way down. Mars trips, too early to tell. There have been proposals both for assemble-on-orbit missions, and for missions which don't bother doing that. Coming back from Mars, at least the energetics aren't as bad as trying to stop off coming down from the Moon, but there's still little reason to bother, and after a two-year mission, of which the last six months were in transit back from Mars, who's going to want to hang around the ISS rather than getting back on the ground? OTOH, it would be a good place to leave the earth-return-reentry module of a Mars mission parked, rather than dragging it all the way to Mars and back. So that's a potential good use for the ISS in the long term, if we get up the gumption to do a manned Mars mission while it's in place.

The worst problem of the ISS from an American perspective is that it is in a high-inclination orbit so it's easily accessible from Russia's launch location. The Shuttle gets to it at a cost of nearly 1/3 of the payload capacity being unused (the cargo weight has to be reduced to get to the energetically less favorable orbit of the ISS compared to what a Shuttle can lift into orbits with inclination more suitable from Florida). That turned out to help (ISS being Russia-accessible) during the period of Russian-only access after the Columbia accident, but it has always been a big limitation on construction of the ISS. And while this would be a big detraction from using the ISS as an assembly-point for a Mars expedition on the outbound leg, since it puts unnecessary weight limits on components, it doesn't detract from using it as a return stop from Mars for transfer to the earth-reentry lander.

But, my guess is, we're going to spend so many decades fumfering around before we put up a Mars mission, ISS will have been decommissioned before we even start. After 20-25 years on orbit, the technology just starts getting too old to maintain even just on the inside. I agree that B-52's and all can be re-fitted and be useful machines for much longer. But they are put in hangars and really stripped down for upgrades and big overhauls. Every fix or upgrade to the ISS down the road will be done by an astronaut and mostly from the inside. Not as bad as fixing your car while cruising on an expressway, but not nearly as easy as doing it anything in a factory or hangar, just from the perspective of having the elbow room and so on. And any outside repair takes even longer, the whole suiting-up rigamarole just to replace one part or something. I'm not saying it's not worth building. I'm just saying, a realistic life estimate of the ISS will be maybe 25-30 years, 35 max, counting from its debut mission, and we likely won't have a Mars mission by then. I hope we do, but I wouldn't bet on it. So the way-station mission is kind of unrealistic as well, IMHO.

[raygun]

Back in 1989 my boss was involved with the Science Olympiad. By day he ran a medical billing/practice management software company. By night he tutored gifted kids. He tapped me and one of my co-workers to be proctors for the computer science event. Funny thing, that eh? Considering we were writing code for him.

Anyways, it fell upon us (my boss and myself) to ascertain potential problems that would be solved during the events. The one caveat was that the problems had to solveable by no greater than Senior high-school mathematics. So calculus and higher math were right out.

Anyway one problem that we worked on was cost/benefit analysis of the shuttle. How many launches before it pays for itself as opposed to Apollo style launch vehicles.

Try as I might, I couldn’t solve the problem satisfatorily; it was a losing proposition from day One. My boss was quite a smart man, having a Ph.D in pathology with some background in mathematics and a computer scientist to boot. He didn’t like what I told him, so he worked through the problem with me. We refined the algorithm a little bit, and came up with a pretty sophisticated analysis of the problem. Net result: it was a money sieve. He kept muttering where are we going wrong. We must be doing something wrong.

I just happened to be taking Analytical Geometry and Calculus at the time, and I whipped out some integration and related rates of change on him. He looked over my work, looked at the computer screen at the results of our algorithm, looked at my work again. Shook his head, and muttered; “Another government boondogle throwing away billions of dollars of taxpayer money.” Then he walked away and I never heard him mention that problem again. Nor did we ever discuss it either.

[hunter112]

The eco-nuts do screw up everything they are allowed to even be next to.

[beezdotcom]

"Sarchasm" indeed...looks like nobody got it, based on all the replies.


Or were you actually serious? How ironic if you were...

[XBob]

“To: RadioAstronomer; cyborg
ping 275, one of my better posts.
Radioastronomer was banned last fall.
He can be found on Darwin Central, along with a number of other scientists who were either banned or left in disgust.”

---

thanks much, RA is super sharp, but sometimes he gets a wild hair. However, there is too much children’s noise here now, and I think, sadly, that I will go back to contributing elsewhere. I still lurk occasionallly, because this was the best forum on the web. sad.

[P-40]

How many launches before it pays for itself as opposed to Apollo style launch vehicles.

If you start with the wrong premise, the problem is not solvable by traditional mathematical means.

[IslandJeff]

Don’t leave, please. Just take a few days off.

[beezdotcom]

They died living their dream.

Yes, that's one perspective. However, it's still a damn shame when someone dies because a stupid O-ring got cold and they couldn't wait for it to warm up - or because stupid eco-nuts argued for crappy unstable foam to replace the original foam and Columbia suffers for it.

In other words, dreams shouldn't end for stupid reasons.

[Tall_Texan]

Space Shuttle's Left Wing May Be Damaged

Just like America's left wing. How fitting.

[buccaneer81]

We initially pissed 16 billion Africa's way to fight an easily preventable disease.

Funny you should mention that. I work for a very large pharmaceutical company, based in Germany (although the US drives every aspect of the business) that has GIVEN away tens of millions of dollars worth of product (since the UN cried for it) to treat the very disease of which you speak.

[FreedomCalls]

Automobiles that were new when I was on the project are considered antiques or classics. You don't see any on the road but the ones that have been restored. NASA's bureaucracy is riding it into the ground, sucking up the money.

And the USAF is still flying B-52s that were built before John Glenn first flew into orbit.