STS-107 Launch of Space Shuttle Columbia for Spacehab NASA, SPACEHAB, and members of the STARS Academy have been preparing for the STS-107 mission for over two years. Scheduled for launch on July 19, 2002, this research mission of sixteen days is sure to be an exciting event. With the debut of SPACEHAB’s Research Double Module on this flight, over 100 experiments are expected to take place onboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia. The flight inclination for this mission is 39 degrees and the flight altitude is 150 nautical miles. This mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida from launch pad 39B. Seven talented astronauts will be flying this critical research mission. They include Mission Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William "Willie" McCool, Payload Commander Michael Anderson, Mission Specialist 1 Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 2 David Brown, Mission Specialist 3 Laurel Clark, and Payload Specialist 1 Ilan Ramon. For the STARS Academy locker, Anderson, Chawla, and Ramon are the assigned crew. As the 111th shuttle mission and Columbia’s 28th flight, this shuttle just celebrated the 20th anniversary of its maiden voyage. Columbia returned to service, fresh from a year and a half of maintenance and upgrades that have made it better than ever. More than 100 modifications and improvements have been made to make Columbia ready for flight on STS-107. Highlights include a “glass cockpit” with nine full-color, flat-panel displays, reduced power needs, old wire removal, and a user-friendly interface.
Columbia's launch for July was scrubbed:****
June 24, 2002 Ed Campion Headquarters, Washington (Phone: 202/358-1694) James Hartsfield Johnson Space Center, Houston (Phone: 281/483-5111) Bruce Buckingham Kennedy Space Center, Fla. (Phone: 321/867-2468) Release: #H02-117 NASA MANAGERS DELAY STS-107 LAUNCH NASA managers today temporarily suspended launch preparations for Space Shuttle Columbia until they have a better understanding of several small cracks found in metal liners used to direct the flow inside main propulsion-system propellant lines on other orbiters in the fleet. Columbia's launch on STS-107, previously planned for July 19, will be delayed a few weeks to allow inspections of its flow liners as part of an intensive analysis that is under way. Recent inspections of Space Shuttle Atlantis and Space Shuttle Discovery found cracks, measuring one-tenth to three-tenths of an inch, in one flow liner on each of those vehicles. Some of the cracks were not identifiable using standard visual inspections and were only discovered using more intensive inspection techniques. "These cracks may pose a safety concern and we have teams at work investigating all aspects of the situation," said Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore. "This is a very complex issue and it is early in the analysis. Right now there are more questions than answers. Our immediate interests are to inspect the hardware to identify cracks that exist, understand what has caused them and quantify the risk. I am confident the team will fully resolve this issue, but it may take some time. Until we have a better understanding, we will not move forward with the launch of STS-107." The impact of the investigation on other upcoming space shuttle launches has not been determined.
First, I know that spacecraft must reach an escape velocity to exceed the force of gravity after it rises above the height at which the atmosphere is dense enough to give the craft ability to push against it.
This leads me to two questions, also posed to any other Freepers.
1. Why do we use rockets to launch spacecraft? I know that the Air Force, back in the sixties, was using planes to carry test ships up, and that at least one of these test ships went above the atmospheric boundary. Use of large planes to piggyback the spacecraft to higher altitudes seems like a much safer, if less spectacular alternative.
2. Why does the shuttle come in at such a high rate of speed? This seems excessively risky to me, and I don't understand the reasoning for it.
The two risks of bouncing off the atmosphere and burning up on re-entry both seem related to the speed of re-entry. A rock doesn't skip off a pond because of the inherent density of the water, but because the speed and angle of approach does not allow the water sufficient time to displace itself for the mass of the rock. The speed of re-entry seems unneccesary. Firing reverse thrusters prior to atmospheric re-entry seems to me like it would make re-entry much safer.
I know there must be a good reason for this, as the people at NASA are a lot smarter and more knowlegable than I am, but it seems to me that a slower re-entry would be far safer, and still allow the shuttle to enter the atmosphere.
A third and unrelated question is why don't we replace the current shuttles? I know cost is a huge issue, but many of these craft are twenty-five to thirty years old. Even though they have been renovated, the metal fatigue and changes in understanding of aerodynamics has made the current fleet obsolete. There are few 1970's era cars still on the road. The reason is that even with repair and renovation, they eventually become obsolete. It's time to move forward, in my opinion, to the next generation of space craft.