What of the Shuttle?

[Ruri]

Now people are starting to be incorrect about the two shuttle accidents. One both of them could of been prevented but NASA management lets to many people have control and no common sense, Thiokol warned of challengers srb segment and columbias engineers wanted photos they knew the shuttle was in danger but management didnt want to hear that Now as to where the shuttles go they will be retired and so will the ares program as well in the days to come so if anyone has anything else to say please say it

That is one big gripe I have is how will Constellation be safer if management ignores the engineers?

Though on canceling Orion my views on this are not black and white.
If it's far enough along then it should be moved to the Delta IV-H and pressed into service ASAP much like the X33 should have still flew with metal tanks vs being scrapped.
If it's sorta far along then get it flying with a simplified SM on a light EELV such as Atlas 502.
But if it's very far away then redirect funds to increased COTS-D and bring two more companies on board.

Another gripe I have is I know Ares can be made to work if you throw enough money at it but the problem is it may only go to the moon six or seven times and then gets scrapped.

What we need to do is to avoid the mistakes of both Apollo and the Shuttle and build a space transportation infrastructure.

First get reliable low cost access to LEO then move on to traveling to GEO and the lunar L1 point.
Next lunar landings,NEOs and then beyond.
The commercial sector should be involved at all steps and if commercial off the shelf hardware exists buy it.

Oddly enough this is very similar to the original CEV development plan.

 

[vulture4]

Agree. I would just point out that however far along it is, the Orion capsule was designed for lunar/Mars flight and was shoehorned into the ISS support mission, for which it is eminently unsuited. The Dragon was designed for ISS support and dispenses with the heavy service module and long-term life support and provides short-term accommodations for seven and a substantial unpressurized cargo volume to boot at a gross mass of (IIRC) of about 10 tons, well under half that of the Orion. The inclusion of RCS on the capsule itself suggests that the unpressurized section can be left in orbit. This means the vehicle might be able to land on either coast or even in the Gulf, while Orion is restricted pretty much to the West Coast since the service module impacts a few hundred kilometers west of the capsule. Land landing would be even safer, however.

To further support your argument, launch infrastructure and processing manpower for the Delta IV is a small fraction of that of Ares, which requires the VAB, crawlers, MLP, and LC-39. Processing for Falcon is even simpler than for Delta, as there is no LH2 or mobile service tower.

I don't think Shuttle should be flown forever, I just think it should be flown until we have something better ready to go. COTS-D was originally a backup to the shuttle, not a successor.There is no reason we could not build a new generation of RLVs while operating shuttle, in fact that's just what we were doing in the 90's and without breaking the budget.

But Constellation wasn't a program to replace the Shuttle, it was a grandiose and fanciful plan to go to the moon, Mars, and beyond without any increase in the budget. The shuttle wasn't to be replaced, since the ISS and human flight to LEO itself was to be eliminated. IMHO this was and remains among the worst management decisions in the history of the space program; we will be picking up the pieces for decades.

 

[missionunknown]

Odd as it may sound, I'm looking forward to the moment when the wheels touch down on the last shuttle flight. It will be sad when the US no longer has the capabilities of putting a man into orbit, but as someone who has seen 2 shuttle disasters, I just can't wait for them to be done. I agree that they seem to be performing better than ever, but at the same time, no one saw the Challenger and Columbia disasters coming and it is bound to happen again. And if that happens, well I don't think I would have the heart to support manned space exploration any longer.

Thats simply not true technicians who worked at thiokol knew that the srbs would fail under extremely low temperatures but for whatever reason their concerns were dismissed.

Also was it not until after columbia that mandatory checks of the entire space craft were made compulsory in orbit to check for tile damage?

adman69 wrote:
I've always viewed the shuttles as a waste of money, time and human intelligence. It's very concerning to me that we seemed to step backwards and not forwards after Apollo. We sent people to the moon 40 years ago...40! Yet we then spent the next 40 years confined to riding in orbit around our planet doing menial tasks that could have been accomplished by unmanned rockets. To me that was technological retrograde.

Imagine for one moment if we continued going back to the moon and explored from there. We would by now have had permanent bases/settlements there and we would more than likely have been experiencing our first manned missions to Mars or a neighboring dwarf planet such as Ceres and asteroids such as Eros or Vesta.

I understand that many people think we didn't have the technology to do so, but I beg to differ. In all actuality we should have been farther ahead than we are currently. In our technological childhood we sent men to the moon and probes that continue to report after traveling for decades and BILLIONS of miles. Why scale back and limit ourselves to NEO missions?

We need to get back to the moon. We need to set up camp there. We need to build the proposed dark side of the moon giant telescope so we can see clearer and farther than ever before. We are capable of so much more....


That i'm afraid is the whole point WE DON"T NEED to do anything. And we almost certainly don't need to go to the moon again, if we needed to we would be on our way, there is no political will for space travel because the public doesn't wish it because theres no need for it.

 

[missionunknown]

I've always viewed the shuttles as a waste of money, time and human intelligence. It's very concerning to me that we seemed to step backwards and not forwards after Apollo. We sent people to the moon 40 years ago...40! Yet we then spent the next 40 years confined to riding in orbit around our planet doing menial tasks that could have been accomplished by unmanned rockets. To me that was technological retrograde.

Imagine for one moment if we continued going back to the moon and explored from there. We would by now have had permanent bases/settlements there and we would more than likely have been experiencing our first manned missions to Mars or a neighboring dwarf planet such as Ceres and asteroids such as Eros or Vesta.

I understand that many people think we didn't have the technology to do so, but I beg to differ. In all actuality we should have been farther ahead than we are currently. In our technological childhood we sent men to the moon and probes that continue to report after traveling for decades and BILLIONS of miles. Why scale back and limit ourselves to NEO missions?

We need to get back to the moon. We need to set up camp there. We need to build the proposed dark side of the moon giant telescope so we can see clearer and farther than ever before. We are capable of so much more....

That i'm afraid is the whole point WE DON"T NEED to do anything. And we almost certainly don't need to go to the moon again, if we needed to we would be on our way, there is no political will for space travel because the public doesn't wish it because theres no need for it.

 

[adman69]

That i'm afraid is the whole point WE DON"T NEED to do anything. And we almost certainly don't need to go to the moon again, if we needed to we would be on our way, there is no political will for space travel because the public doesn't wish it because theres no need for it.

There's no need for it? Have you listened to anything that scientists say? We have every need to continue reaching out to the stars. And whether the Earth's demise is tomorrow or 5 million years from now, we need to get securely off planet now so when that day comes we as a species are safe. We finally and undeniably just verified the existence of water on the moon. That alone makes continued study and colonization a very needful thing. Add to that the fact that the Moon harbors unknown quantities of resources that can become fuels and sustainable energy sources and again, you have a very needful thing. In case you've forgotten, the Earth does not have an endless supply of natural resources at it's disposal. We're using fossil fuels faster than the Earth's decaying matter can replace it. Our water supplies are under attack from the hundreds of years of industrial abuse. Our ozone layer is irreparably damaged so it also is on borrowed time. Need I go on?

The fact is, we need the moon for many reasons. Some that we may not have even fathomed yet. If someone finally did invent a mode of travel to get us to an Earth like twin orbiting Alpha Centauri B, do we not go just because the political landscape says we shouldn't? If man is to survive itself then space travel is the most integral part of that survival. Governments and economies have risen and fallen (see lather, rinse and repeat) since the dawn of mankind...we will always endure those obstacles. We cannot, however, ignore the very real and proven fact that the Earth and our Sun are on galactic borrowed time. We do need the moon...and beyond.

 

[tapansino91]

While I am a huge supporter of our space program, I believe the decision to retire the Shuttles is a correct decision, for many obvious reasons. These are:

1) The Shuttle design is approaching 40 years old and the youngest Shuttle is now over 20 years old.

2) The cost to launch each Shuttle is about $1 billion each, equivalent to a Saturn V launch cost for a moon mission, but all we get are low earth orbit missions.

3) No launch escape system for the crew - every astronaut I have ever talked to hates this about the Shuttle.

4) The Shuttle is very expensive to maintain and requires extensive maintenance between each mission.

5) The Shuttle's cargo bay can carry about 20 tons to the ISS, but there are less expensive ways to get 20 tons to low earth orbit.

6) Every astronaut knows that the potential for a total loss of vehicle and crew is high for each mission. They literally put their lives on the line with each mission with virtually no hope of survivability in a critical failure mode.

I couldn't agree more. The shuttles have served us well over the years, but its time to move on. We need newer and better space vehicles to get us where we need to go in the future. Granted, I'm never pleased when the cuts come in and NASA gets hit (for the umpteenth time), nor am I happy to hear that we just wasted $9 billion in R&D (relatively speaking of course), but I think we're finally headed in the right direction. After Columbus and the other explorers finished their work, Jamestown and Plymouth were founded, and the further developments are history. So shall it be with space, our newest frontier, that once the explorers have paved the way, settlers follow, and business arises.

I think we'll be in good hands. I really hope we don't have another space race though. We'll probably lose in that case.