Quo Vadis Space Shuttle

[Ned]

I am surprised there is no thread on the Shuttle Report. But it is devestating to NASA. The Columbia disaster happened because NASA ignored safety in favor of cost and schedules. They did not learn the lessor of Challenger.

Can NASA be trusted to continue operating something like the Shuttle? Clearly not, given the report.

We are at a crossroads where fundamental questions need to be addressed and not ignored. The fundamental question I have is why are we flying manned missions into low earth orbit at all? Why aren't we reaching out to explore the solar system?

We need vision. We to something better than a failed concept.

I say, ground the Shuttle and send cargo and people to the space station with simpler rockets, like the Russian Soyuz. I say, focus US manned mission on Mars.

What do you guys think we should do?

[Asher]

They have manned low-orbit missions to do experiments that aren't really possible to do without direct human supervision, not just to explore...

[PLATO]

I tried to start one last night, but when I posted it I was suddenly in the Community Forum! WTF? When I tried to PM a Mod to move it the site apparently went down. I went to bed. Today...no sign of the thread.

You are correct though. The report is very damaging. I will try to get the link to it again. It is really long.

[PLATO]

Ok. Here is the link to the report off of NASA's website

http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html

[Ned]

I spent much of the day yesterday reading it. Its is tragic that lack of communication caused Ham to kill the request for DOD photo's and for the people in the ranks to not stand their grounds and keep up the request for photos. The panel found that the Columbia and its crew could have been saved - contrary to Ham's off-hand statement that nothing could have been done. The crew had the means to patch the hole in the RCC. They also had enough air for the Atlantis to get there for a rescue. The Columbia then could have been parked in a higher orbit pending a later repair mission.

Ham killed all this when she spiked the photos.

What a tragedy!

[mrmitchell]

Sell the Shuttle for scrap. Make our mission to explore the universe or to colonise the moon or Mars.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Sell the Shuttle for scrap. Make our mission to explore the universe or to colonise the moon or Mars.

The shuttle (or a future version of it) would be critical to further exploration of the solar system. Even a mission to the moon would be far better off being launched from orbit.

[mrmitchell]

The shuttle (or a future version of it) would be critical to further exploration of the solar system. Even a mission to the moon would be far better off being launched from orbit.

Okay. Sell the one right now and make the future version of it.

(I'll read the report tomorrow. Taking a while to download.)

[PLATO]

Originally posted by mrmitchell

Okay. Sell the one right now and make the future version of it.

(I'll read the report tomorrow. Taking a while to download.)

Who would buy it ??

[mrmitchell]

Sell it for scrap, take it apart and say "Okay who wants a space-approved wire! Anyone need a 466mhz proc?" Shuttle parts on eBay as a charitable auction (paying NASA's bills) would be a hit. There's simply a lot of geeks out there who would want to say "I have a metal plate from a space shuttle"

[PLATO]

Well the next generation is already in the works.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,12543,443762,00.html

[Giant_Squid]

"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world."
— Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden

This is going to sound highly callous and politically incorrect, but so be it.
NASA deals with stuff that is inherently unbelievably dangerous. You've probably heard the crazy statistics like if they're off by a tenth of a degree or a tenth of a second or whatever, the shuttle burns up and everyone dies, how there are 15 million different components in the shuttle and if even one of them malfunctions the shuttle burns up and everyone dies, how if they get their speed wrong by a single percent the shuttle burns up and everyone dies, et cetera. Contrary to the popular saying, this IS rocket science, and it's probably the most complex, difficult, and advanced thing going on in the world today.

That being said, one miss every fifteen years is a pretty good safety record, especially if you factor in that this includes over a hundred flights, all kinds of different missions, and constant changes of procedure. It is unfortunate that people died, but they became astronauts in the knowledge that they were putting their lives on the line.

Certainly continue the investigation into what went wrong and make sure to fix it. Certainly fire the people responsible and cancel any contracts with the companies responsible. Certainly up safety precautions where it is discovered they were too lax. But to whine about how NASA has a culture of inattention to safety or are bumbling incompetents or just don't care about people's lives or have an awful track record seems to me to be comparable to the letter-writer who said of the recent New York blackout "How many times do these people have to prove their inability to do their job before something gets done?", despite the fact that it was the first such blackout in thirty years. Give these guys a break. And while you're at it, give them a budget so that they've got something to work with.

[The Mad Monk]

From Darkstar, over at CG:

TCO... I'll read the report tomorrow while at work.

Right after Challenger, there literaly was 100% accountability. I could have called in a "issue" and they'd have stopped the launch. But NASA rolled back, because the emphisis swapped right back to what it had been pre-Challenger. From all sides.

NASA doesn't want to risk money, and especially doesn't want to risk human lives. However, the pressures it gets put under, the directions it gets given, its all "We don't care. Just shoot the rocket! Keep on schedule! Blah blah blah."

Not doubting you, TP. It's just how it works. Function determines form and all that. The fish rots from the head, etc...

We've been given a whole lot of excerpts from the report. The investigating board didn't want to "surprise" NASA completely. Just partially. :shrug:

Oh.. right now, O'Keefe is saying Return to Flight will be next spring. We will see though.

If you pushed an issue before in NASA that management decided wasn't an "issue", you got fired. And blacklisted. No whistle blowing tolerated. Anyone pushing an issue after it was "downed" was considered a candidate for early retirement. Anyone that made the mistake if going public would find the weight of the government descending on them. That's how NASA worked.

There's going to be a window of opportunity for about a year to go public without repercussions... and then, it will be back to business as usual. Why? Cause that's how they are handling it, from what I seen so far. A more streamlined "analysis and restructuring" following along after Challenger lines.

But it's early yet. Maybe if we fired all of the White House, Congress and NASA, we COULD create a new version of NASA that will be able to follow the recommendations.

I see the odds only being 10 gazillion to 1.

I'm telling you... if you **** canned all of NASA, they'd end up back at the SAME culture so long as American politics stay the same. That's the lesson learned from this. Watch and see.

That was Columbia's 30th flight. I forgot that was what the Air Force said would be the average number the shuttles would be lost at. Every 30 flights. Need to go look up the other shuttles and see which one is next... NASA will loose another shuttle in another few years. Because there is no way that politics won't go back to "business as usual". You can count on that. NASA is. I could see it in the directions being put from the Management.

[Ned]

Lest one forget, this is the THIRD time this has happened. Kennedy put NASA under a lot of pressure to get to the moon before the end of the '60s. Everyone was moving as fast as they could - and ignoring safety issues. As a result, we lost three astronauts who were burned alive in Apollo I. There were 19 years between Apollo I and Challenger. There were 16 years between Challenger and Columbia. In all three cases, the proximate cause of the disaster was schedule pressure that lead NASA to ignore safety.

Regardless, conceptually, why in the world do we need manned missions to fly cargo into low Earth orbit? Operating the Shuttle is so expensive as to prevent NASA from doing anything else - like planning a mission to Mars or even building and maintaining a space station. The number of Shuttle flghts per year is insufficient to even provide proper crew rotation on the space station - as the report emphasized -- even before we lost one of the four Shuttles. The concept of the Shuttle was that it was supposed to be a space truck. It will never be that. It remains a vastly overly complicated and dangerous vehicle whose sole mission can more easily and reliably be done by simple and inexpensive rockets.

[Eli]

If you pushed an issue before in NASA that management decided wasn't an "issue", you got fired. And blacklisted. No whistle blowing tolerated. Anyone pushing an issue after it was "downed" was considered a candidate for early retirement. Anyone that made the mistake if going public would find the weight of the government descending on them. That's how NASA worked.

All the NASA leaders should be beheaded for this.