blike Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Space.com is reporting that engineers found a small crack in the foam insulation covering the shuttle's external fuel tank. The crack is not expected to be a safety concern, though it delayed the shuttle rollout for a few hours. The space shuttle Discovery began its 4.2 mile journey to the launch pad today. It is scheduled to launch sometime in mid-May. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasori Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 I don't know... I'm all for pushing the shuttle to launch, but I think right now NASA's just doing it to try to regain some respect. I think, instead, they shouldn't worry about whether or not they look like "wusses" and fix it, rather than leave it and get a repeat. Maybe they won't have to worry, but they should patch it up or something to be sure they don't have to worry. But if that patching would take more than a month... ignore this whole post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sayonara Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Let's design a new vehicle for them. I mean, it can't be any worse than those old things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 A barrel with a large rocket engine on the bottom of it would be better than the shuttles atm. Hope this doesn't screw things up again though. They really need some new machines - I mean, these ones have been in service since I was born, and that was 20 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdurg Posted April 7, 2005 Share Posted April 7, 2005 Either way, in order to get us up into outer space, you'll have to attach the equivalent of a gigantic "bomb" to where us humans are sitting. Space travel is not the safest thing to do, and I'm more amazed at how few accidents we've actually had in relation to all the trips we've taken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blike Posted April 7, 2005 Author Share Posted April 7, 2005 True. I don't think our primary concern should be safety, and I don't mean that as it sounds. Of course we should be concerned with the safety of these people, but space travel is inherently dangerous, at least at this point. Think of the early astronauts and the failure rate among those vehicles. If we applied today's safety standards to those times no rocket would ever be launched from US soil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edisonian Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 Delayed? I would think they would postpone the flight until this is investigated further. The small "crack" before led to a catastaphe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
island Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 Damndest drug smuggling operation I've ever heard of... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ophiolite Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 I was attracted to this thread by the title. (I suppose that's one of its functions.) I was however, hugely disappointed to discover it was an engineering item and not final proof that NASA has been smuggling cocaine into low Earth orbit to sell to pasing UFO's and thus ease the budget shortage. Think of the early astronauts and the failure rate among those vehicles. I would argue that the early manned craft were spectacularily reliable [Apollo Thirteen and the 'Fire on the Pad' tragedy apart.] Yes, they pushed the envelope to the limit on more than one occasion, but that's what pioneering is about. I suspect the safety standards have not changed dramtically, but rather that NASA has felt obliged to pretend that space travel is safe. In that respect I agree with you totally - space travel is dangerous. How many people died in the first twenty years of airplane flight? Dozens, scores, hundreds? Until Mt. Everest became virtually a tourist destination in the eighties you had about an equal chance of summiting as dying. That never prevented multiple expeditions each year seeking the goal. Space travel would seem at least as important as climbing Mt Everest, so is a similar risk level not acceptable? Apprently not. Edit: Damn. I just noticed the previous post. Proof that humour (or lack of it) is Universal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
island Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 Wow!... I disagree, and I am just now, after many *cough* years of personal observation of Spaceflight... finally figuring out why, because I feel the same way as Ophiolite when it comes to the risk that's involved. BUT... if someone asks the question, "Can we successfully explore deep space?", what happens to the answer when you have to consider that maybe the last 3 out of 7 space missions failed? I clearly remember my confidence that our first trip to the moon would be completely successful, and now I finally understand that my confidence came from our ability to do the impossible, yet still bring em back alive... ala, Apollo 13... and there is little doubt now, that this COULD have been the case in the last doomed shuttle mission too! They failed to consider all of the options in the last shuttle disaster, and there is no excuse for that, but the bottom line is that the success rate of the space program must far outweigh its failure rate... or we ain't got a chance in hell of any real long-term survival and we will know this... IN OUR GUT! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedAlert Posted April 12, 2005 Share Posted April 12, 2005 I don't know about you guys, but there is quite a lot of design plans out there for new spacecraft. Maybe NASA should try out some of the more promising ones? I'm no space scientist, just a 14yr old high school kid, but maybe if they took SpaceShipOne (the space craft that won the X-Prize), made it bigger scale wise, and tweaked around with it.....they could get some sort of new good space ship? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted April 12, 2005 Share Posted April 12, 2005 Crack Found in Shuttle Tank damn! these drug smugglers will try Anything for a quick buck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chatlack Posted April 12, 2005 Share Posted April 12, 2005 guys , some of you must have heard that : Again insulation covering was the problem behind the last accident. Last time the crack on it happened to break a little plate of the covering and madde it blow up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bascule Posted April 12, 2005 Share Posted April 12, 2005 Crack Found in Shuttle Tank damn! these drug smugglers will try Anything for a quick buck! Either that or NASA needs a better screening process on their tank workers. Only users lose drugs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
island Posted April 12, 2005 Share Posted April 12, 2005 guys , some of you must have heard that : Again insulation covering was the problem behind the last accident. Last time the crack on it happened to break a little plate of the covering and madde it blow up... But not before they saw, via camera footage, that the insullation had flown off of the fuel tank and hit the shuttle edge-on. And not before engineers were stiffled by upper managment when they tried to point out that some scenarios indicated the impact force of the insullation hitting the shuttle could end disasterously. And not before they picked up the damaged piece of the shuttle on radar as it fell off of the shuttle in outer space! And not before they failed to train available high resolution miltary telescopes on the damaged section to get a better idea of what that might have been all about... And then nobody took responsibility for the fact that they had enough fuel that they could have abandoned ship after space-walking to the MiR, whereby they could have decended to Earth via the many available soyuz capsules that the Russians have for just such an event. Instead, they dodged even discussing that option by claiming that they didn't have a docking ring... So. What? They didn't have to die... is what, but they were more of an loosely calculated economic risk that the powers that be... saw fit to take Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasori Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Erm... didn't Mir drop in '01? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
island Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 Yeah... I meant the ISS So, shoot me... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ydoaPs Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 the next gen reusable vehicle should have a docking thing built into the hull instead of that crapola they have now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedAlert Posted April 14, 2005 Share Posted April 14, 2005 Crapola? Or do you mean Cupola? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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