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Space Forum / Shuttle / December 2005BIG decision coming!
Fate of The Shuttle Program December 6, 2005 As you read this management and technical side meetings are taking place at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility (started today and run all week). These meetings have a single purpose, to decide if the Shuttle will return to flight. The principle technical objects are: 1st finding away around thermal stressing of ET foam. This stress occurs when the ET is fueled with cryogenic. 2nd the option (rather expensive) of return to the old CPR-488 foam. 3rd the impacts of all foam repairs. 4. The human elements in making foam repairs. 5. If the ET foam can be certified for flight up to the point it reaches sufficient altitude (that turbulent air is no longer an issue). The product of all this will be a formal recommendation to press towards flight or to ground the fleet once and for all. How and political impact of grounding the fleet is a decision that will be made far beyond these engineers, managers and astronauts. FROM US SPACE NEWS I feel like saying they should have thought of all this years ago, and by now they would have had a safe method of insulation. It occurred to me last night that what the US needs now, if they really want to retire shuttles, is a catastrophic accident that makes the ISS uninhabitable or destroys it. I'm sure the conspiracists on here will be quick to suggest some...:-) Brian  SignatureBrian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email. graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them Email: briang1@blueyonder.co.uk ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ > Fate of The Shuttle Program > December 6, 2005 [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > FROM US SPACE NEWS ISS getting hit by some orbital debris, with the crew getting out safely, is but one way. The whole trouble today is previous nasa management. To keep the shuttle going they tied ISS to it, to discourage shuttle termination...... It was a good plan... in some respects too good.... Opinion: The shuttle will get one more flight, then never fly again. They will go through the expensive proposition of repair just to show it can be done. At that time, it will be announced that the shuttle is outmoded and no longer the vehicle of choice. (Kind of like "Peace with honor", for all you who remember our pull out from Viet Nam). The Bush administration will bleed money from NASA to fund our current "Viet Nam", and the space program will dwindle away until we get a balnced budget and a President with intellect rather than rhetoric. It's gonna be a long time before you see a positive movement in the U.S. Space Program. Start looking for a major pull out of experienced astronauts. >Opinion: The shuttle will get one more flight, then never fly again. They >will go through the expensive proposition of repair just to show it can be [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >positive movement in the U.S. Space Program. Start looking for a major pull >out of experienced astronauts. Wow. Talk about gloom and doom! Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning? :-) Brian >>Opinion: The shuttle will get one more flight, then never fly again. >>They will go through the expensive proposition of repair just to show [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > Wow. Talk about gloom and doom! Who pissed in your Wheaties this > morning? :-) Forget this morning; he's been posting like that since November 2000. Richard may have been a founder and valuable contributor to sci.space.* at one time, but his postings for the last five years have been dominated by the conspiracy theory that Bush intends to destroy NASA, a theory not supported by the facts. Bush has increased NASA's budget every single year of his presidency, in stark contrast to his predecessor, who cut NASA's budget five out of eight years (and two of the three increases came in, surprise surprise, election years). And yet, Richard's postings for the previous eight years never complained, not once, about Clinton's budget cuts. I find this extremely hypocritical. SignatureJRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. > Forget this morning; he's been posting like that since November 2000. > Richard may have been a founder and valuable contributor to sci.space.* at [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > previous eight years never complained, not once, about Clinton's budget > cuts. I find this extremely hypocritical. *sigh* And everyone in these debates seems to be ignoring the fact that the legislative branch - not the executive - is responsible for appropriating funding. SignatureHerb There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ RAH >> Forget this morning; he's been posting like that since November 2000. >> Richard may have been a founder and valuable contributor to [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > legislative branch - not the executive - is responsible for > appropriating funding. True enough, as far as it goes. Usually they at least make a pretense of using the president's budget as a starting point for the appropriations process, and in the case of NASA, it's been quite a while since Congress made wholesale changes to the president's budget request. I've been keeping a NASA budget spreadsheet for several years now, with data from 1958-2011, but it only contains the final appropriated amounts for the past years (the future years are, of course, the president's five year budget plan). I should go back and add a column for the president's initial budget request. I doubt that Clinton will wind up looking any better under that comparison. SignatureJRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. >> *sigh* >> [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > initial budget request. I doubt that Clinton will wind up looking any > better under that comparison. Almost certainly not. Note, however, that in a good percentage of Clinton's years in office, Republicans controlled one or both houses of Congress and made no substantial effort to increase funding beyond that requested by the Administration. You should add two more columns to the spreadsheet - one for each House - and then indicate which party had the majority for each two year segment. SignatureHerb There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ RAH >>> *sigh* >>> [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > of Congress and made no substantial effort to increase funding beyond > that requested by the Administration. Probably correct. It is interesting to note, however, that all three of the years during the Clinton administration where Congress increased NASA's appropriation (1996, 1997, and 2001) were with the Republicans in control of both houses. > You should add two more columns to the spreadsheet - one for each > House - and then indicate which party had the majority for each two > year segment. I agree. Digging up the budget data will be tricky; OMB's historical tables online include only final appropriations, and presidential budget requests online only go back to the birth of the web in the mid-90's. The previous years' budgets probably only exist in dead-tree form. SignatureJRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. [...] > I agree. Digging up the budget data will be tricky; OMB's historical tables > online include only final appropriations, and presidential budget requests > online only go back to the birth of the web in the mid-90's. The previous > years' budgets probably only exist in dead-tree form. Soem of the major news organizations might have it in their on-line searchable files, but probably not the actual budget request document...NASA, though, is big enough that the agency's total should at least be broken out in the better articles. /dps Brian, I caught all kinds of flack from these same guys when I told them that you can't build a new space vehicle and test it, then make it flight worthy for fifteen billion dollars. Recently, the expected development costs announced turned out to be over one hundred billion. Look, it's very true that I am very, very, negative on the un-American Bush administration. "We're makin' progress!" is a lie, plain and simple. I'll stand by my prediction and hope I am wrong. I'm getting darned tired of being proven right, again and again. Listen to history, not to political platitudes. > Brian, I caught all kinds of flack from these same guys when I told > them that you can't build a new space vehicle and test it, then make > it flight worthy for fifteen billion dollars. Recently, the expected > development costs announced turned out to be over one hundred billion. Of course. Because you were wrong about what the fifteen billion figure included, Richard. That was the development cost of the CEV *alone*. *Not* the CLV. *Not* the heavy lifter. And *not* the lunar lander. And neither NASA nor the administration have *ever* said otherwise. I wanted to believe you were merely mistaken about that, Richard. I wanted to believe that you'd taken a journalist's statements out of context. I tried to set you straight on it. More than once. But you have continued to repeat that statement, and I am coming to the conclusion that you do so out of deliberate malice, not simple ignorance. I can't help it if your hatred for the current administration has blinded you to the truth. SignatureJRF Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail, check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and think one step ahead of IBM. > > Brian, I caught all kinds of flack from these same guys when I told > > them that you can't build a new space vehicle and test it, then make [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > the CLV. *Not* the heavy lifter. And *not* the lunar lander. And neither > NASA nor the administration have *ever* said otherwise. Why do you idiots keep quoting costs on things that don't exist. CEV, CLV, Schtick, Heavy Lifter, they don't exist. You are discussing imaginary things. http://cosmic.lifeform.org http://cosmic.lifeform.net > The Bush administration will > bleed money from NASA to fund our current "Viet Nam", and the space > program > will dwindle away until we get a balnced budget and a President with > intellect rather than rhetoric. it would be a little hard to balance the budget by taking NASA's budget, since NASAS only accounts for less than a penny out of every tax dollar. C'mon dude, you know better than that. > Opinion: The shuttle will get one more flight, then never fly again. They > will go through the expensive proposition of repair just to show it can be > done. At that time, it will be announced that the shuttle is outmoded and > no longer the vehicle of choice. Hasn't the one more flight been done? Now all that is left is to declare it outmoded. Tom > I feel like saying they should have thought of all this years ago, and by > now they would have had a safe method of insulation. [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > > FROM US SPACE NEWS Or the loss of a Soyuz crew and vehicle. That would damage the ISS program more than anything. I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians still were willing to press on, and continue launching crews, but congress would be in an uproar, especially if a US astronaut was lost aboard a Russian spacecraft. -A.L. Bob Haller Wrote: > Fate of The Shuttle Program > December 6, 2005 [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > FROM US SPACE NEWS The impact of grounding the crippled "fleet" ? More soyouz and a stronger new KSC (THE Kourou Space Center... o course) Good idea! US' astronauts going to the ISS from Kourou with Soyouz.. like Bangladeshis... Nice -- Rémy MERCIER |
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