Shuttle Taking off at around 9pm......

Well obviously I would rather it took off perfectly.
But I wouldnt be the only one who would take a slight more interest in the video stream if it went 'bang'.
:)
 
Entirely true - Apollo 13 proved the media's penchant for disaster movies, but aside from the loss of live it'd also be the end of the shuttle missions, and most ptobably the ISS too.

I still remember Challenger btw. 73 seconds iirc. :(
 
Well that was very interesting, still listening to the conversation / updates ... all seems to have gone very well by all accounts!

Just the secondary gimbal control system on the left side seems to have failed - a pretty minor thing in the big picture :)

Good luck to Discovery !
 
As for the fault, yeah, at least it's the secondary. There's a tradition of the 'one for the mission' dating right back to the Apollo days in that something always breaks on the way up. I don't recall a recent mission that hasn't had one. They were going for the record of least faults prior to launch so I wonder if they achieved that.
 
The title of world's fastest human actually goes to three humans, Thomas Patten Stafford, John Watts Young and Eugene Andrew Cernan.

These three men reached a speed of 24,790 MPH or 39,897 km/h on board Apollo 10 during their return from the Moon.

That translates to 6.88 miles per second or 11.08 kilometers per second.
Click to expand...

Wow is all that I can say to that.
 
Piece of foam from the external tank captured breaking off.

080531debris.jpg


T+plus 10 minutes. A very large piece of foam was seen breaking free from the external tank shortly after separation of the twin solid rocket boosters. Video from a camera on the tank showed the piece did not strike the orbiter's right wing.
Click to expand...
 
Energize said:
Why do Nasa continue to cheap out on safety and design on these things? Foam must come off on practically every launch.
Click to expand...

This was the first external fuel tank that was built from the ground up with lots of new safety features implemented from the colombia disaster. It seems that no matter what they do the foam will invariably come off :(

Edit - not saying none of the other tanks previous didn't have the safety features, previously they were retrofitted to an already existing tank iirc.
 
VaderDSL said:
This was the first external fuel tank that was built from the ground up with lots of new safety features implemented from the colombia disaster. It seems that no matter what they do the foam will invariably come off :(

Edit - not saying none of the other tanks previous didn't have the safety features, previously they were retrofitted to an already existing tank iirc.
Click to expand...

What I meant is, why not redesign the shuttle, so foam insulation is not needed, perhaps use a different fuel. Nasa seem to hate having to spend money on safety features, hence why there is still no emergency ejection system on ascent.
 
Energize said:
Why do Nasa continue to cheap out on safety and design on these things? Foam must come off on practically every launch.
Click to expand...
Ask a physics professor. Anything that has to deal with a temperature difference of around 250C from inner surface to outer is likely to suffer thermal issues. The simple answer is that the foam cracks under this thermal load and some breaks off.

There are two obvious solutions - replacing the foam with something else (feasible in small areas and they've done that, but not feasible for the whole tank due to the development time, money, and weight), or using a more substantial foam (also not feasible due to weight). There is thus no perfect answer and some foam shedding is expected.

The foam issue will go away with the shuttle programme, and the ejection system issue will go away then too.
 
Energize said:
What I meant is, why not redesign the shuttle, so foam insulation is not needed? Nasa seem to hate having to spend money on safety features, hence why there is still no emergency ejection system on ascent.
Click to expand...

Ah :) I don't think it's fair to say they don't like spening money :) they get their budget from the government, and in today's economy I think it's around $17 billion, spread over all the projects they do a good job with limited funds.

They will never redesign the shuttle sadly, it's being retired in 2 years or so. They are designing a new series of spacecraft, but I very much doubt it will be a shuttle variant, in fact they are I think going back to an Apollo style capsule :)

Orion I think it's called
 
Currently a 4 year gap between the last shuttle and the first orion/ares.

NASA are pumping lots of cash into Soyuz to keep it reliable!
 
Last edited:
Ah Ares :) I was watching a conference on NASA Tv a while back with a guy talking about these :) won't Ares V be able to carry a lot more?

in fact looking Wiki says 120 tonnes!!! Jeez isnt the capability of the shuttle 25tonnes or therabouts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom