MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: vRStu on July 08, 2011, 04:24:32 pm
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Due to go in about 5 mins, now being shown on Sky News. :evilgrin:
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Fantastic to see it launch, sad to see it was the last one
How long is it going to be until they get another vehicle that doesn't have to be retrieved from the sea after a controlled crash landing ?
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Can I ask if anyone knows why that it is the last one?
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Quote:
Nasa itself hopes to invest in a new spaceship and rocket that can take humans beyond the space station to destinations such as the Moon, asteroids and Mars.
The conical ship, known as Orion, has already been defined and is in an advanced stage of development. The rocket, on the other hand, is still an unknown quantity.
The US Congress has told the agency what its minimum capabilities should be. However, the agency is currently struggling to put those specifications into a concept it says can be built to the timeline and budget specified by the politicians. It promises to detail the rocket's baseline design before the summer is out.
Critics have bemoaned the lack of speed in moving to new systems, a delay that means America must rely on Russian rockets to launch its astronauts for the foreseeable future.
Asked here why he thought Nasa did not have a ready-made replacement for the shuttle, Bill Nelson, a US Senator and leading figure in the space debate on Capitol Hill, said: "Because Nasa has been starved of funds these past six to eight years."
C/o BBC News
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Thank you. :happy2:
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Welcome mate :smiley:
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Can I ask if anyone knows why that it is the last one?
Because multiple generations of American politicians don't have any vision or foresight.
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The Shuttle is a brilliant piece of equipment, but brilliantly flawed. Saturn V (the rocket which took men to the Moon) could loft 140tonnes into Low Earth Orbit, and 40-odd tonnes into Trans Lunar Injection (on the way to the Moon). TLI is important, because really, if you have the capability to achieve TLI, you can achieve trans-anywhere-injection (for instance, to Mars - TMI).
Saturn was hugely expensive to launch, and the Shuttle was proposed as an alternative that would significantly reduce the cost of getting into space. Unfortunately, the Shuttle programme has ended up costing about as much per launch as a Saturn V launch, and, because of the "reusable" factor, take a significant amount of effort to renew for each launch. But compared to the Saturn V's 140 tonnes into LEO, the Shuttle can only aloft 30 tonnes (still more than anything else available, mind you). Furthermore, the Shuttle cannot leave LEO, so as an exploration device doesn't take us anywhere too far (the Shuttle only operated at max 600km altitude; for reference, the Moon is 300,000km away.).
If the Shuttle programme had not commenced, and Saturn continued to be used, at the same funding that the Shuttle enjoyed there could have been 6x Saturn flights a year, at least two of them being manned trips to the Moon.
There's a whole host of other reasons why the Shuttle needs to be replaced. Unlike Saturn/Apollo, there are practically no survivable failure modes during ascent and re-entry. It's a tremendously complicated machine, requiring major refurbishment after each launch. The Solid Rocket Boosters cannot be controlled once they are ignited, which is inherently unsafe. The Thermal Protection System is notoriously fragile. I could go on.
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What is absolutely crazy, though, is cancelling the Shuttle programme where there is no replacement in place. This goes back to my first comment. US presidents and administrations from George H. W. Bush down to Obama have been hacking away at NASA's budget. Constellation - George W. Bush's initiative - was a badly thought out programme, but at least it was a programme. Now there is a vague desire to develop some sort of new heavy lift capability that will, at least, rival the Shuttle if not Saturn, and an equally vague desire to have commercial manned spaceflight to LEO. All the while NASA's budget is still being reduced - from US$19bn to US$17bn next year.
US$17bn is a lot of money, I hear you say? Well, for context, the US Army alone spends around US$21bn on airconditioning. Yes. If you look at the Department of Defense budget (with ancillaries) you're looking at between US$800bn and US$1tn. With a ROI of somewhere around 8:1, investing in spaceflight is both cheap and profitable - but I guess invasions are better. Never mind all the things the US space programme has given us - anyone using this forum, it has literally changed our life in every way (from integrated circuits to GPS and communications satellites to modern ceramic materials to more fuzzy subjects like risk and capability management...)
Sorry for the rant, but this is a subject I'm very passionate about. While I watched Atlantis lift today I found it incredibly hard to accept that this was the last time anyone on Earth would see this awesome sight.
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:congrats: bravo cmdrfire, bravo. Couldn't have said it better.
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I missed it :sad1:
Is there anywhere I can watch it?
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Yup. BBC news website has footage
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14076454
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Yup. BBC news website has footage
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14076454
Nice one, cheers :happy2:
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Watched this live on the Nasa website in the office yesterday :signLOL:
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I'm in Orlando now and was going to go out to see it but all indications were she would be a no fly! The weather has been awful and the channels were stating a 70 % of rain and lightning! Also it would have meant a 0400 start so all up the decision was made to not drag the whole and very tired family out of bed.....
Wish I now followed my gut feel... :sick:
:notworthy: to NASA and all their efforts over the years.
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I'm in Orlando now and was going to go out to see it but all indications were she would be a no fly! The weather has been awful and the channels were stating a 70 % of rain and lightning! Also it would have meant a 0400 start so all up the decision was made to not drag the whole and very tired family out of bed.....
Wish I now followed my gut feel... :sick:
:notworthy: to NASA and all their efforts over the years.
I was up at around 0500 for Discovery's launch, which was at 1330 local time... but it was nice and empty at Kennedy, we were some of the first to arrive so we had a nice quiet tour before the crowds arrived.
You should still have been able to see it from Orlando, I understand.