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86 Comments
- Kurisuteru, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Deathtrap? Really? You're attached to a big-ass bomb exploding right below you, and you're on your way to a vacuum. No kidding it's a death trap! Of course, NASA people should be a bit more thorough on the checks sometimes...
But to comments like Serra's, "It's not like we're ever going to be able to all live on another planet... at least for a long ass time- if ever", I have to say this: No, _we_ won't live on another planet. But someone a couple hundred years from now might. If we don't research, it might be a couple millennia away instead of two or three centuries. By then we can already have destroyed the planet so much we'll be extinct because we had nowhere to go.
And if you complain about homeless people needing to be prioritised first; why not start with your ***** _military_ budget. It's several orders of magnitude larger than NASA's budget, if not all space organisations' budgets combined. And that money goes directly into killing people and finding new, improved ways of killing people
NASA doesn't kill people. At least not voluntarily. - RetiredMidn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Basically the bail-out system we have on the shuttle is the same bail-out system a B-17 bomber pilot had in World War II."
Nice inflammatory analogy, but pointless. The shuttle's bail-out system is more than you have available to you in a 747 or an Airbus 340. Neither the shuttle nor the 747 could perform the tasks they were designed for if they were equipped with all possible safety systems.
The guy's humping a book, and CNN, and the Guardian, and now digg, are all giving him free publicity for it.
--digg - rft3rd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2space program has nothing to do with homelessness so lets stay OT.
one thing he states really bothers me..
"It was this lack of ejector seats that ensured the deaths of Challenger's astronauts. Such a powered escape system could have blasted them from their stricken ship and saved them."
I found this story at http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/InnaSokolyanskaya1.shtml
Dunn, Marcia. "The End of the Challenger." AP Online, 19 May 2000. "Challenger was traveling at a speed of 18,000 miles an hour, at a height of 46,000 feet when it blew up." 8000 m/s
(at Challenger explosion)
they would have been ripped apart if they had left the confines of the shuttle going 18k MPH... thats just ludicrous... now as far as the Columbia incident, massive failure upon reentry, once inside the atmosphere an ejection style evacuations system would be feasible as the speeds are significantly lower then that of take off. - djtripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It may be a death trap, but I would go up in it in an instant.
- ProfMo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm all for retiring the space shuttle, but only because it *should* prompt NASA to start implementing better space vehicles. Despite it's dire need for restructuring and rethinking, I think NASA is an asset to not only the U.S.... but the world. In fact, I think it's something the U.S. should be proud of. And at only a fraction of the U.S. national budget, the price is right for the kind of work they are doing. Just imagine what NASA could do if they cleaned up their act even a little.
@serra: This is a good site showing practical benefits of space exploration: http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
I hope you find it an interesting read. - muikano, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It doesnt matter what the mitigating factors are. The space shuttle program is underfunded and overpaid. What does that mean? The NASA program doesn't work. There's something fishy with the billions of dollars we pour into it. Why not let those Spaceship One guys have a try? 20 million for a flight into the exo sphere. 20m is 1/50th of a billion dolllars. Imagine what they could do with NASA's budget.
16000 engineers? Jesus Cristu. For gad's sake. Send them out. - LooterMcBeer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2~~~~"lol at american enginuity"~~~~
Has your country ever even been into space? Walked on the moon? Thought so STFU - GreenSlabOfClay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2World poverty and Space Travel.
What a tug of war.
Both pull at the heart strings. - thetruth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Golly!
Who would EVER have imagined that a combination spaceplane/human habitat strapped to 200 tons of rocket fuel destined to travel to an irradiated vacuum and then plunge through Earth's atmospheric shield at 100,000 mph, would be dangerous?
"Astronaut" means "test pilot". If the dude doesn't want to fly in "death-traps," then he can't ever go into space.
BTW, the Shuttle's failure rate is 4%. Hardly optimal, but also not anywhere close to qualifying as a "death trap," especially given the extreme environment and circumstances. - Double-Z, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To the morons that whine about the cost of the shuttle. Are you aware that the US black budget for military is measured in trillions of dollars per year?
NASA rocks. - AstroSnail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"It was this lack of ejector seats that ensured the deaths of Challenger's astronauts. Such a powered escape system could have blasted them from their stricken ship and saved them."
Complete B.S. An ejection seat at such high speeds as those that the Challenger experiences on its way back through the atmosphere could not have prevented that which killed the passengers - the high speeds. - latinjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Complete B.S. An ejection seat at such high speeds as those that the Challenger experiences on its way back through the atmosphere could not have prevented that which killed the passengers - the high speeds."
The challenger didn't blow up on re-entry.....It didn't make it 2 minutes off the ground! The high speeds also didn't kill the challenger passengers. Even through the explosion the cabin remained mostly intact, the impact with the water at 200g's killed them. - Terry2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Most Shuttle astronauts are eager to go back up. I know. I talked to one personally. 4% is a very safe rate - improvements are being made with each launch.
I agree that space exploration is important and necessary to the future of our planet. Everything has flaws. Do we hide our heads in the sand just because something isn't perfect?
The shuttles have a lot more life in them before an expensive new design can practically be made. Eventually the new designs will be done, but the current design is still the best for now. I'd go up in it. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here's an idea: we could always launch two shuttles at once, odds are they won't both blow up, unless they crash into each other. That way we have "failsafe redundancy". It'll work if we clone our astronauts.
- solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Katabatic: Right on with spotting that "deathtrap" was not what the astronaut said! Sensationalism, for sure.
Nit to pick: Mach 1 is only 700 mph at sea level. When the instruments indicate "Mach 1" at high altitude, it will be going many times faster than that.
For instance, I heard Mike Melville state that Spaceship One was only doing about Mach 1 at the most during his flight... but it was screaming fast.
The molecules that make up air are so spread apart at (say) 120,000 feet that they don't make an airspeed indicator (which simply reads pressure) read very high. - musicbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Space exploration is necessary. The benefits of whats learned helps in many different fields of study. The shuttle itself is one of the most complex machines in the world and is decades old technology. That does equal a deathtrap. It needs to be retired, but something new needs to take it's place... manned or unmanned.
- alphamerik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Almost everyone seems to be missing the point of the article. He says that NASA is poorly managed, not the first time this accusation has been made. By 2010 after we have spent 500+ billion USD on building a space station, it plus the shuttles used to build it most likely will be nothing but pieces of junk. Bush says he wants to send people to Mars... thats cute but the tech is too immature. The privatization of the space industry is the only thing which will salvage our manned explorations, and the corrupt corporations which are producing war machines would be better suited for this purpose.
- sabbac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"This guy is an ass. "It has no powered-flight escape system" When has an space ship have one."
Every previous manned launch system by the United States has had one. The tall staff on top of the capsules of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all had small rockets as a powered escape system. - natemc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1NEWS FLASH: Getting in a car is dangerous, tens of thousands die every year.
I'm pretty sure people know the risks, I'd still fly into space even though I know there is the chance I could die. It's still worth it to explore, but no one is forcing anyone to fly into space, it's a choice. - ek3s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dude... It doesn't take a degree in ***** engineering to figure out that space shuttles can totally pwn your ass.
- Osiriscky3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0^ you're kidding right
the craft didn't "break up" it actually exploded there was truly nothing that could have been done once the PROBLEM was discovered with challenger about 1-2 seconds before loss of contact....
I've listen to the tapes I know what happened and what failed don't lecture me on your ***** off some other website. - stonebear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is well known the shuttles are obsolete, NASA freely admits it. They did the best they could with cold war funding, and should not be drubbed in retrospect. Given the type of service required, the airframe has done a good job for many years. Astronauts know the risks going in, and have no grounds to complain. When they do, I think it is merely to draw attention to the fact that it is past time for new and better near space technology. Or is it?
Space holds solutions to earthly problems, sure, but not the most important facing us today. Perhaps Americans need to use their increasingly limited resources to fix up things that are wrong with America for a while before taking the next step beyond. The US having a fully funded space program now would be like a new luxury SUV parked in the driveway of a tumbledown bungalow. - mtupker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0no doubt about it. The shuttle is over 25 years old and literally the most complex device ever built by humans. Frankly I think its a miracle that some of them are still flying.
- eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0kalte - wonderful link and sound reasoning. But if you notice, the number of people who think this way in th US must number in the dozens.
Here is another link about the time when the shuttle was being built;
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook.html
written in 1980
before challenger and columbia. He wrote another article after columbia that is a stunner as well.
So this is not news, but people are still blinded by the words "man in space". I came to my senses after columbia because I thought the challenger accident was a "one off" and NASA had fixed things.
But "man in space" is not the kind of space program I want to see. I want to see more voyagers, new horizons, gravity probe b, cassini machines than a couple of guys marking time in orbit by picking their noses. - Phlegyas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yep, strapping yourself to a controlled explosion has never been safe.
- mogebier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"The only way to cure world poverty is to share things around- which means you Americans will have to accept that you're all going to be a lot poorer and you're going to have to be a lot less selfish. Your riches and lifestyle are based on decades of exploitation of poorer countries. The current administration's revisionist policies and spin merchants may deny this but it is fact."
Bite me.
Next time there is a disaster around the world, have a look at what country the world comes to for help.
Now shut up you jealous foreign putz. - TK99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What people don't know is that NASA was forced to accept the Space Shuttle, the Pentagon screwed with the original NASA and when that design changed failed to do anything except make it more expensive and less useful. NASA was told to take the Shuttle as is and to like no matter what.
My hope is that NASA gets an Administrator with balls and says we can have shuttle replacement that is for NASA only if the Pentagon or the NSA want to go to space make their own damn ship. At least NASA is quietly push for the what was sold as just a back may in fact be the real replacement. Two craft one small manned launcher that can reach low, mid and high Earth orbit and heavy Cargo launcher that can also reach low, mid and high Earth orbit. They are both incredibly simply and redundant and the simplest piece of each is the reusable part. - alphgeek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@serra: Wow, a girl geek. Hope you find a boyfriend soon, you should have no troubles with that kick-arse rig (the computer I mean :P)!
Re weapons: Not sure who is going to attack you guys...who would bother / have the capability?!? Nukes and a cold-war army aren't really suited to modern fighting these days...great for serious arse-kicking but not so good for urban battles with indigenous civilians still living in town. Too easy to...oops, just flattened that city block....hmmmmm...
Re space: Consider that less than 100 years ago - less than 0.1% of the time we have been civilised creatures - we didn't have the vaguest notion as to the true nature of reality. We didn't know how big the universe was, what it was made of, how old it was, how long it would be here, etc, etc. Questions that have nagged at us for thousands of years. Now we know the answers to all of these questions, in large part due to space-related exploration (eg Hubble telescope, IRAS, Compton GRO, COBE....)
This exploration is similar to that which led to the 'discovery' of each of our wonderful countries. At the time, I am sure people were questioning why Columbus felt the need to waste precious resources on travelling around the world.
May not sound important right now but maybe in a few years, who knows....
Alphgeek (2 tattoos, 7 piercings) - userqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.hourofthetime.com/Report%20From%20Iron%20Mountain.html
- Gitarstar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ solarpowered
according to
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/mach.html
at 46,000 feet, Mach 1 is 660 Mph.
at 120,000 feet, Mach 1 is 710 Mph
So, I'm not sure about the accuracy of your statement. - victor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is our natural curiosity and the dream of exploration that pushes us up there. The ones that fly are not forced to do it, they do it because they want to. And specially you, Americans, think that your ancestors did the same thing when they came to your lands.
Yes, it is dangerous. Yes, you might die flying in space. But it might be better than to die in your bed without doing something in your life. - dpk87, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I you guys knew anything about economics, unemployment is at a very reasonable level right now, which doesn't really need to be "fixed".
- georgep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0digg effect after 11 diggs? no way
- Detour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0January 28, 1986.
Wow, have we forgotten it's been 20 years? - jsh1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this was posted like 3 days ago
- solarpowered, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0gitarstar: I appreciate your fact-checking. The calculator says that at 250000 feet, the speed of sound is 602 mph. I submit to you that the calculator is very, very broken. I think we're out of the range that the approximations used by the calculator are valid.
As far as my original statement: I'm going by what I was told by the first private astronoaut told me in person. He was hauling ass, but his indicated air speed was well under Mach 1.
ft speed of sound
0 761
50000 660
100000 684
150000 748
200000 707
250000 602
Help. Is there an aerodynamicist in the house? - serra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@jkfan87: And what technology would that be? I would be interested in seeing a list of practical things that the space program has given us.
As far as the mining goes, if we can't find more alternatives for energy, it might be necessary. I'm from Ohio, so I totally understand about the whole mining industry thing. But space... what is practical about it?
--------------------------------------------------
http://fuh-q.com - Pictographer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder if it would be possible to fly the shuttles without people on board. Use them for lifting cargo and use some other presumably safer rocket for getting the people up to the space station.
If it were up to me, I would have canned the shuttle program years ago. It's premature to put people in space. Robots give us better science for an order of magnitude less money and less risk. It will be many years before that changes. - BritOverseas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It don't matter, some day we will make it to another planet, then we will find out how to make that planet habitable, then we will continue, that is human nature. Like Mr Smith said, "we are a virus, just looking for some other place to infect" .
I for one would give my left nut for a ride but then I haven't got $20 mill for the ticket. My best chance is Mr Branson and his friends and then it is still $200K, maybe later.
Plus, all you Yank knockers out there, remember, a lot of stuff that has happened in Space flight and Exploration is down to them, albeit on a "Lowest bidder" vehicle with 1 million moving parts (kind of silly), 50% of the talent at NASA is not American but America still claims the credit, kind of way. - EdwinBubble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"the craft didn't "break up" it actually exploded there was truly nothing "
No - the external tank ruptured and exploded. The bulk of the craft itself probably broke apart from aerodynamic forces imparted by the explosion itself - much as the bulk of Columbia broke apart once attitude control was lost when most of the port wing came off - again due to massive strain. - Werdock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am sorry boys, but that lads is saying that the problem about Colubia was the absence of ejection mechanism. Hello? Do you think ejecting at a speed of triple the sound will save your life?8/ You'll be thinly spreaded over a territory of 20 square miles.
- Aeplus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://moon.google.com/
I still can't find that flag... - riddlebox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0And yet our tax dollars are still funding suicide and murder. I got a propane tank on my grill. Stap it to my ass and someone break the nozzle. I will make it to mars before they do.
- ldjessee00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I want to know why they just do not stop the space shuttle and use the VentureStar?
http://www.didyouknow.org/whatsnew/venturestar.htm - Jetfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Of course the Shuttles are death traps....they were made in the 80s. Last time I checked it was 2006!!"
Age has nothing to do with it most of our aircraft fighters are older (with updates). The Blackbird is even older built preCAD and it still rocks.
I have said before NASA Management is screwed up but it's not all NASA's fault. There are to many hands in the basket trying to tell it what to do too. I have been around people in the military/space industry for the past 16 years. If your heard some of the stories they tell. If the did half the things today as they did now they would be in jail. NASA is over regulated and all common sense is lost because of it.
The shuttle program has be messed up from the beginning because of too many hands telling NASA how to built it. One thing no one talks about on the Insulation that flies of during launch is that it isn’t the original stuff. It was change to an environmentally friendly material that came off allot more than the original stuff. - Terry2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Bah -- NASA has a new head. Let's give him a chance. NASA is not Microsoft -- the whole government is Microsoft - if you are making the analogy. The new shuttle design is coming. It will be here eventually, meanwhile, there is still much life in the old shuttle design and we have an obligation to do our part in the Internation Space Station effort with other countries. We should not let them down, especially since they are doing their part.
- Osiriscky3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0anything you send into space with the intent on returning is a deathtrap 2 accident in over 20 years in my opinion me being an aviation safety major is damn good considering what the spacecrafts go through.
ALSO
"It was this lack of ejector seats that ensured the deaths of Challenger's astronauts. Such a powered escape system could have blasted them from their stricken ship and saved them."
at the speed and altitude they were at 73 seconds into the launch any ejection from the craft would have instantly killed them. I see there is amazing research going on with this story. The news media only shows you obscurred and not always factual information also I am denouncing Mullane as credible seeing as he flew in the early 90's and isn't much of an astronaut anymore. Why don't you interveiw a true astronaut like Jim Newman?
anyways no digg for a horrible story. - orangetiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sell all three to china and make/buy a new one. There lookin to go into space
- Jetfire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This guy is an ass. "It has no powered-flight escape system" When has an space ship have one. This also wouldn't Columbia. It's questionable about Challenger. For the idiots who complain about wasting money on the space program at the expense of the homeless. STFU, and do some research on the benefit we made from it in healthcare, manufacturing and everything else.
As for how NASA is run that’s a different store. It’s run by committee and not by a leader. It has such a bloated bureaucracy, that it can’t function like it needs to. Although, there has been some improvements with some of its smaller missions of late. We don’t have the great NASA of the 60s. Those we people who got things done. Now a days everyone is about covering their ass. Tell me why is it going to take 10+ years to return to the moon. Also for you idiot who say it’s a waste of money. Do you know if they brought back a shuttle load of H3 from the moon it could power the US with clean energy for years. - muikano, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0argh your missing the point. Can NASA be run better?
Can there be better, safer, more efficient shuttles?
Are the shuttles using old tech?
face it. NASA is microsoft and those shuttles are Internet Explorer. Come out with 7.0 or die. Simple. -
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