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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Will NASA never learn?
Posted by Jill | 9:13 PM
I can't believe they're going to do it again:

NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month's shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.

[snip]

During a weekend meeting at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Dr Griffin gave the final nod for next month's mission, despite what he called an "intensive and spirited exchange" with senior colleagues who recommended a "no-go". "We have elected to take the risk," he said.

If the mission ends in disaster, NASA's multi-billion dollar shuttle programme will be scrapped, leaving construction of the International Space Station unfinished and marking the end of an era in human spaceflight.

"If we were to lose another vehicle ... I would be moving to figure out a way to shut the programme down," Dr Griffin admitted.

Engineers have addressed the foam-shedding problem suffered during last year's mission by removing a stretch of insulating material from the shuttle's external fuel tank.

But smaller pieces could be shed from 34 aerodynamic structures known as ice-frost ramps, which protect the tank's fuel lines from ice build-up.

If a big enough slab hit a certain part of the shuttle, "the results would be catastrophic," said John Chapman, project manager for the external tank.

Former astronaut Bryan O'Connor, now NASA's safety chief, and chief engineer Christopher Scolese have recommended that the next mission should be postponed until the ice-frost ramps can be redesigned.

Dr Griffin said that if the shuttle's thermal tiles are damaged by debris during launch, the vehicle would still make it safely into space. The danger, he said, would come during re-entry.

The astronauts could make minor repairs before coming down or take refuge in the International Space Station and await a rescue mission by a second shuttle, Atlantis.

Dr Griffin said: "I do not see the situation we're in as being a crew-loss situation. If we are unlucky and we have a debris event on ascent, it will not impede the ascent. The crew will arrive safely in orbit, and then we will begin to look at our options."


As Tbogg so succinctly puts it:

"crew-loss situation" = death

"debris event" = shit happening + death

Houston, we have a moron.


"Looking at our options" once the crew is in orbit is sort of like looking to bolster the World Trade Center's fireproofing while you're standing on Lispenard Street watching it collapse.

What's happened to NASA is a tragedy. I can remember when space flight was exciting and glamorous. Watching all those geeky guys in their short-sleeved white shirts and thick-rimmed black glasses in the 1960's, working all those "machines that go 'ping!'" while jaunty guys in spacesuits waved on grainy video footage made it seem as if there was nothing Americans couldn't do; that good old American know-how meant that the sky was the limit for knowledge, for discovery, for science.

Now they're reduced to launching 25-year-old shuttles using what one article once called "big dumb rockets" that have at least an even shot at destroying what they're launching. And instead of discovery and wonder, we now can't bear to watch.
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