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Author Topic: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(  (Read 3142 times)

Offline Bill Heher

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Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« on: July 21, 2011, 07:34:51 AM »
Well it's done- the last twin sonic boom rattled the Cape and Cenral Florida early this morning, now the shuttle program is over.

Congratulations and thanks to all the thousands of people who flew and maintained that awesome machine for the past 3 decades, and a moment of silence for those who paid the ultimate price to pursue their dreams.

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Offline John Stiles

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2011, 08:27:33 AM »
Well it's done- the last twin sonic boom rattled the Cape and Cenral Florida early this morning, now the shuttle program is over.

Congratulations and thanks to all the thousands of people who flew and maintained that awesome machine for the past 3 decades, and a moment of silence for those who paid the ultimate price to pursue their dreams.


Well spoken Bill! I agree totally. H^^
John Stiles             Tulip, Ar.

Offline Douglas Ames

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2011, 08:53:54 AM »
An era has passed...
I find it incredibly disappointing we have NO replacement in place or in the near future. Our politicians and/or NASA sure dropped the ball on that one. Too much finger-pointing and not enough leadership.
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Offline Paul Smith

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2011, 09:11:23 AM »
I'm usually the anxious to cast the first stone at politicians, but in the case, maybe we've just hit the limits of physical reality.

By my count, we put a pair of men on the moon for a few hours, about six times.
We've launched and recovered the space shuttle about 160 times over the course of 34 years with two crashes, par for the course for high performance machines.
In conjunction with the Russians, proved that we can keep people in Earth orbit as long as somebody is willing to pay.

That's all folks.

Unless we can figure out how to make another significant leap, there's little benefit in continuing to repeat the same trick. 



Paul Smith

Offline Peter Nevai

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2011, 09:58:13 AM »
Ending the shuttle program before a suitable replacement was in place is dumber than dumb.

For example

The ISS is typically crewed by 4 people. Since only the Russians have the capability to evacuate the station in case of a catastrophic failure Russian personnel get the first seats in the rescue capsule. The Russian rescue capsule can carry only 3 people.

You do the math.

BTW as soon as they learned that the shuttle program was being ended they upped the negotiated price to deliver American crew or materials to the station up by around 60%
Words Spoken by the first human to set foot on Mars... "Now What?"

Offline jim gilmore

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2011, 10:05:33 AM »
I think the issue is not that we do not have a replacement. We are at a time in our history where our political leader and we the people are unsure as to whom will pay for it as well as well as whom is going to pay for everything else...
A ride to mars sound nice but our countries infrastructure is falling apart and there is just no monies to fix them....

Online Brett Buck

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #6 on: July 21, 2011, 10:18:59 AM »
I'm usually the anxious to cast the first stone at politicians, but in the case, maybe we've just hit the limits of physical reality.

By my count, we put a pair of men on the moon for a few hours, about six times.
We've launched and recovered the space shuttle about 160 times over the course of 34 years with two crashes, par for the course for high performance machines.
In conjunction with the Russians, proved that we can keep people in Earth orbit as long as somebody is willing to pay.

That's all folks.

Unless we can figure out how to make another significant leap, there's little benefit in continuing to repeat the same trick. 

    Do you really think that that is the limit of our capabilities? We had what we needed to put permanent colonies on Moon and go to Mars 40 years ago. What is lacking it the guts to do it.

    Brett

Offline frank williams

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #7 on: July 21, 2011, 11:09:56 AM »
I think the issue is not that we do not have a replacement. We are at a time in our history where our political leader and we the people are unsure as to whom will pay for it as well as well as whom is going to pay for everything else...
A ride to mars sound nice but our countries infrastructure is falling apart and there is just no monies to fix them....


NASA's annual budget is 1/2 of 1 percent of the total budget.  NASA's continuity would have been much more "shovel ready" than the stimulus money that went for (ha ha) shovel ready jobs that weren't.  In 1949 subsidies were given to the mohair industry because army uniforms were made of wool.  Now military clothing is pretty much synthetic ...... but every year we still pay the mohair subsidy.  This wasn't some technical hard point we ran up against in manned space flight ..... it was a planned "redistribution of monies".  Maybe with the 100's of millions we'll be paying the Russians for manned launch services ..... just maybe ... the price of a Yatsenko Shark will come down a bit.

Offline John Stiles

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2011, 12:48:45 PM »
I think the issue is .............our political leader(s)and we the people are unsure as to whom will pay for it as well as well as whom is going to pay for everything else...
...........our countries infrastructure is falling apart and there is just no monies to fix them....

because it's all stashed in foreign accounts...............now, that sounds about right LL~ :##
John Stiles             Tulip, Ar.

Offline Peter Nevai

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2011, 02:37:21 PM »
You can blame much of this on our consumer culture. It has gotten to the point where if there is no significant return on investment then don't bother. Unless you can make a boat load of money from it. I will not be funded. Why do you think that Cancer is still around? If someone came up with a way of eradicating cancer in all it's forms then the loss in revenue to hospitals, drug companies, radiology centers would plummet. Entire industries would collapse because there would no longer be a need for all those treatments and tests so on and so on. Most of intellectual research is non profit. The ends do not justify the means.

Why return to the moon, or mars or anywhere else for that matter? What spend billions just for a ego boost? No money in that, but then you loose any transferable technology that develops from such expeditions of fancy. Computer sophistication has come to a point where we can simulate just about anything and then remote controlled robots and probes can fill in any gaps. We have progressed to the point where manned space flight is passe. People are just not a requirement anymore.

The shuttle however had utility, it could make possible tasks that are otherwise impossible. Like capture and entire satellite stow it safely and return it to earth.Bring objects into orbit that are far too fragile or big to easily fit on a traditional rocket booster. Without the shuttle the Hubble space telescope would have been long dead. Without the space shuttle there would be no ISS. Unless another utilitarian vehicle like the shuttle is developed soon there will be no facility to send people into orbit to perform experiments or other tasks requiring more space than something just a tad larger than a sub compact car.

But as I said when you really examine it, there is no longer any hard and justifiable reason to send humans into space at all. The only reason left is one of a purely emotional nature.
Words Spoken by the first human to set foot on Mars... "Now What?"

Offline Fred Cronenwett

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2011, 03:21:53 PM »
Sad to see the Shuttle go the way of museums. I saw one landing, but never a launch, got to see the hot fire engine tests of the SSME main engine several times (it shakes the ground) at Stennis space center. I look back to the time time I spent working at Boeing Rocketdyne on the SSME main engine with good memories (1988 thru 1995). There were so many folks that helped produce the parts, welding and testing for the 3 main engines. And that does not even cover the folks who worked the vehicle side of the effort.

the SSME was a reusable liquid cooled rocket engine that use hydrogen and Oxygen and produced the power for the first 8 minutes of the flight to get the bird into orbit. The engine and shuttle itself was an engineering marvel that will not surpassed for some time.

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Offline RC Storick

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #11 on: July 21, 2011, 10:30:04 PM »
    Do you really think that that is the limit of our capabilities? We had what we needed to put permanent colonies on Moon and go to Mars 40 years ago. What is lacking it the guts to do it.

    Brett

Brett do I hear this correct? Are you willing to go your self on a one way mission to Mars? Yah we could get there but aint no coming back yet. Unless there is something I have missed.
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Online Brett Buck

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2011, 11:16:14 PM »
Brett do I hear this correct? Are you willing to go your self on a one way mission to Mars? Yah we could get there but aint no coming back yet. Unless there is something I have missed.

     Well, yes, I would go one-way (and volunteered for a potential one-way right after the Challenger - as did every single *real* astronaut  and everyone on the program who might be qualified; that was actually a plan for about a month or two, to launch a few critical payloads regardless of the risk).

    But the technological basis for going, staying for the required time (on the order of a year) and coming back is well in hand for *a long* time now. It would be a massive and every expensive effort but Apollo-era capabilities and mild extrapolations would have been more than adequate. For example, Skylab would have made the *perfect* spacecraft for the travel to and from Mars and could easily carry sufficient supplies. You would need a HUGE pair of external boost and brake stages to boost it out of Earth orbit, stop it at Mars, and then send it back. But big is all that would be required, nothing particularly sophisticated. So well within our capabilities.

   The lander is pretty high-zoot but you have some advantage that you can use aerobraking and parachutes so it's not inordinately worse than landing on the moon. The ascent stage would be huge, of course.

   Von Braun had it pretty much worked out by the time he got moved out of Apollo, and it was a fun bit of work for us in junior high science class to determine the required propellant quantities. For the braking and Mars escape insertion that was a lot of propellant since you had to use hypergolics. If you could convince yourself that you could insulate the tanks long enough to use LOX/RP1 for at least the braking, that would tremendously reduce the size of the Mars boost stage.

   And this is for a "giant Apollo" EOR-MOR mission without aerobraking into orbit. If you could develop some of the trickier in-situ propellant, oxygen, and water generation, then the entire thing shrinks dramatically, as does some of the risk. The beauty of that is that if you screwed it up the first time, you could keep trying until you got something that worked with no risk of people. That's probably just a matter of research, not advanced technology.

   Note that if we went back to the moon, we would almost certainly use EOR-MOR now, too. They thought it was too complicated at the time but they also had never done a rendezvous in space when they decided. If you just wanted to repeat Apollo you could do it with much smaller boosters because you would assemble the stack in orbit. We could have done it with three Titan 4 or Delta 4 heavy launches  - one for the LM, one for the S-IVb  and one for the CSM (probably in that order) and maybe with three Atlas 552 launches although I haven't done the math. I think the Saturn 1b was just a bit too small for three launches (because the fully-fueled CSM was too heavy - no problem for the LM).

    Brett

Offline Howard Rush

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #13 on: July 22, 2011, 01:03:42 AM »
Brett do I hear this correct? Are you willing to go your self on a one way mission to Mars? Yah we could get there but aint no coming back yet. Unless there is something I have missed.

He has to run the Nats first.  He can go after that. 
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Offline PJ Rowland

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2011, 02:11:49 AM »
" He has to run the Nats first.  He can go after that.  "

Now who is pushing the limits of human achievement.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” - Bruce Lee.

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Offline john e. holliday

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #15 on: July 22, 2011, 07:33:09 AM »
Well I am no scientist or engineer.   In my opinion, who ever controls space will control the Earth. VD~
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Offline John Stiles

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #16 on: July 22, 2011, 09:17:08 AM »
Well I am no scientist or engineer.   In my opinion, who ever controls space will control the Earth. VD~
x-2 on that! H^^
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Offline FLOYD CARTER

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #17 on: July 22, 2011, 10:25:16 AM »
Having visited the launch facilities at the Cape, and having been associated with certain space projects, (including Hubble), I was/am amazed at the amount of $$ thrown at NASA (and other space ventures).

With the economy in such bad shape, it might be wise to put such things on temporary hold, at least until certain members of congress decide it might be a good thing to fix the economy so that money will again be available for further space projects.

The planets have been out there for 4 billion years.  They're not going anyplace soon.

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #18 on: July 22, 2011, 11:15:00 AM »
Well I am no scientist or engineer.   In my opinion, who ever controls space will control the Earth. VD~

Good Point John!

Online Brett Buck

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #19 on: July 22, 2011, 11:45:54 AM »
Having visited the launch facilities at the Cape, and having been associated with certain space projects, (including Hubble), I was/am amazed at the amount of $$ thrown at NASA (and other space ventures).

With the economy in such bad shape, it might be wise to put such things on temporary hold, at least until certain members of congress decide it might be a good thing to fix the economy so that money will again be available for further space projects.

The planets have been out there for 4 billion years.  They're not going anyplace soon.

  NASA's budget is microscopic - we spend more flying congressmen around on private and military jets to fundraisers than we send to NASA. You could zero out NASA's budget tomorrow and all you would get is a flyspeck on the larger scheme of things - and another 50-60000 people out of work.

   Brett

Offline Mark Scarborough

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #20 on: July 22, 2011, 01:25:11 PM »
Regardless of how much the budget is,, if it were to be cut from NASA under teh guise that its going to help other programs, do we really expect that the money would make it anywhere we deem beneficial?
No I say one of the greatest aspects of America is its ability to think big,, act big, and explore possibilities that others wont because there " isnt a payback" as such,,
its an attitude we have, or had at least. If we take away all the "dreamers" then this country will stagnate and die, our reason for forging ahead will faulter and we will become just a bunch of laborers grinding out our existance,, I for one want to dream big! R%%%%
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Offline donald raab

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #21 on: July 23, 2011, 12:37:26 AM »
Time for Chinese lessons.  it is going to be a long century.

Offline Elwyn Aud

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #22 on: July 23, 2011, 02:49:20 AM »
With the shuttle program ending, will this mean the end of deliveries of any large pieces of equipment to the ISS? What is the difference in payload capacity between the space shuttle and a Russian cargo ship?

Online Brett Buck

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #23 on: July 23, 2011, 12:59:10 PM »
With the shuttle program ending, will this mean the end of deliveries of any large pieces of equipment to the ISS?

   Yes.

Quote
What is the difference in payload capacity between the space shuttle and a Russian cargo ship?

   A factor of about 50.  The russian cargo capsule is pretty much the same as the crew deliver vehicle, it's about enough for two people to live comfortably for about 10 days, roughly a 7 foot diameter sphere. And the size is significantly limited by the size of the hatch.

    The shuttle, as a cargo craft, is a little bigger than a Saturn 1b. The Russian Soyuz is somewhere around a Gemini or a little smaller.

    Brett

Offline Norm Faith Jr.

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #24 on: July 26, 2011, 08:04:41 PM »
     Well, yes, I would go one-way (and volunteered for a potential one-way right after the Challenger - as did every single *real* astronaut  and everyone on the program who might be qualified; that was actually a plan for about a month or two, to launch a few critical payloads regardless of the risk).

    But the technological basis for going, staying for the required time (on the order of a year) and coming back is well in hand for *a long* time now. It would be a massive and every expensive effort but Apollo-era capabilities and mild extrapolations would have been more than adequate. For example, Skylab would have made the *perfect* spacecraft for the travel to and from Mars and could easily carry sufficient supplies. You would need a HUGE pair of external boost and brake stages to boost it out of Earth orbit, stop it at Mars, and then send it back. But big is all that would be required, nothing particularly sophisticated. So well within our capabilities.

   The lander is pretty high-zoot but you have some advantage that you can use aerobraking and parachutes so it's not inordinately worse than landing on the moon. The ascent stage would be huge, of course.

   Von Braun had it pretty much worked out by the time he got moved out of Apollo, and it was a fun bit of work for us in junior high science class to determine the required propellant quantities. For the braking and Mars escape insertion that was a lot of propellant since you had to use hypergolics. If you could convince yourself that you could insulate the tanks long enough to use LOX/RP1 for at least the braking, that would tremendously reduce the size of the Mars boost stage.

   And this is for a "giant Apollo" EOR-MOR mission without aerobraking into orbit. If you could develop some of the trickier in-situ propellant, oxygen, and water generation, then the entire thing shrinks dramatically, as does some of the risk. The beauty of that is that if you screwed it up the first time, you could keep trying until you got something that worked with no risk of people. That's probably just a matter of research, not advanced technology.

   Note that if we went back to the moon, we would almost certainly use EOR-MOR now, too. They thought it was too complicated at the time but they also had never done a rendezvous in space when they decided. If you just wanted to repeat Apollo you could do it with much smaller boosters because you would assemble the stack in orbit. We could have done it with three Titan 4 or Delta 4 heavy launches  - one for the LM, one for the S-IVb  and one for the CSM (probably in that order) and maybe with three Atlas 552 launches although I haven't done the math. I think the Saturn 1b was just a bit too small for three launches (because the fully-fueled CSM was too heavy - no problem for the LM).

    Brett


I'm 63 years old and if asked if I could be ready to ride with Brett in 24 hours?...I would want to know what to do with the other 23 hours and 59 minutes. I was there for the last launch, (my second) awesome, proud and humbling...emptiness.  :'( I would of loved to have rode the last one.
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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #25 on: July 27, 2011, 05:18:21 AM »
So why can't we fly two of em up to the ISP and dock them to be used as escape vehicles, then the ISP could used to it's full potential.

Offline Norm Faith Jr.

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #26 on: July 27, 2011, 10:06:47 AM »
So why can't we fly two of em up to the ISP and dock them to be used as escape vehicles, then the ISP could used to it's full potential.

Not a bad idea, but I believe that maintenance upkeep and the need for specialized technicians, would be prohibitive.
Norm
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Offline Ed Keller

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #27 on: July 27, 2011, 03:20:53 PM »
Before any serious discussions involving space travel take place, there is a lot of information that the public needs to consider. The following is a quote from an article written by David Coppedge, who works in the Cassini program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The article is entitled "Space Travel? Shields Up!"  "Most manned space flight has been in the relatively safe zone of low earth orbit. ...... to consider the hazards of prolonged exposure to space. The news is not good. Earthlings, count your blessings. Outer space is no calm vacuum. It is filled with fast moving particles, from the smallest neutrinos to massive meteoroids. The solar wind blows electrons and protons at over a million mph. Without warning, solar flares can erupt,emitting 100 times the sun's X-ray energy output. In addition, high-energy cosmic rays from deep space can easilypenetrate a spaceship and a human body, causing damage to tissues and DNA.       Shuttle and space station astronauts operate within Earth's protective Van Allen belts and gravitational field. ....Apollo 17 lasted only 12 days. ..... none of the flights occurred during a solar flare. Had the space travelers received such a blast, they would have been dead within minutes. ...... last September,NASA medical researchers described "Risk 29":...... massive amounts of solar  and cosmic radiation will decimate the brains of astronauts, leaving them in a vegatative state, if they survive at all. The sight of a demented crew emerging from their craft is hardly the photo-op to boost national pride."  This article goes on to list many other obstacles. It winds up with the best advice anyone can give - "In the meantime,step outside underneath the gentle sun, breathe the sweet air, and thank God.  The full article is http://www.icr.org/articles/view/3193/346/   Regards, Ed

Offline Ed Keller

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Re: Space Shuttle touches down - it's over now :(
« Reply #28 on: July 27, 2011, 03:28:37 PM »
As an adder to the above, in order to clarify - "Shuttle and space station astronauts operate within Earths protective Van Allen belts and gravitational field." This is the key to all of the past "space programs". This was one of David Coppedges main points. We actually have not ventured beyond this limitation.   Ed


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