Be Excellent To Each Other

I just finished watching that 2 part program on NASA that was on BBC 2.

They said that the Shuttle is due to retire in 2010. Do we know what the replacement is yet?

I think they might be going back to rockets until tehy sort something else out.

Glass Elevators.

As far as I know they're just going back to more conventional rockets. I think making the shuttle reusable ended up costing more than it was worth.

A bit of a backward step?

The replacement programme is called Constellation and the first rockets Ares. The Ares boosters are about the size of Saturn V, but designed similarly to the tank and SRBs that lift the Shuttle Orbiter.

Wiki.

So back to the moon again...cool

It's very similar to the Apollo program.

The Space Shuttle is a nice idea but a combination of stupid design alterations* combined with the fact that it's extremely inefficient in terms of moving equipment (even the Soviet Shuttle was far superior in payload capacity, plus it could do its entire mission unmanned) but hey, at least it put AMERICANS IN SPACE!!!!

*the original idea was very much like SpaceShipTwo (or, if you like, the GI Joe Space Shuttle). A big manned carrier aircraft would take off (either vertical launch or runway) with the Shuttle on its back. At very high altitude, the Shuttle would detach and fly the last few miles into orbit, while the carrier aircraft circled around back to land. Nothing was disposed of.

Soviet Shuttle ?? I had not heard of that, or have I.. was it scrapped and left in a warehouse?

I did a school project on it, it was called 'Buran' and I think only two or three were built, only one of which ever flew.

Externally it looks almost identical to the US shuttle, except it has a much bigger payload capacity and can be flown entirely by remote control. I think they're all in museums now. They had the misfortune to be built just as Soviet Russia was undergoing the ultimate Russian reversal and becoming just plain boring Russia.

Wikiclicki



It certainly has a sleeker, more sinister Communist look to it, doesn't it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

I was right about the wharehouse..

I'd love to go to the moon. Or space. It'd be awesome.

Bizarrely, thinking about it it, and the fact that I never will, makes me really, really sad.

We can fasten you to a big firework if that helps?

It's quite depressing thinking about things that are so out of reach of your potential. Space is one of those things.

Thanks, man. it means a lot to me.

We could stick a firework up your arse. Would that make you happy?

Mali, we're all in Space (man). You mean, you want to leave Earth?

This can be arranged, in a manner of speaking.

You can't beat the 70's sci-fi novel cover look of it.

Spaceman. Always wanted you to go into space, man.

What do you do if you see a Space man?

Yep, and even if those short trip to space touristy things do ever take off (arf) they'd be so hideously expensive I wouldn't be able to do it anyway

I'm not sure if I ever thanked Plissken (I think it was him) for recommending the book 'Riding Rockets' by the shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane. I really really enjoyed that book.

*waits for Zardoz*

I went to a talk by Buzz Aldrin last weekend and got a signed book (swooon!)

The shuttle was probably on the whole a really bad decision, and what has held us back this last decade. It's a nice idea to make a true reusable craft, but it wasn't really. It requires a huge amount of maintance, and some bits of it are so old they have to scavange for stuff on ebay. Due to all tha maintance they need there not even cheaper (I think).

With the ISS we don't need to take a mini space station up and down each trip, and rockets can take more interesting and varied pay loads.

So all in all it's a good thing I think.

Not a problem.



I hate you. I mean that with love. But I hate you.

I was meant to go and attend a lecture by and then meet Chris Hadfield back when I was in high school. Unfortunately, a series of delays and the sheer size of the York University campus meant that I missed the entire lecture and only got to sort of stand ten feet away from him as he answered a few questions before packing up, and instead wound up spending the day with the stunning redhead chick that I was courting (who was in my space science class).

So it sorta worked out in the end.

I think the Space Shuttle is an idea ahead of its time... while a reusable spacecraft is great, the whole 'spaceplane' concept won't really be super duper until it's capable of taking off from a runway under its own power.

We should have built HOTOL, even if it bankrupted us.

How could it have been a toattly bad decision, when the shuttles did well over 100 flights with only 2 major incidents?

Two out of the five built exploding spectacularly isn't exactly a gleaming safety record.

Perhaps for some of the reasons Lave mentioned above?

it is if you look at the number of flights which I belive is about 150. so 2 out of 150 is not a bad saftey record.

In fact the one that last had an incident was flight 114.

Space elevators for the win. They just need to find something to make the cable from that is (I think I recall) 8.5 times stronger than the strongest thing we have right now. At the rate materials science is progressing, that's likely to happen in the next decade or so.

Also I love this pic:

Didn't they say that they could make it of a feasible strength with carbon nanotubes?

I always liked the idea of an electromagnetic railgun built up the side of a mountain.
Possibly not ideal for getting people up there mind you.

i am not questionign that the program went on a decade longer than it should, but it's safety record was quite good.

From the same design engineers who observed that bike seats are uncomfortable and came up with padded shorts, we bring you: Iron Skeleton!

No, I don't think so. Did they? If so, why haven't they done it yet? Shuttle and rocket launches are so incredibly expensive (isn't it over $1bill/launch?) that the economics of a space elevator are staggering. It's a total game changer for getting stuff into orbit.

Yes, but of the original four spaceworthy shuttles, half of them have blown up. I don't think half your fleet of vehicles exploding and killing the crew is something 'major incident' does justice to, nor does the fact that they had to build a fifth shuttle to replace the first one that blew up.

We're not talking the various (30) incidents of the early DC-10s when you consider that 386 of them were built and that they've flown hundreds of thousands of hours. There was an aircraft with a bad repuation for safety (though they've since sharpened up). I don't think we'd get as far as 173 crashed DC-10s without the whole lot of them being grounded.

I like that one.

Nice. So is this:

There is a great 'hard' science fiction trilogy where they build a space elevator on mars, and later the top part connected to a stabilizing meteor gets cut lose. And it proceeds to wrap itself around the planet 2 and half times, gaining speed the whole time, causing muchos damageous.

But some simulations predict that infact it would snap with most pieces gaining escape velocity.

It would be quiet a terrorist magnet. But totally, totally awesome.


That triliogy is called

Some game designer recommended those books in a interview with PC Gamer a while ago.

It would be cool if it worked like a cheese wire and cut Mars in half.

You got to the end of the Mars trilogy, Lave?

I guess you earned your doctorate, then.

It's a far worse safety record than passive descent modules have though, so that's a negative too.

Yes agreed that 2 of the four shuttles were destroyed, but as I have said and you seem to be ignoring is that the combined number of flights the 4/5 shuttles did. Which is about 150 I think...

There is a whole difference between aircraft and space craft. Space flight is not routine and is very dangerous.

There have been more shuttle flights that there were appollo flights, and there were 2 appollo accidents.

Heh. I got about half-way through Red Mars before getting utterly bored. But that was back when I was about 15, and had half the attention span.

360 Pad blister packs

Problem being Myps only has one cock.

I thought there were two of those too.. which I put in my last post... Apollo 1 and Apollo 13, granted 13 made it back.

So? Soyuz must have done that many trips including ferrying people to and from the space station, and I don't think they've lost any crews at all, am I wrong?

[edit]yes, during the same phase as the Apollo missions. Early stuff though, it's been reliable since and the shuttle hasn't. That's all my point was.