Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Herra Tohtori on July 08, 2011, 09:04:57 am
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Today, 8th July 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift-off for its final mission.
Weather is still a factor, the launch could be a scrub, but they're still go for launch at this time.
Tune in as history is being made:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html)
NasaTV is now in HD!
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Shuttle lifted off successfully!
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I was a little wistful watching from the camera on the External Tank as the Orbiter disconnected and slowly rose away for the last time.
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It was just too damned expensive for what it did:
Space Shuttle Program was a $209 billion mistake
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MIT Technology Review - The Space Shuttle program's benefits weren't worth the cost—and now the U.S. is in jeopardy of repeating the same mistake, says a leading space policy expert.
* 135 shuttle launches since 1981
* Other, simpler designs were considered in 1971 in the run-up to President Nixon's final decision; in retrospect, taking a more evolutionary approach by developing one of them instead would probably have been a better choice.
* The program cost $209.1 billion (in 2010 dollars)
* NASA administrator James Fletcher told Congress in 1972 that the shuttle would cost $5.15 billion to develop and could be operated at a cost of $10.5 (1972 dollars) million per flight.
So actually it was (1972) $278 million per flight ($200 billion with 5.33 times inflation factors and 135 flights so 26 times more than the $10.5 million.)
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/space-shuttle-program-was-209-billion.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29
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That's no fair sullying her good name while Batutta is not able to defend his Lady's Honour.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Leighton-God_Speed!.jpg/180px-Leighton-God_Speed!.jpg)
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Unfortunately, Luis, the only "alternative" right now is the Russian Soyuz. At 50 million dollars a ticket, we're really not getting a better deal with that than just having an entire damn shuttle.
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why even have a shuttle? rockets ftw
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To put people in space? And the shuttle kind of used rockets. It's, you know, how it moves.
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ppl r overrtd. Myself am bot.
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The ISS kind of needs a crew, unless you want to deorbit that too, which would be bad considering the ISS houses a lot of research, testing, and observational equipment, and would be a useful staging point in future missions beyond Earth orbit. The Soyuz craft works, but really only useful as a people mover. Even then three people really isn't much, and you don't have much room for a payload. The shuttle could resupply, switch the crew, and still provide a decent payload of equipment all in the same mission.
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hey thanks for the info. So you have any clues on how they'll substitute the shuttles in those tasks instead? Or are they going to use the Soyuz for all these things?
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Like I just said, the Soyuz only really transfers the crew. There are other launch systems that they'll be using for resupplies and equipment handling, like the Progress (which is derived from the soyuz, and not for people), and the ATV and HTV. Additionally, private companies are contracted by NASA to use their own systems to deliver supplies through IIRC ~2015, too. They will not be using the Soyuz.
EDIT: And doing some more research, it looks like the private companies will also be doing some people moving, too. The point is, we now have about three missions doing what one shuttle mission did before.
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Perhaps it's still cheaper nevertheless.
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Reasons for retiring the shuttle were valid, but for me that doesn't make watching it retire any less sad. Especially considering there's pretty much no successor.
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Well I wouldn't be so pessimistic. I actually think we are on the verge (and by "verge" I'm being generous - decades) of a space revolution. Silently prices to go upwards to the sky are getting lower and lower, and the interests of going up are also going up.
The next wave of space exploration will be by the private sector. And when it reaches the critical price points needed, it will be a boom.
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Reasons for retiring the shuttle were valid, but for me that doesn't make watching it retire any less sad. Especially considering there's pretty much no successor.
I feel much the same way. The Shuttles were great vehicles although perhaps overcomplicated. They did serve a great purpose of being both a transporter of people and of cargo and research at the same time.
Tragically, the biggest design flaw with them wasn't truly revealed until the Columbia disaster. I'm still very sad to see them go with no real replacement on the pad and ready to go. It does seem like companies such as Space X are making good progress and I was reading that several command module prototypes are currently being designed by a couple of companies. The manned space mission is not completely lost... But it does seem like a lot will be lost for some time.
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Considering the problems with the Progress series for resupplying the ISS, the shuttle is a remarkably safe, simple, and cheap method of doing so.
After all, it's never tried to ram the station.
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(http://i56.tinypic.com/2w1typu.jpg)
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I think NASA would get a lot more mileage if it talked about the last flight of the *space shuttle*. Trying to hype up each individual launch doesn't really work well for them and it's wasting a valuable opportunity to make people realize that they are losing the space program that was supposed to get them all into space.
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So, I'm not up-to-speed. Is this the last shuttle flight ever, or just the last for the Atlantis? If so there is a few more shuttle missions to come?
EDIT: Okay, so it's not the last flight ever as of yet. I guess they're retiring them 1 by 1. When are they expected to be completely retired?
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Considering the problems with the Progress series for resupplying the ISS, the shuttle is a remarkably safe, simple, and cheap method of doing so.
Yeah, I mean if you only spend slightly more than a billion dollars per launch on average, I guess that's pretty cheap. /sarcasm
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So, I'm not up-to-speed. Is this the last shuttle flight ever, or just the last for the Atlantis? If so there is a few more shuttle missions to come?
EDIT: Okay, so it's not the last flight ever as of yet. I guess they're retiring them 1 by 1. When are they expected to be completely retired?
Wrong, it is the last shuttle mission.
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So, I'm not up-to-speed. Is this the last shuttle flight ever, or just the last for the Atlantis? If so there is a few more shuttle missions to come?
EDIT: Okay, so it's not the last flight ever as of yet. I guess they're retiring them 1 by 1. When are they expected to be completely retired?
Wrong, it is the last shuttle mission.
Okay, no need to be snippy about it. I was just inquiring.
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I was just answering your question
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Considering the problems with the Progress series for resupplying the ISS, the shuttle is a remarkably safe, simple, and cheap method of doing so.
Yeah, I mean if you only spend slightly more than a billion dollars per launch on average, I guess that's pretty cheap. /sarcasm
I would not be surprised at all if that turns out to be simpler than having several different programs to do a specific task.* The hardest part of any mission in LEO (and actually any mission in this part of the solar system) is just getting to space, and without the shuttle you need to to that three times instead of once. Plus there's the overhead that each private company uses for development of their craft. Just a guess, but I'd imagine that if NASA didn't contract this out to private companies, they wouldn't be able to have multiple kinds of spacecraft for each task. Heck, even the Russian Fed can't have completely different spacecraft designs, the Progress is derived from the Soyuz. The shuttle was complicated and over-engineered, but at the very least you didn't need to design a new one for resupplies, satellite recoveries, and crew rotations. If they'd actually make a new kind of shuttle the things they'd be able to do with it would be simply amazing, no doubt about it. Well, very little doubt about it perhaps.
*Ok, maybe I would be a bit surprised, but I hope you get what I'm saying anyway. :p
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Yeah, I mean if you only spend slightly more than a billion dollars per launch on average, I guess that's pretty cheap. /sarcasm
If you take out the ISS, you've wasted how many billions?
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So, I'm not up-to-speed. Is this the last shuttle flight ever, or just the last for the Atlantis? If so there is a few more shuttle missions to come?
EDIT: Okay, so it's not the last flight ever as of yet. I guess they're retiring them 1 by 1. When are they expected to be completely retired?
Yes this is the last ever flight for the space shuttle program. Discovery and Endeavor have already had their final flights. This is it. After Atlantis returns to Earth the program is officially over.
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Reasons for retiring the shuttle were valid, but for me that doesn't make watching it retire any less sad. Especially considering there's pretty much no successor.
I feel much the same way. The Shuttles were great vehicles although perhaps overcomplicated. They did serve a great purpose of being both a transporter of people and of cargo and research at the same time.
Tragically, the biggest design flaw with them wasn't truly revealed until the Columbia disaster. I'm still very sad to see them go with no real replacement on the pad and ready to go. It does seem like companies such as Space X are making good progress and I was reading that several command module prototypes are currently being designed by a couple of companies. The manned space mission is not completely lost... But it does seem like a lot will be lost for some time.
Actually the biggest design flaw was revealed when the Challenger exploded, and that was in the 80's.
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Arguably, neither incident were primarily results of design flaws, and neither incident had anything to do with the orbiter itself.
Challenger disaster was caused by using o-ring seals outside their designed operation range (too cold temperature), and the Columbia disaster was the result of insulation foam coming apart from the external fuel tank, and then ignoring the potential damage because nothing had happened before.
Columbia disaster was more directly caused by the foam not staying where it should, so that could be considered a design flaw (of the external fuel tank), but even so they could have inspected the damage, lifeboated for some time on the ISS and either sent for repair materials or send the shuttle down on autopilot and see if it held together during re-entry.
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Arguably, neither incident were primarily results of design flaws, and neither incident had anything to do with the orbiter itself.
Challenger disaster was caused by using o-ring seals outside their designed operation range (too cold temperature), and the Columbia disaster was the result of insulation foam coming apart from the external fuel tank, and then ignoring the potential damage because nothing had happened before.
Columbia disaster was more directly caused by the foam not staying where it should, so that could be considered a design flaw (of the external fuel tank), but even so they could have inspected the damage, lifeboated for some time on the ISS and either sent for repair materials or send the shuttle down on autopilot and see if it held together during re-entry.
I was meaning to say that the design flaw is that the shuttle's protective shield is not protected during the critical takeoff stage and is therefore vulnerable to things like the foam hits. I suppose it's a choice in design. It makes sense the way they did it... especially since they are building a space plane. But it does open itself up to the problem that was eventually revealed (again quite tragically).
In a rocket with a command module the shield is protected during takeoff and is only revealed later. Not that it isn't potentially vulnerable after that point but I think I'm making myself clear.
It's the rocket versus space plane argument. I'm sort of in the middle ground here but just pointing out the pros and cons for both.
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Yeah, I mean if you only spend slightly more than a billion dollars per launch on average, I guess that's pretty cheap. /sarcasm
If you take out the ISS, you've wasted how many billions?
I'm pretty sure you can understand the difference between the program of the Shuttle and the program of the ISS. I mean for real.
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Yeah, I mean if you only spend slightly more than a billion dollars per launch on average, I guess that's pretty cheap. /sarcasm
If you take out the ISS, you've wasted how many billions?
I'm pretty sure you can understand the difference between the program of the Shuttle and the program of the ISS. I mean for real.
By "take out" I believe NGTM-1R is referring to the following scenario rather than him being confused about the difference in NASA project budgets.
After all, it's never tried to ram the station.
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He means it's worth spending a billion dollars per launch if that's what it takes to have a vehicle that won't ram the ISS.
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Exactly. The Progress resupply rockets were actually pretty scary **** for a time, and ridiculously unreliable. No spacecraft is perfect of course, reliability fades with complexity, but they were a damn sight worse than the shuttle has ever been.
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Columbia disaster was more directly caused by the foam not staying where it should, so that could be considered a design flaw (of the external fuel tank), but even so they could have inspected the damage, lifeboated for some time on the ISS and either sent for repair materials or send the shuttle down on autopilot and see if it held together during re-entry.
That, unfortunately, may not have been possible. No shuttle could have launched before they ran out of consumables, and prepping a Soyuz launch would have taken quite a bit of time as well. And even if the empty shuttle makes it down on autopilot, you still have the problem of seven extra astronauts aboard the ISS (if the Shuttle had enough fuel to get to it in the first place!). There was no good way out of the predicament they found themselves in. I don't want to say they were doomed from the moment the foam struck, not knowing the exact fuel load, etc., they had for the mission, but rays of sunshine would have been difficult to find.
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i could imagine the fiasco that would have happened had they found the hole while at the iss. scrambling to launch a rescue mission, rationing consumable, astronauts drawing straws over who lives and who dies because theres not enough air for everyone, etc. sometimes i wonder if the higher ups kept quiet about it because that was exactly the kind of situation they wanted to avoid. its all just conspiracy theory nonsense. it might be wise to deal with this kind of event in the future to add a few escape pods to the iss, assuming we dont end up scrapping the space station because noone can afford to build a ship to go there.
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http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html
Docking with the ISS as we I speak.
EDIT: Everything went well, if you stuck around for 5 minutes after contact you even got to see the sun rise.
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The shuttle is safe to fly when it is flown safely. Both the O-ring problem and the foam problem were known prior to their respective accidents, but were dismissed by managers as not a concern. (The foam even collided with a support strut on the solid rocket booster two missions before Columbia, which should have set off alarm bells about repeating the Challenger disaster. As it happened, a disaster did occur, but on landing, not entry.) Normalization of deviance, as was said after Challenger.
One should also keep in mind that the shuttles are still experimental spacecraft. They've only flown 135 times. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has flown thousands of times and still isn't flight-qualified yet.
More on-topic, I saw the STS-135 launch live. :D
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That, unfortunately, may not have been possible. No shuttle could have launched before they ran out of consumables, and prepping a Soyuz launch would have taken quite a bit of time as well. And even if the empty shuttle makes it down on autopilot, you still have the problem of seven extra astronauts aboard the ISS (if the Shuttle had enough fuel to get to it in the first place!). There was no good way out of the predicament they found themselves in. I don't want to say they were doomed from the moment the foam struck, not knowing the exact fuel load, etc., they had for the mission, but rays of sunshine would have been difficult to find.
You're probably right, but in the interest of "could've, should've, would've" discussion, let's assume the shuttle could have made it safely to the ISS. As far as I remember the ISS keeps a Soyuz docked to it that can be used as an escape pod. I think just one though.. that one could have still been used to evacuate 4 (I think) of the shuttle's crew, meaning 4 less mouths to feed until a rescue vehicle could be sent. Not sure if this would have been feasible, though - I'm by no means an expert and it's easy to be the general once the battle's all over. Just pointing out something that seems to me might have been possible. Considering the complications this would cause, however, it's easy to see why they went ahead and tried to return on-board Columbia, especially considering they didn't have a way of knowing just how serious the problem was.
edit: according to the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster), two possible contingencies were possible;
1) The Columbia had plenty of consumables aboard as part of an extended orbiter package, and the Atlantis was already being prepped for a March 1 launch. It was possible to expedite the launch and in theory gain a 5 day window in which to rescue the Columbia crew.
2) An emergency EVA to try and repair the damage was possible in theory.
Interestingly enough, no ISS contingency was mentioned - perhaps the shuttle was unable to reach it after all.
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No, the Shuttle doesn't carry enough fuel while in-orbit to change its orbit that dramatically. This is why, when Shuttle flights resumed two years after Columbia, they were all directed at the ISS, so that the crew would be able to lifeboat there if an orbiter was damaged upon lift-off. The only exception to this was the final Hubble repair mission, but there was a backup orbiter on the pad ready to launch on very short notice for that.
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Atlantis just reached wheel stop a few minutes ago. Here's to over thirty years of fantastic service from the Shuttle fleet, and to the two that never made it back home.
Something struck me while watching the video of the final approach. No other spacecraft has ever looked that graceful when returning to Earth. Capsules plummet like a stone and then have to dangle from parachutes until they're unceremoniously dumped in an ocean or on a plain. But the Shuttles were able to come in of their own accord, performing a great sweeping turn over the runway before performing a controlled landing. Whatever the benefits of the new capsule systems that are in the works, they won't have that going for them.
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Gorrammit, where's my SABRE engine!!???
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its likely gonna take a dozen years to fully develop it, then you got to build the skylon on top of that. though i think the engine, if successful, might be used on other designs. i can imagine some being bought for use on an american made spacecraft. sabre is far superior to anything weve ever tried to build. scram and aerospike engine suck in comparison, at least on paper. they cant be used during all phases of flight either. dragon will likely happen first.
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That's indeed all and good - Dragon will be a critical asset in ensuring that the US can maintain manned space operations. Indeed, private industry should further distribute the technical knowledge base of spaceflight operations across the aerospace industry. This then will lower development and launch costs.
Scramjets aren't too much of a draw to me, but as I do more research, I have very high hopes for plug engines and aerospike engines. Merging an aerospike with a partial fixed bell might be a real winner with a system like SABRE if you can get a combination of good materials and a favorable logistics scenario. In other words, a high turnaround rate matched with economical operational costs. I see the annular aerospike engine with a replaceable ceramic exhaust cone as an ideal fixture on a future version of the SABRE.
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I demand the immediate construction of the SuperOrion.
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That's indeed all and good - Dragon will be a critical asset in ensuring that the US can maintain manned space operations. Indeed, private industry should further distribute the technical knowledge base of spaceflight operations across the aerospace industry. This then will lower development and launch costs.
Scramjets aren't too much of a draw to me, but as I do more research, I have very high hopes for plug engines and aerospike engines. Merging an aerospike with a partial fixed bell might be a real winner with a system like SABRE if you can get a combination of good materials and a favorable logistics scenario. In other words, a high turnaround rate matched with economical operational costs. I see the annular aerospike engine with a replaceable ceramic exhaust cone as an ideal fixture on a future version of the SABRE.
i rather like the aerospike and plug engines that ive read about, sabre uses an expansion-deflection nozzle which is also capable of automatic compensation. im not entirely clear on which is the best one we have so far, but the reserch has been going on for decades. any atmospheric compensating nozzle should mesh well with the rest of the sabre design. you essentially want a nozzle that will be efficient at all altitudes. one of the reason you stage rockets (other than to get rid of dead weight) is because an effective nozzle at sea level will not be as effective at zero pressure and vise versa.
for an ssto design like skylon you need to have engines that work at all stages of flight. then it is only necessary to carry one set of engines instead of several. this makes the problem of dead weight a lesser concern, only empty tankage which in comparison to multiple sets of engines are fairly light. though skylon doesn't seem to require it it would be possible to use drop tanks for larger spacecraft/payloads.
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Atlantis re-entering the atmosphere, taken from ISS. This was over the earth's nightside so you can also see the greenish bubble effect of airglow (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/airglow1.htm). Very cool.
(http://i.imgur.com/GxUrG.jpg)
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Yeah, my jaw dropped when I saw that shot. The ISS apparently passed directly over Cape Canaveral about ten minutes before the landing, which seems appropriate.
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It almost seems as if they timed it!
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they did, space operations have to be timed perfectly to work.
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I think he means it seems they timed it so that the ISS would be able to view the re-entry. Not sure if that's the case, but if not then it certainly is a nice coincidence. Hell of a shot to to end the shuttle missions with. :)
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You guys must volume up your sarcasm detectors! :)
BTW, another article pointing out the sheer ludicrousness of the shuttle program:
How to Avoid Repeating the Debacle That Was the Space Shuttle
The most important thing to realize about the space shuttle program is that it is objectively a failure. The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.
It even includes FEYNMAN!
According to reports after the Challenger disaster, the ship exploded because of a faulty joint that included an O-ring hardened by especially cold conditions before launch. More importantly, this was far from an isolated problem, as illustrated by a report by Richard Feynman. Feynman slammed not only the O-ring error but the entire process of building and testing the shuttle, plus the management style and decision-making of NASA, for good measure. When he wrote, “Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality,” and, “They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space,”
Finishes exactly where my feelings are:
So as we prepare to mothball the shuttles and send them off to their dotage at various museums, don’t be sad about the end of the program; instead think of where could have been now if we’d cancelled the thing 25 years ago. And make sure our future spaceships are based in and judged from this spot called reality.
http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jul-aug/22-how-to-avoid-repeating-debacle-of-space-shuttle