Actually yeah Mika, looking back through your post history you have a bad habit of calling people idiots (in a very passive-aggressive way) when posting. Please stop, and remember that one of the core rules of a good debate is to always assume the strongest form of your opponent's position.
If you want to call people idiots just say 'you are an idiot', that's much more fun
I will start with this one. I don't call anyone idiot in real life, and that applies to the internet discussion too. Doing that doesn't make anything "fun", it will usually only serve to make things worse. And I apply that core rule when I don't know enough from the person who I'm talking/writing to.
Then to the topic:
Space flight is fundamentally unsafe. It will never be made safe; the entire notion that the space industry is intended to make its vehicles safe is a good laugh, and I should've said 'could easily be made safer' rather than 'safe'. The intent is to make them safer. The shuttle might be made safer, but the shuttle's engineered safety tolerances are, as far as I'm concerned, pretty good. Not perfect, but considering the environment, good. The lack of a crew escape option is one of the bigger flaws.
and this one are actually partially related.
EDIT: and remember (this can be confusing to those who haven't spent a long time discussing the topic) that most of the statements I've made about good condition and good engineering in this thread are about the orbiter. The SRB and tank designs have always been the weak points of the STS complex and you won't find me stepping up to defend them.
I, in principle, agree with these statements, but there is one thing missing that I feel hasn't been discussed much. There is one thing in the orbiter tolerances themselves that when combined with the tank design is outright a dangerous combination. That is the reinforced carbon carbon panel impact resistance combined with the external tank shedding its isolation foam. Even though the panels are likely a couple of magnitudes stronger than required, this is not enough to withstand almost a supersonic impact of an object that might have mass counted in kilograms rather than grams. I'm starting to think that nothing that would be put in the orbit could be.
The underlying problem is the shuttle launching procedure in itself, the orbiter is not sitting on top of the external tank where the isolation foam would have a much lower probability of hitting it. It is instead fixed on the lower part of the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. And I also think that it is almost impossible in the current knowledge of Physics to put isolation foam on the tank that would remain there with sufficient certainty, considering the influence of the environment. It is no coincidence that aircraft wings should really be kept clean, and the orbiter is no exception - things are only more demanding with the orbiter. The insulation foam of the tank cannot be got rid off in the current design. It is needed to prevent ice from getting on the tank surfaces, ice would cause even more problems than the foam should it fall on the orbiter during ascent. If Russians and Chinese are going to go with reusable vehicles, it will be interesting to see if they go on with a shuttle like configuration or change it somehow to prevent this issue.
Why do I make such a big number of it? In the report, it is said that almost every tenth of the shuttle missions have documented foam shedding and hitting the heat shielding. This means that there is actually some probability that at least every tenth mission could end like Columbia, and there is quite a little that can be done to improve this. Different insulation foam combinations have been tried, but that hasn't got rid of the problem. Also add in that the shuttles are prototypes, each one built slightly differently, both of reports criticize NASA for calling it operational vehicle when it has never been. The problem with foam shedding might be fundamentally unsolvable, and for that reason I think it might not be a bad decision to end the shuttle program.
As a clarification I don't think that the orbiter is badly engineered (it is more on the overall design requirements that were flawed), but as someone who does some amount of engineering I put more value on how well the systems achieve their performance requirements, where the shuttle is unfortunately a failure. It would be interesting to hear how do the engineers themselves think about the shuttle in private, though I haven't yet met one from NASA.
