[Luis Dias]

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

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Sololop]

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.

[Luis Dias]

I was just answering your question

[Polpolion]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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?

[IceFire]

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.

[Kosh]

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.

[Herra Tohtori]

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.

[IceFire]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[StarSlayer]

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.

[redsniper]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Astronomiya]

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.

[Nuke]

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.

[Polpolion]

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.

[Goober5000]

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.

[newman]

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, 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.

[Mongoose]

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.