No More Space Shuttle = ?? for ISS?

[stueyross]

Hi All,

For those of us that follow the fares of NASA and the future of our space programme its interesting to see that the age of the Space Shuttle is coming to an end next year.

Question: How are we going to ferry people to and from the International Space Station? Is it primarily to be Russian led?

Info appreciated please

 

[Mark de Vries]

I think this is more suited for the Science & Technology forum, but to answer your question: yes, NASA will be buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft (or possibly commission a complete Soyuz if needed), just like European and Japanese astronauts.

 

[Mr Awe]

Thank goodness the Space Shuttle will soon be done!! Overly complex, overly expensive POS. I just feel bad for those who lost their lives in that death trap.

Mr Awe

 

[Canadave]

^ Death trap? I can't argue that the shuttle never really lived up to the ideal of a cheap and easy vehicle to transfer to and from LEO, but 98.4% of all shuttle missions occured safely and without loss of life. That's a remarkable percentage for any space program, and off the top of my head the only other system I know of with a comperable record is Soyuz. It'd be a stretch to call it "safe" (no rocket really is) but death trap? Hardly.

 

[stueyross]

Thank goodness the Space Shuttle will soon be done!! Overly complex, overly expensive POS. I just feel bad for those who lost their lives in that death trap.

Mr Awe

If I were thinner skinned I'd actually find that quite offensive. The Shuttle is the only truly re-usable space going vehicle mankind has ever created and is perhaps the singularly most impressive feat of engineering in the last 20 years.

Yes there were catastrophic disasters but thats the price that we pay for pushing the frontiers of exploration.

Complex maybe. Expensive certainly. But with great risk comes great rewards. Whether we've actually realised those rewards just yet is debatable, but if we dont try, if we dont at least venture outward in some way we'll stagnate here.

I dreamed of being an Astronaut, still do. I'll never get there. Didnt have the right background, am too old and I'm far from being rich enough to pay for one of these space flights. I cried the day we lost Challenger and cried again the day we lost Columbia.

Maybe the next generation of western space vehicle will fare better and reach further.

 

[Mr Awe]

^^ It may be reusable but it is actually more expensive to run than non-reusable capsules. Doesn't make financial sense. That's one reason why we're dumping it and going back to a capsule design.

And, the Shuttle is far more dangerous than say the Soyuz which hasn't had a fatality since 1971! Yeah, I'd take the Soyuz safety record over the Shuttle any day of the week even if it is "just" a non-reusable capsule. That's another reason why we're ditching the Shuttle.

The Space Shuttle was originally planned to have 100 flights a year. Decades later and we've only got 126 flights total. Pretty lame. There really has not been any "great reward" from the Shuttle.

You call it a "remarkable feat of engineering." Why? Because it had no escape system. Or because the crew compartment was in the middle of the stack thus placing it at risk? Or, maybe it's because of the inherent flaw in its design that required the "great" foam it needed for the fuel tanks that could easily come off and puncture wholes in the wings?

Instead, the Shuttle has not gone further out into space but rather its huge expenses has drained money from other, more worthwhile projects that would've allowed us to do so.

Go ahead and be upset or whatever. But, we'll enjoy a cheaper, safer, simpler, and more flexible (not bound to LEO) system soon. You might like reusable but it came at great cost. Personally, I'm looking forward to the better system.

Mr Awe

 

[Zulu Romeo]

We can't rely on Soyuz forever. Sooner or later someone will design a much more proven, safer, more efficient, cheaper, and maybe even reliably reusable orbital delivery system that several nations can use easily. The Shuttle is of an old design, and there have been several replacement candidates on the drawing board for decades. It will need a successor.

But Soyuz is here, proven, and working, so I guess for now it's best to work with what we've got. Until our spaceflight needs change very quickly and with different and more ambitious aims in mind (I strongly believe it will be a case of when, not if), it will do.

 

[Mr Awe]

^^ Yeah, it's good that we have Soyuz for now. I'm hopeful that NASA's new Ares system will be a marked improvement. It returns to the basics of a capsule design but it'll be improved from the Apollo era capsules. They'll be much more flexible and most likely cheaper and safer to use.

Mr Awe

 

[RJDiogenes]

The Shuttle is an amazing vehicle, but it was, and is, an experimental vehicle. It never lived up to its promise, partly because of political failures and partly because of technological failures. I love the Shuttle but I'm not sorry it's being retired; it scares the Hell out of me every time it launches and every time it lands-- I don't want to see any more Astronauts killed (but, of course, I will, because people are always killed in such endeavors).

I just wish they would get on the stick with this replacement vehicle.

 

[CaptainStoner]

Maybe something else we need is a cargo vehicle that stays in orbit, and is probably remote controlled. Then things can be sent into orbit without a crew on board, retrieved, all without risking astronauts. For getting them up and down from the space station, I like the "orbital cable" idea.

 

[sojourner]

^Not needed. Russian Progress and european transports take cargo to the ISS unmanned now.

Right now I have more faith in SpaceX completing Dragon than Ares I ever being completed.

 

[pookha]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/index.html

i have faith in it.

 

[stueyross]

I have to say Ares looks fantastic. I cant wait for the stability test flight (into the Atlantic) later this year.

I had a long conversation with my other/better half last night and she's agreed that I/we can go to FLA to catch one of the last Shuttle launches.

it's always been a dream of mine. Anyone wanna meet up and crack open a Bud and watch the last launch?

 

[Mark de Vries]

I'd really love to see a launch, but alas: wrong side of the Atlantic .

I am curious to see what will happen with the shuttles after retirement. Maybe they can tour one of them around as a farewell. Wasn't Enterprise at the Paris Air Show some time in the 1980s?

As for the shuttle: yeah, they need to be retired, but I love them. Call me sentimental, but I do. Soyuz is safer than the shuttle, yes, but does that mean that the shuttle is not safe at all? Of course not. Two Soyuz missions cost the lives of their crew. They happened in the space of four years. Two shuttle missions, spaced seventeen years apart, also cost the lives of their crew. I'd say that balances things out somewhat. Whenever something horrible like that happens, things are improved as much as they can, but there is no such thing as a 100% safe vehcile.

 

[Flagius]

Thank goodness the Space Shuttle will soon be done!! Overly complex, overly expensive POS. I just feel bad for those who lost their lives in that death trap.

Mr Awe

If I were thinner skinned I'd actually find that quite offensive. The Shuttle is the only truly re-usable space going vehicle mankind has ever created and is perhaps the singularly most impressive feat of engineering in the last 20 years.

No... The damned things had to be almost totally rebuilt after every flight. That's not called re-usable, it's called recyclable. And considering the fact that it was designed in the 70's, it's hardly a modern marvel of engineering.

 

[Flagius]

I'd really love to see a launch, but alas: wrong side of the Atlantic .

I am curious to see what will happen with the shuttles after retirement. Maybe they can tour one of them around as a farewell. Wasn't Enterprise at the Paris Air Show some time in the 1980s?

As for the shuttle: yeah, they need to be retired, but I love them. Call me sentimental, but I do. Soyuz is safer than the shuttle, yes, but does that mean that the shuttle is not safe at all? Of course not. Two Soyuz missions cost the lives of their crew. They happened in the space of four years. Two shuttle missions, spaced seventeen years apart, also cost the lives of their crew. I'd say that balances things out somewhat. Whenever something horrible like that happens, things are improved as much as they can, but there is no such thing as a 100% safe vehcile.

How many Soyuz missions have there been? How many shuttle missions? That's how you judge safety, not by the time span between failures.

 

[JonathonWally]

I just wish they would get on the stick with this replacement vehicle.

They've already changed over one of the big launch pads, retrofitted the VAB, and changed the gantry system over.

The prototype launches in August which will then lead them to start construction on the rest of Ares and Orion for a planned first launch in 2011/2012. It seems like a long time, but considering how it was only announced a short time ago and they're already getting well underway, especially in this economy, it is promising.

Last I read, all the contractors are ready to start building their respective pieces almost immediately after the launch of the prototype if all goes well.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

If I were thinner skinned I'd actually find that quite offensive. The Shuttle is the only truly re-usable space going vehicle mankind has ever created and is perhaps the singularly most impressive feat of engineering in the last 20 years.

The "singularly most impressive feat of engineering in the last 20 years"? I beg to differ; the Millau Viaduct, Burj Dubai and the Large Hadron Collider come to mind. Now those are impressive feats of engineering. Not some expensive, exploding deathtrap that tries to get people out of our atmosphere.

Now if someone invented FTL drive or anti-gravity, or if they built (with limited technology) a ring around the planet, or a space elevator; I'd agree with you -- but nobody has, of yet. As long as we've only got some Shuttles and they ain't got any modern technology, it has become an outdated piece of crap; the space days are over, and have been for a very long time. Fortunately, there are new initiatives on the horizon, I believe.

 

[Deks]

The shuttles are extremely out of date piece of technology.
Why anyone would be calling them 'singularly most impressive feat of engineering in the last 20 years' is puzzling.
If NASA had been working on actually improving the shuttles over the years to bring them up to the latest technological standards (internally and externally) every once in a while, we likely would have had much better success with them.

As it is, I'm slightly puzzled as to why stick with an outdated piece of equipment that is continuously being patched and already caused deaths of some people in the process.
I'm not saying that latest and the greatest is without it's faults, but it helps in minimizing the risks involved.
They are always saying how they are throwing billions into the space program, and yet they still use 'antiquated garbage' to do this and wonder why they end up with so many issues.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

If NASA had been working on actually improving the shuttles over the years to bring them up to the latest technological standards (internally and externally) every once in a while, we likely would have had much better success with them.

I completely agree. Yes, I long for Humanity to reach the stars, just as most people on this board -- I'm a Star Trek fan, after all. However, even with billions of dollars poured into NASA, they still haven't come up with something new, or innovative. Sure, a little discovery here and there, but nothing groundbreaking. At this point, I'm seriously wondering if it's money well spent or if we should wait until we've invented more effective methods for escaping our planetary atmosphere and cruising in our solar system. As it stands now, the technology is outdated, NASA's got more bureaucracy then the European Union and we're not actually accomplishing anything significant. If that doesn't sound like a failure to you, tell me what does.