Space Shuttle Countdown Enters Final Hours

[jamotto]

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA managers put a brief but embarrassing setback behind them as the countdown to the first space shuttle flight in 2 1/2 years entered its final hours Wednesday, with only predicted thunderstorms posing some concern.

A temporary window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail Tuesday afternoon, just two hours after NASA declared Discovery ready to return the nation to space for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

The mishap was an eerie reminder of the very thing that doomed Columbia ÔÇö damage to the spaceship's fragile thermal shield.

Discovery and its crew of seven were set to blast off at 3:51 p.m. EDT on a flight to the international space station.

"It should not impact the launch time right now," said David Mould, NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs.

The lightweight plastic cover on one of Discovery's cockpit windows came loose while the spaceship was on the launch pad, falling more than 60 feet and striking a bulge in the fuselage, said Stephanie Stilson, the NASA manager in charge of Discovery's launch preparations.

No one knows why the cover ÔÇö held in place with tape and weighing less than 2 pounds ÔÇö fell off, she said. The covers are used prior to launch to protect the windows while the shuttle is on the launch pad, then removed before liftoff.

Two tiles on an aluminum panel were damaged, and the entire panel was replaced with a spare; Stilson called it a minor repair job.

Space agency managers held one last meeting Tuesday to address lingering technical concerns and later pronounced Discovery ready to fly.

"We have done everything that we know to do," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said afterward.

The families of the seven astronauts killed during Columbia's catastrophic re-entry praised the accident investigators, a NASA oversight group and the space agency itself for defining and reducing the dangers.

Like those who lost loved ones in the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire and the Challenger launch explosion, the Columbia families said they grieve deeply "but know the exploration of space must go on."

"We hope we have learned and will continue to learn from each of these accidents so that we will be as safe as we can be in this high-risk endeavor," they said in a statement. "Godspeed, Discovery."

Discovery will be setting off on the 114th space shuttle flight in 24 years with a redesigned external fuel tank and nearly 50 other improvements made in the wake of the Columbia tragedy.

A chunk of foam insulation the size of a carry-on suitcase fell off Columbia's fuel tank at liftoff and slammed into a reinforced carbon panel on the shuttle's wing, creating a hole that brought the spacecraft crashing down in pieces during its return to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003.

During their 12-day flight, Discovery's astronauts will test various techniques for patching cracks and holes in the thermal shielding.

The crew members also will try out a new 50-foot boom designed to give them a three-dimensional laser view of the wings and nose cap and help them find any damage caused by liftoff debris. That is on top of all the pictures of the spacecraft that will be taken by more than 100 cameras positioned around the launching site and aboard two planes and the shuttle itself.

Until the window cover fell, NASA's only concern was the weather. Because of thunderstorms in the forecast, the chances of acceptable weather at launch time were put at 60 percent, down from 70 percent a day earlier.

"We're just hoping that the weather gods are kind," Griffin said. "Weather's always out there. We'll just deal with it as it comes."

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[LostInSpace]

Oh well, flight cancelled again.

[jamotto]

NASA Could Attempt Shuttle Launch Sunday

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA said Thursday that it will not make another attempt to launch space shuttle Discovery until at least Sunday ÔÇö and even that is a "really optimistic good-luck scenario."

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Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said the space agency still probably faces several days of troubleshooting to figure out what caused the faulty fuel-gauge reading that forced the cancellation of Wednesday's launch.

The only way the shuttle would be able to fly on Sunday is "if we go in and wiggle some wires and find a loose connection," said Hale, who conceded that was unlikely to work.

Wednesday's liftoff would have been the first shuttle flight in 2 1/2 years since the grounding of the space program after the Columbia accident. With little more than two hours to go and the astronauts on-board, the flight was canceled because a fuel gauge read full when it should have read empty.

Hale said the space agency had 12 engineering teams around the country trying to figure out why, but so far they haven't solved the problem.

"I wish I had more answers for you," he said.

He wouldn't rule out the chance of launching Discovery in July, and NASA officials have no immediate plans to move Discovery from the launch pad back to its hangar, which would require more days of delay.

NASA has until the end of the month to send the shuttle and its seven astronauts to space on their 12-day mission or it must wait until September. The launch timing is dictated by both the position of the space station and NASA's desire to hold a daylight liftoff so it can photograph the spacecraft during its climb to orbit and watch out for possible damage.

"I'm not ready to give up on a July window," Hale said. "We still have several days ahead of us."

On Wednesday, shuttle managers found themselves on the defensive, explaining why they pressed ahead with the launch when the same type of potentially fatal problem with the fuel gauges cropped up during a fueling test just three months ago and was accepted as an "unexplained anomaly."

The space agency requires all four of its hydrogen-fuel gauges to be working to ensure that the main engines shut off in space at just the right moment. If the engines shut down too soon or too late because of erroneous gauge readings, the results could be catastrophic. For instance, the engines could rupture if they kept running after the tank sprang a leak and ran out of fuel.

Some engineers had pushed for further testing at the pad before committing to a liftoff, but were overruled by top managers who concluded that the replacement of cables, the electronics box and the tank itself was ample.

However, even if NASA had conducted another fueling test in June, Hale said it's unclear whether the fuel gauge would have malfunctioned the way it did in a checkout test: Instead of showing an empty tank, the gauge kept showing full.

The delayed launch came just a day after an embarrassing turn for NASA, when a plastic cockpit window cover fell off the shuttle and damaged its fragile thermal tiles before the spacecraft had even taken off.

Wednesday's launch delay disappointed space buffs across the country. From Cape Canaveral, where congressmen and astronaut families had come to witness the awe-inspiring sight of a rocket launch, to museums coast to coast where schoolchildren had gathered, the postponement of the long-awaited return to space was disheartening.

"I wanted to see it really, really, really bad," groaned 8-year-old Michael Schamtin of Sherwood, Ore., who had waited for liftoff at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

When the shuttle finally does take off, the astronauts will test new techniques for inspecting and repairing cracks and holes similar to the damage that doomed Columbia in 2003.

In the 2 1/2 years since Columbia broke apart on its return to Earth, NASA has worked to fix its "safety culture," which the accident investigators concluded broke down during the flight.

NASA also has concentrated on making the external fuel tank safer by reducing the risk that foam insulation, ice or other debris will break off at launch. The gauge that caused trouble on Wednesday is in the external fuel tank, but was unrelated to any of the safety modifications.

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If first you don't succeed.....

[Cc]

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Sorry,time to retire this beast.

At a million dollars per launch,I think we can do better.

[teknocack]

Yeah, I don't know if it is dirty economics and vendors trying to keep their lucrative contracts going or if it is politics. I am getting sick and tired of talking heads that say we need to feed the children first instead of increasing NASAs budget or pushing the exploration of space in other ways (private investment is probably the way things will go).

Man is intellectual and must explore and expand his sphere of influence. Particularly in the face of rampant human expansion on this planet. As of right now we are using up resources at a faster rate than the planet can renew them and I must admit that I am not confidant that this trend will reverse. Next solution, find some safety valve in the form of other locations to live. Yes I understand that this is not an instant fix but combined with other strategies might save our mother planet from becoming a used up husk with a few grubby mammals eking out bare subsistence.

I say our country should do two things: 1. Double NASAs budget for the short term. Their mission should be exploration and help to shape the bureaucracy that will control the space ways. 2. Devise regulations to allow private investment in space exploration and the developement of a new economic segment of our society.

Bottom line is that we must go into space and we must do it more effectively and the shuttle, while an admirable workhorse and historic spacefaring platform, is definitely tired and past its useful prime. It's time to move closer to real Battlecruiser shizzle.

[jamotto]

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Originally posted by Cc:

Sorry,time to retire this beast.

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Its long past it's retirement age

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At a million dollars per launch,I think we can do better.

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NASA was developing one, it got canned.

[Guest]

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Originally posted by Cc:

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Sorry,time to retire this beast.

At a million dollars per launch,I think we can do better.

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A million? Try 300 MILLION.... PER LAUNCH.....

That is for the 1st 8 launches in any given year, launch 9 and 10 would only cost 90 million. I have no idea how they come up with such figures, but that is it.

It costs 1/3 the total cost of a shuttle, 1 BILLION dollars, to launch it and it's payload into space.

[jamotto]

It on average it costs 450 million per mission. It also costs about $10,000 per pound for the payload alone.