NASA Acknowledges Space Shuttle Risks

AP on Yahoo ^ | 4/5/05 | Marcia Dunn - AP

[NormsRevenge]

SPACE CENTER, Houston - After a two-year struggle to keep big chunks of foam from coming off the shuttle fuel tank during launch, NASA acknowledged Tuesday even marshmallow-size pieces could doom the spacecraft under the worst circumstances.

Shuttle systems engineering manager John Muratore said it is a risk NASA and the nation must accept for flights to resume anytime soon.

It would take years and a total redesign of the fuel tank to completely eliminate foam loss and to ensure the 2003 Columbia tragedy would never be repeated, Muratore and other officials said.

NASA expects pieces of insulating foam no bigger than one or two marshmallows to break off the fuel tank when Discovery blasts off next month. Depending on where and when the pieces hit, they could cause catastrophic damage during re-entry, Muratore said.

By contrast, the size of the foam that shattered Columbia's left wing was the size of a carryon suitcase.

Muratore told reporters he was "trying to be scrupulously honest with you about what the potential is — but that doesn't say that's what we expect to happen." He likened the situation to trying to predict the chances of being in a fatal car accident while driving to the airport.

"If we have that worst day, and the tire is worn and you have a flat tire in the wrong place in traffic, next to a truck going 90 mph, could you get killed? Yes, you could. Is that a reasonable set of assumptions to plan your trip on? Probably not."

Muratore said assessing the danger from foam and other launch debris is an extremely complicated engineering problem made even more uncertain by the fact that computer models show little pieces of foam could cause catastrophic damage. NASA's flight experience over the decades has proven otherwise.

What NASA has to do to get smarter, Muratore said, is to stop relying on computer models and start flying the space shuttle again.

Discovery is scheduled to blast off in mid-May on the first shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. NASA plans to move the spacecraft to the launch pad Wednesday.

NASA will fly five types of repair kits aboard Discovery for the astronauts to test in space, but the rudimentary patches will accommodate holes no bigger than 4 inches. The gash that brought down Columbia was an estimated 6 inches to 10 inches in size.

Steve Poulos Jr., a shuttle project manager, said a repair kit to fix that big of a hole should be available in two years.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

[NormsRevenge]

The space shuttle Discovery sits on the mobile launcher platform in the Vehicle Assembly Building, VAB, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Tuesday, April 5, 2005. The rust colored unit is the external fuel tank and on either side of it are the solid rocket boosters. Discovery is scheduled to be rolled out of the VAB to the pad early Wednesday. Discovery is scheduled for launch no earlier than May 15 on a mission to the international space station carrying a crew of seven.(AP Photo/Peter Cosgrove)

[cripplecreek]

There will never be spaceflight if we can't accept the risks.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Too bad the risks can't be divided into smaller pieces.

[NormsRevenge]

The space shuttle Discovery arrives in the Vehicle Assembly Building after being transported from the Orbiter Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida March 29, 2005. NASA passed a significant milestone in its two-year quest to return the shuttle fleet to flight when shuttle Discovery left its processing hangar early on Tuesday and made a quarter-mile journey to the assembly building. (Charles W Luzier/Reuters)

[NormsRevenge]

The space shuttle Discovery hangs is it's sling in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida March 29, 2005. Discovery will be lifted vertical to the top of the building, then turned, lowered and attached to the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank. NASA passed a significant milestone in it's two year quest to return the shuttle fleet to flight. REUTERS/Charles W. Luzier

[Fast1]

I have never seen a statement quite like that before!

[ChefKeith]

What NASA needs to do is send some of these "engineers" up on a flight.

Then they will get off their collective a$$es and fix the problems on the Shuttle and tanks when THEY are in True Danger...

[NormsRevenge]

I'm thinking Space Bondo myself.. ;-)

[ChefKeith]

But if they asked me to go the day after either of the disaster flights I would have said "get Me a suit"

[JOE6PAK]

Can't we get the hippies to hold hands and chant around the shuttle to levitate the thing up to the space station?

[Paul_Denton]

There will never be spaceflight if we can't accept the risks.

Exactly.

[ChefKeith]

No, No - Super Duper Mach 10 Duct Tape.

[NormsRevenge]

a marshmallow could leave a good sized hole , many inches possibly, Super Duper Mach 10 Duct Tape? foot wide right? and we're covered.. ;-)

[cripplecreek]

Mankinds greatest acheivements have been about 20% knowledge, 20% luck and 60% risk. When Chuck Yeager strapped himself into the X-1 he knew it was a flying bomb that couldn't land with a fuel load.

[Fast1]

If you can not redesign the fuel tank then provide some hi temp metallic shielding for the leading wing edge insulation even if some payload capacity is lost.

[JOE6PAK]

"When Chuck Yeager strapped himself into the X-1 he knew it was a flying bomb that couldn't land with a fuel load."

Look at kids car seats today! When I was a lad, I sat next to Dad and shifted the gears at 60 mph on the Jersey Turnpike!

WHATTARUSH!

[spinestein]

The risk of total failure (including loss of crew) per shuttle flight remains at about 1 out of 80. This hasn't changed since the beginning of the program and as complicated as the shuttle is, it isn't going to change.


Any new vehicle to replace the shuttle is not likely to see much of an improvement in that number because high risk is inherent to manned spaceflight.

[ChefKeith]

[freedumb2003]

a marshmallow could leave a good sized hole

Look what this guy did:

[cripplecreek]

One of my toys when I was a little kid was an old 20 guage shotgun that the firing mechanism removed. When I say little I mean 6 years old or so.

[bvw]

(1) This is hardly spaceflight. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo -- those were space flights. This is non-science, low-earth-orbit unusefulness, deadly and absolutely wasteful.

(2) The risk involves every civilian, mother and child, man and boy under the flight path. We were incredibly fortunate that the last Shuttle crash did not end a single innocent live on the ground -- parts fell in inhabited areas!

(3) This is a jobs program that quells more space-related endeavor than it enables. Better to put that sinecured ossified bureaucracy to work scanning luggage. Combine the Shuttle program with the baggage shuttles.

[Doe Eyes]

What NASA needs to do is send some of these "engineers" up on a flight. Then they will get off their collective a$$es and fix the problems on the Shuttle and tanks when THEY are in True Danger

My experience has been, the engineers want to fix everything, but the managers think it costs too much.

[solitas]

There will never be spaceflight if we can't accept the risks.

"we" were accepting the risks previously (AND using a different, more durable, kind of foam - environmentally-unfriendly though it was) and there were HOW many successful landings?

Since the wings don't matter on launch (with the rockets essentially 'shoving' it into orbit) how about some kind of sheathing to, if not totally protect the surfaces) at least mitigate gouging? Lose the sheathing in-orbit or let it burn-off on reentry.

[ChefKeith]

Then we just add them to the crew, maybe strapped to the outside for aero testing purposes.

[Springman]

Ping.

[FreedomFarmer]

I guess I'm at a loss to understand their reasoning.

On one hand, I can safely work as a government engineer for life, and retire to obscurity,

or,

tell me up front there is a 90% chance of being a well known, celebrated, roman candle, and for having big brass ones.

Hmmmm,

10% chance for success, or 100% chance of bordom.

easy...

Kick the tires and light the fire!

[KevinDavis]

Life is risky no matter what.

[taxesareforever]

It would take years and a total redesign of the fuel tank to completely eliminate foam loss and to ensure the 2003 Columbia tragedy would never be repeated, Muratore and other officials said.

That's the price that must be paid in order to remain enviromentally correct. NASA went green and the space shuttle went down.