The space shuttle Columbia broke up Saturday as it descended over central Texas toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven crew members were aboard. Many believe that a debris that hit some shielding during take off might be the culprit for the explosion during the return of the shuttle. Our condolences go out to the families of the brave astronauts.Now the question is: who is going to bring back or take care of the three astronauts that are left in the space station (Soyuz can only carry one extra person at a time), as the last time NASA had a tragedy with Challenger in 1986, it took them 3 years to fly again. The last time the Russians left up there a person for a whole year because they didn’t had the money for a manned mission to bring him back, the guy got almost crazy (normal time to be left up there is 6 months, and you normally get visits). Assuming a rotation purely based on Soyuz, they’d each stay 18 months (one could change every 6 months) and they wouldn’t get visits. Plus, this means that the Russians couldn’t use tourists to help finance the flights (I hope NASA will though).
My thoughts and prayers are now mostly to the three astronauts that are still up there.
they would send a mission to get them when their mission is over.
this is not the end of the program. things like this happen when we get careless and this event screams to give NASA proper funding. we need to invest in a new way to get our men and women into and out of space….we are riding on 20 year old meathods.
Re-entry has always been a problem for the piloting astronauts. The shuttle always comes in like a hand-glider, no thrusters. Astronauts have compared bringing the space shuttle in like flying a brick with wings. All the astronauts have to make adjustments are their flaps. If they didn’t get their angle of descent quite right, it would be almost imposible for them to regain control and as such, their lack of aerodynamics would tear the craft apart. I think that we will indeed see NASA missions continue and the astronauts on the ISS will not be left out there. My condolences to the families of the astronauts.
If you look at the failure rate of the space shuttle you would see that it is one of the lowest in the world. So there isn’t any reason why they shouldn’t continue as planned with the ISS space station.
>give NASA proper funding
What NASA needs is restructuring and competition (in order to bring prices down). Russians do the same missions for only a *fraction* of the cost for each mission.
In order to build a new shuttle team of 5 spaceshuttles, it will need around $20 billion. That is $200 USD of additional tax for each family in America. And I think that this is way too expensive. Prices need to go down. And that can only happen with competition and some restructuring and some reworking of contracts with the companies that do the parts.
“Ar deis De daoin trochaire orthu”
May they rest in peace
🙁
Space missions are very high risk, but they can’t be a russian roulette.
At least they did not suffer. Adios.
Do shuttle’s carry anything equivalent to black box’s? even if they did i wouldn’t say much survive on the way down from 38km’s.
May their souls rest in peace; I pray their families, friends, and those who cared for them find some peace as well. My heart goes out to them all.
please research your statements when you make claims about tings you don’t know about:
– these things are not hand flown for re enttry
– the accident rate may be low per mile, but per flight it is orders of magnitude higher than other forms of transportation.
Bush is about militarizing space, don’t worry, they’ll be properly funded.
To the crew members, rest in peace.
Red China plans Lunar base in 2010 IIRC.
From my understanding they have a “hot stick” but they DO NOT ACTIVELY bring in the shuttle on their own. I am going by news accounts from NASA and former astronaut pilots about the autopilot and “hot stick”. The pilot(s) or crew watch a series of gauges for hydraulics. A “hot stick” is when you can take control of the shuttle at any time from autopilot. A pilot mentioned he was never afraid only _TERRIFIED_ when the took off due to the nature of the controlled explosion needed for lift off. He said that orbit was peaceful and re-entry was only slightly exciting (burning through the atmosphere hardly sounds like fun, peaceful, or exciting). Perhaps structual failure or autopilot went awry.
I mourn the loss of great minds and such pioneers. I am sure their families and the world will never forget them. My prayers and condolences go those affected by this tragedy.
Posting a link to the front page of CNN is like posting a link to google and saying “go, fetch”.
This will just give Bush another chance to push that Homeland Security crap and to make people more afraid of “terrorists”. Especially with non-americans on board. It’s not faulty equipment and underfunded NASA technicians that kill people, it’s terrorists that kill people. Yeah, right.
As for the astronauts themselves, rest in peace. At least you did not have to suffer.
i hope they didnt suffer. looked like a horrible way to go from the videos.
would be nice to replace those shuttles with a space elevator
I am talking about competition INSIDE the US. That is what would drive NASA costs down, not China or Russia.
Was the operating system to blame for the incident?
They didn’t upgrade it to Windows CE, did they?
Last I heard, parts of it were running QNX …
I hope people realise when they watch the next sci-fi blockbuster film, that some people are risking their lives doing it for real, on missions with less budget than the film cost to make.
Remember, mankind has never even been to another planet. The technology we have is in it’s infancy, crude and dangerous, and it’s only due to exceptional circumstances that space travel is attempted at all.
I have the upmost respect for those who work at NASA.
> Posting a link to the front page of CNN is like posting a link to google and saying “go, fetch”.
Oh, give us a break. CNN has 10 different links there, all in front of your eyes. I could not link to all of them, and if I would link to one of them, it wouldn’t be enough. The best would be to link to their page that contains all these links to the different articles about the shuttle, so that would be their front page currently.
If you think you can do it better, come and take over. I do my best over here, for free. Show a bit of respect.
Well, I remember the Mars Pathfinger mission, where fatal mistakes were almost made because the OS didn’t support priority inversion in its threads handling.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=583
>What NASA needs is restructuring and competition (in order to >bring prices down). Russians do the same missions for only a >*fraction* of the cost for each mission.
I have another opinion :that type shutle should be eliminated
forever .They did’nt do it first time (when it expoded) .They
reduced the costs but introduced the new unprooved vehicles .
The old type should be used . i’am still impressed by the
russian vehicles KISS (kip it simple simple) .
I agree with Eugenia.. Elver: Grow up and stop shooting down people.. this is a situation that people want to talk about and the way Eugenia chooses to present it is perfectly fine. It’s rather odd that you feel the need to hurt someone elses feelings in the face of such a tragedy.
Eugenia: Kudos for being kind enough to show some respect to the families and post that link. When things like this happen.. it’s nice to discuss them and see so many concerned people’s comments.
> Posting a link to the front page of CNN is like posting a link to google and saying “go, fetch”.
Give me a break. It is practically all that is on the front page of CNN.
> This will just give Bush another chance to push that Homeland Security crap
Yeah, right… Any excuse to bash Bush, I suppose.
>that type shutle should be eliminated forever
Creating new ones, it would take more than 10 years (and US doesn’t have the luxury of waiting in the space race), and it would be equally, or more expensive. In fact, NASA had a new shuttle in the works, but it blew up in its first testing, so what normally aviation companies/organizations do after such a result, they just cancel the program altogether. And this is what NASA did too. Financially, it makes sense to keep the shuttles in tact. It is no small feat to create such machinery that works.
Stuffle, Mike, thank you.
I believy use 8086/8088 CPUs for all mission-critical applications. I also believe they are specially manufactured to withstand the radiation.
Which means that these specially manufactured Intel 8086/8088 chips would be hard to obtain.
“Creating new ones, it would take more than 10 years (and US doesn’t have the luxury of waiting in the space race), and it would be equally, or more expensive. In fact, NASA had a new shuttle in the works, but it blew up in its first testing, so what normally aviation companies/organizations do after such a result, they just cancel the program altogether. And this is what NASA did too. Financially, it makes sense to keep the shuttles in tact. It is no small feat to create such machinery that works.”
They should import soviet technology simple and practical
and cheap or buy shutles made in china .
I should do a research showing the rate of failures between
the old type and the “falling brick”.
I saw on discovery about these “falling bricks” : in one
experiment the brick rotated like a crazy horse . It’s
disapointig inovation . Yah and the automated pilot …
Who knows what happened there . God rest them in peace …
My heart goes out to the families and to the counties who sent them the USA and Israel.
“Prices need to go down. And that can only happen with competition and some restructuring and some reworking of contracts with the companies that do the parts.”
Eugena, previous Nasa deaths were caused by competition undermining quality. Competition doesn’t automatically equate to quality, such as how things are in computing
Nxtw, they probably use all sorts of chips, but I distinctly remember reading that they use 80386s up there. I doubt a single 8086 would be powerful enough for all the mathematically calculations, but maybe they have 8bit smp :o)
save the conspericy stuff and political ideology for the yahoo message boards please.
And the world will become safer, even in the shuttle.
I am not sure Colombia was initially built for more than 20 years, and Nasa got less and less money. Apollo dreams and motivation are far. Too sad.
>previous Nasa deaths were caused by competition undermining quality
This is true, but that was in the ’60s. Competition does bring quality as well. But what it mostly needs to bring, is better prices. NASA is barely able to send manned missions out there, and they barely have the money to create new machinery. The way it is now, it just costs way too much and that can never be good when thinking the future. The cost should brought down, no matter what. Plus, NASA needs some restructuring on the way it works anyway.
“In fact, NASA had a new shuttle in the works, but it blew up in its first testing, so what normally aviation companies/organizations do after such a result, they just cancel the program altogether.”
Huh? NASA are putting $4.5 billion into a Space Launch Initiative for developing a replacement for the space shuttle over the next five years.
The replacement is a long way from being tested!
See also the 2003 budget request: http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/2002/015.html
colombia was on flight number 28.
I am reffering to an earlier effort, many years ago. Can’t remember the name of the project now. I will look around to try and find it.
>The last time the Russians left up there a person for a whole year because they didn’t had the money for a manned mission to bring him back
Where did you get that? I lived in Russia 25 years (up to 2001) and never heard of this.
You mean each Russian space craft has enough food/fuel and other resources to support people on board for couple of years ? – just in case if there is no money to bring them back ?
))))))))))))))
28 flights in 21 years, so a total lifetime of 75 years ???
Eugenia, thank you for putting the story up. You have done this before in times of crisis or other important events and I think it’s a really good thing to do.
Ever since I was a boy and saw the first space flights on TV, I’ve thought astronauts are the bravest people in the world and i still do. They are so smart, so skilled, so brave. What a terrible loss.
I’m not sure about this, but I thought I heard them say that, if they felt they couldn’t yet use a shuttle to bring the three astronauts home, there is the Russian space capsule that could be used this spring.
I hope people will keep Bush, world politics and the military out of this. The people who died today were true explorers and they are gone forever. And, we have a great challenge – to get those others home safe and sound.
Need Another Seven Astronauts
I hope they wanted to be creamated and spread over texas.
>Russians do the same missions for only a *fraction* of the >cost for each mission.
Well, Eugenia, not exactly. Do you remember Buran, the Russian space shuttle, that was abandoned right after having successfully carried out an unmanned test flight? They abandoned it because the cost was prohibitive. Falling apart Soviet empire just couldn’t afford this, so they had to stick with the existing solution which was proven by time and much much cheaper.
So the mission is not the same. The underlying technologies are fundamentally different and therefore it’s hard to compare these two approaches.
My condolences to the families of the astronauts and to all American and Israeli people.
Artem Vakhitov
>They abandoned it because the cost was prohibitive
Prohibited for the Russia’s economy. For NASA, these costs would probably be fast food. I just wish that NASA finds ways to cut the costs, they are just outrageously expensive today.
…people die every day… this is a massive over reactoin from the world media.
> hope people will keep Bush, world politics and the
> military out of this
Obviously you can’t. When you put the money here, it can’t be there. It’s a choice of the last 15 years, and it’s also true in Europe, where many interesting missions were recently canceled. It’s a shame for our civilization.
We can’t do today what we did 30 years ago, despite the fact we have Windows and Linux today, this shows the stupidity of sterile discussions like “Doom is more fun on Windows” or “Linus is a nicer guy than Bill”. Think about true projects, true dreams and stop what is more and more a religion instead of being a science. I hope events like this will make people in computer science more mature, and make them thinking about what is _really_ important. We’ve got great computers, great OS. For what? Web surfing, text processing, and spamming. Not to reach the Moon nor Mars.
The circumstances of their death was definately not trivial. Neither the cost of the shuttle, neither the overall importance. They didn’t die in a car crash, neither from a heart attack.
Their death and their mission was of interest in the whole space community, around the world, not only for Americans. In fact, this specific mission, was the first after many years that didn’t have to do with ISS, but it was purely scientific. And such losses, do have impact in the decisions of NASA as to when and if and how the next mission will go by. And the space stuff, are important for the whole humanity, not just for NASA. Space does hold information about how we can run our own planet, let alone travel elsewhere in case this planet can’t hold us anymore. This is why their death is more important than who ever else we might feel sympathy for.
http://www.fas.org/spp/eprint/lindroos_moon1.htm
They have some failures too..
I have only one big dream
safe cars (like volvo )
safe planes (no crashes ever on earth)
if this could be done cheap and at scale
world would be better
yah and safe shuttles …
“Red China plans Lunar base in 2010 IIRC.”
China isn’t very red these days. It’s following the Singapore model.
Space is for all the human race, and I hope the Chinese successfully
join in with the Russians, Americans and others.
Well put, Future!
Yes this is tragic and i Hope NASA comes through ok.
Now for other stuff.
The space shuttle does not have a good record, there have been 6 built, 5 space worthy, (the enterprise was onely for testing). Of those 5 they have lost 2 of them. 40% lost of fleet. This was flight 113 i belive. Thats not quite 2% failure. That’s massive, Failure for anything should only be in the .001% range for cato. failures by mechanical means. The shuttle is a horrible design. It cost something like 750-900 million per launch, a soyuz rocket is like 3 million and has a massively better record (and comonaunts have servived destructions do to it having escape means). The space shuttle needs to be replaced with things like the x33, though funding got killed, it needs to be brought back. The craft Eugenia mentioned was built by Northrup gruman i belive in the early 90’s it was a vertical take off vertical landing craft. NASA never accepted the design, they chose lockheads design, the x33. After lockhead got a bid the Grumman craft blew up when during a landing when one of its legs failed.
I doubt this was a software issue, nasa has a zero bug policy and it’s been tested many times over in flight. The critical systems are nothing like and OS, it’s a straight off scrath built embedded control system. It has no bugs because it was done from ground up and the spent billions on it. No other code on earth has been through as much testing. Things like QNX probably run sub systems like monitoring.
Previous failure’s , the challenger failed because the people in charge ignored the engineers who told them about the frozen O-ring problem. It was preventable, all they had to do is delay the launch.
The apollo 1 capsule had a bad design, but it was in the early days, they learned alot from it. Yes it shouldn’t have happened but from such things we learn. By apollo 13 it showed how tough it can be even when it does fail.
Things like broken tiles happen on the shuttle, if that was the cause, which it’s looking like it was by the telemetry, well then their luck ran out. Every flight things need fixing. Largely due to the shuttle being a POS. Many of the failures are due to NASA tearing them appart after every flight. They were never ment for that. They were ment to be torn down a few times in it’s life. A Boing 777 isn’t much last complicated than the shuttle, it doesn’t get torn apart after every flight. Everytime you tear it appart you age it. You loosed thread holes, weaken metal pulling it appart, damage wires…..etc.. this is repeatedly shown to cause most the problems. If it wasn’t a tile failing it could very well have been any other thing inside failing. Remember this thing goes from a rocket, to a spacecraft, to a return capsule to a glider. So some systems don’t come into play till late in flight. The structure of it could have failed from the stress. The space shuttle has very low saftey factors, other wise it wouldn’t get off the ground. There is backup electronics but not much else. It’s like a military aircraft. they have a saftey factor of around 1.1 where commercial planes are 1.3 and cars and such are 2 and up. After flights they have to inspect military planes. Those who fly them are used to the risk. As a Mechanical engineer I’m terrified of flying. If you know a ME ask them what the think when on planes and you will understand, we know to much. And the space shuttle is much worse, it’s engines can barely last liftoff, many of it’s componets are one the super far edge of safty. It is the worst space vehicle ever and needs to be replaced. No more multi peice craft, no more SRB’s, and no more needed thousands of people to run it.
Far as what could be done if it was the tile and NASA knew, the answer is nothing. You can’t fix it, and you can’t stay up forever. You just have to hope for the best. Even if NASA knew that the wing wouldn’t make it they wouldn’t have told the crew. Why tell them something you can’t change. If we ever get a better craft then we might be able to have rescue craft. But currently there is no way, it takes months to get a shuttle up. All NASA could do is keap them calm and hope for the best. For apollo 13 they just had to keap hope. They had nothing to loose. Better to burn up in the atmosphere than be in space forever.
This is a sad day. Unfortently as we go into space more it will happen again. I do not know what they will do for the ISS crew, my understand was there were three on board because thats what the soyuz capsule could handle on re-entry even though it only has a crew of two going up. I know soon as you get on the ISS you have to get your seat in the soyuz set up. Having a craft for 2 with 3 on board would be dumb.
Anyways, we will learn, we will go on.
Sad that the deaths of space pioneers are linked with slander of the President and uninformed dribble.
My wife (who used to work for NASS) woke me this morning to lower our flags this morning to half staff. We think that any loss of life is sad. We stand by the American Constitution and the elected officials and public employees that serve this great nation each day. The NASA program is the best and it costs money to be the best.
“>They abandoned it because the cost was prohibitive
Prohibited for the Russia’s economy. For NASA, these costs would probably be fast food. I just wish that NASA finds ways to cut the costs, they are just outrageously expensive today.
”
*shrug*
1-Safety cost. The alternative is even more expensive.
2-Look at all the knowledge and technology we’ve gotten from the space program, and how many earth-bound lives it’s saved and improved.
3-Wonder if we could have gotten the Hubble up there, or built ISS without a vehicle like the shuttle?
And yes my heart is with the shuttle astronauts.
IIRC, one of the women astronauts on board is the backup astronaut for the teacher who died in the Challenger. Spooky. Also, the Russians casules may be cheap but it is stated that Energia (the company manufacturing them) will not be able to produce them anymore after another few years. I did not catch the reason, but it was supposedly not due to monetary constraints. At liftoff, each shuttle has over 100 systems that are capable of causing a mission failure. The high possibility of failure on each flight is the reason the shuttles are so expensive to use, every inch must be inspected and audited before each launch. Finally, the Columbia withstood a few tiles falling off on one of its first missions, so a few more should not be as much of a problem. This will be one very tough investigation.
Today it is amazing we got to the moon, although it was sucessful it was very Shady to say the least.
For those who mentioned the CPU’s on the shuttle. Remember the design for this thing started the same time the apollo program did. But it was determined to be hard and costly at the time. Even by the 70’s when the design went forward the controls was a massive problem. It is much like the problems of the v22 osprey. It has to go from helicoptor to plane, the shuttle has to do many switches. that grey area in the middle is the hard part. This is where the control nightmare is. For the shuttle they managed to come up with a system. To ensure it works there is many backup computers on board. Those computers each use many cpu’s. But remember it’s only running control code. It’s not that big of a deal. You can run a whole lot of stuff on a 68K. They can’t upgrade them do to complexity and there is no reason to. A PIV inplace of that 68K would do nothing to improve it. Now yes some of the other systems get upgraded in time but they arn’t control systems. Also the shuttle went into a design freeze in the 70’s no new stuff when into it even if it came out before it was finished. You have to hault the technology at some point or you will never finalize the design. The ISS is on such a freeze at 286 cpu’s. Thats what it was designed around. For the shuttle the systems were tried and tested. No point in messing them up. The odds of this being a software error are very low.
>>3-Wonder if we could have gotten the Hubble up there, or built ISS without a vehicle like the shuttle? <<
Indeed, we do need a shuttle like craft, the shuttle just isn’t the one to do it. You just can’t get the useful ness of a shuttle out of a Capsule. It’s just The Shuttle, is a poor implementation of the shuttle.
I wish that NASA had the funding to really get the job done. Most countries that have space programs are trying to just get men into space, let alone land on the moon or Mars. China is one of these countries, that is just trying to catch up to the U.S. China’s space “technology” is just re-hashed Russian designs that have been upgraded with new equipment and American technologies. If the U.S. was serious about real space technology and exploration, they would not be pressuring NASA do to these cheap space missions where they send little toy robots to do the job, not to return. Other countries are going to catch up with the U.S. if the U.S. does not start getting the program in gear again. I mean, how many innovations were created out of the Apollo and Gemini programs? Tons of technology. I think that is about time we fund NASA to make a new shuttle technology that is better and less expensive to operate (not that it will not cost money to get there)…so that the U.S. can remain #1 in space. Current shuttle technology is still sophisticated, but is 30 years old! My condolences to the astronauts…RIP
Dano.
ok i know this is serious news, but why is it on osnews? If i want to read about the latest disaster i’ll go to a reliable news site (ie news.bbc.co.uk)
Anyeay while we’re on this topic, i wonder who’ll be investigating this one – Feynman’s report on the challenger disaster was well worth reading (and still is) – shame he’s not around for this one.
http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/buran_auction_020509.html
I didn’t knew russians did this kind of spacrafts !!!
(ed :ok they are american clones) but at that price
you can’t even buy a second hand aircraft (airbus or boeing)
Now if we could get funding diverted from the military to NASA, wow, what they could come up with.
“As the Columbia’s crew prepared for re-entry, astronaut David Brown joked with mission control: “Do we really have to come back?” As the rising sun burned off the early morning fog the controllers in Houston gave the seven astronauts clearance to begin the run for home. “I guess you’ve been wondering,” they radioed Columbia, “but you are now to go for the de-orbit burn.” Those words marked the beginning of the descent to doom.”
Related to this : http://www.ctnow.com/news/custom/newsat3/orl-columbiaside020103,0,3…
“NASA workers often referred to Columbia as “102,” its serial number. They also called her, “The Penguin,” for the amount of time she spent grounded.”
Eugena, previous Nasa deaths were caused by competition undermining quality. Competition doesn’t automatically equate to quality, such as how things are in computing
Uhh what? Are you referring to Apollo 1 or Challenger? In either case the deaths were caused by stupidity, unless you’re talking about some problem related to Apollo 1’s door, which was a design flaw. Challenger was a combination of design limitations and stupidity; Challenger was launched in conditions which greatly exceeded the design limitations of the O-rings on the SRBs.
It’s on topic if for no other reason than Those Who Be Editors decide the topics. The fact that many in the tech community follow the space program and its happenings, if even at a cursory level, implies that the readers of this forum may perhaps be interested in the event.
My understanding is that the IIS has an “escape capsule”, but as to whether it can hold three people is a different question. However, they’re “safe” up there until June, with a supply mission coming within a week.
Yes, a “mere” 7 people were lost today, but as with many such things, this even is far bigger than the 7 lost. Anyone insterested in the space program, all of the national resources, both material and spiritual, involved in the space program, the national pride invested into the space program. All of these make it “important” to a vast array of people.
The Indian and Israeli astronauts were both held in VERY high regard in their countries, and there was a lot of expectation and celebration planned for their safe returned. This just makes the event that much larger.
The fact that we in the US consider space flight routine should be hard thought about as well. We always run for the TVs when something wrong happens in the program, but are rarely aware when a shuttle is up in the first place.
How many here watched the launch on Jan 16? Anyone?? How many were even aware of it?
On the other side of the coin, consider the insane accomplishment that this launching of humans into orbit in that massive construct known as the Space Shuttle IS considered routine. It’s normal. They’re always launching or landing. We pay little more attention to it than we do when a 737 touches down at the local airport.
Now it seems that it isn’t quite as routine as we may think it is. That makes it important too.
As one commentator put it, there are 1500 seperate items on the shuttle that are considered “Critical” to the flight (launching and landing). Critcal. Failure means Bad.
Whatever happened up there happened at THE worst possible time after pressing the big red Launch button. They were all settled in, all maneuvered, trusting their fates to the computers, sensors, thrusters, ground crew, and good ‘ol Newton himself as Mother Earth pulled them back home.
They just had to ride it out.
Now, we turn this tragedy into a marvel of forensics and engineering as we watch NASA tear this mission apart, second by second until they have a solid understanding about what happened. Then they’ll fix it.
The fact that Columbia is 20 years old is a detail. It’s probably the most modern shuttle in the fleet after recent overhauls. The foundation is solid, and the inspections that these things must go through are enormous.
They’ll figure it out, and we’ll go back out again.
Condolences to those who have lost today.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=20…
An interesting “historic” bit about the shuttle tiles, and maybe relevent. Found through the link below.
—
http://www.robotwisdom.com/
They seem to think that at launch a stray piece of insulation broke off the external fuel tank. This might have broken off some insulation tiles and broken some sensors on a wing.
But they are not certain about that being the problem at all. Time will hopefully tell.
Condolences to all their families, friends and coworkers.
http://k26.com/buran/Info/A_Comparison/a_comparison.html
http:/ /k26.com/buran/Info/A_Comparison/a_comparison.html
Hey! Thanks for the link. I’m wondering though if those ejections seats would have helped at that attitude and speed (wasn’t it faster than Mach 4?). As well as the spacecraft disintigrating around them? (enough reaction time?)
“This is true, but that was in the ’60s. Competition does bring quality as well.”
I was talking about the Challenger
I think the performance bar for Windows Embedded just got higher.
“”…people die every day… this is a massive over reactoin from the world media.””
Either humanity makes it off this rock and out into the universe or in the end all that we are, were, or could be is for nothing. Sooner or later this planet will lose out in the universal crap game. It would be mildly disappointing if the species was to go down with it.
That’s the ultimate reason space exploration is important and hopefully these events won’t halt mankind’s progress.
Why do we care? Maybe it’s because astronauts represent a dream, or a small part of our own dreams. Irregardless of their nation, or creed, or colour once they get off planet they represent humanity as a whole, independent of the ludicrous arguments and confrontations that may be happening on earth.
We’ve come a long way since the days of the cave, and there’s a long way still to travel. Personally I see astronauts as an example of just how far we’ve come, of what human ingenuity can achieve. That’s why I react to their deaths, because it brings home just how much we still cannot accomplish.
Unfortunately there is a price to be paid for every beginning, and that’s where we are in space exploration, at the beginning. Through the courage of the pioneers who are willing to brave that price we, as a species, move onward. RIP crew of Columbia.
My condolences too to all the families, & people involved.
The x86 used may well have been of the 286 design originally, I am not sure, but remember back then most cpu chips were designed in NMOS which I would remind people was the technology that was much later replaced by CMOS. In those days only CMOS would be allowed into space because it was naturally more immune to noise & radiation upsets & needed 1/10th or less the power. The PCs at the time were all using Intel, AMD, NEC, etc NMOS parts. However Harris was probably supplying the CMOS redesign under Intel license for the much more limited space & aviation markets. These CMOS parts would have have vastly lower power consumption also than the NMOS & would be specially toughened up with mil processing. Where the Intel parts may have been a $100, the Harris parts could easily end up being many $Ks. They also had much more expensive fancy packaging, nothing PC about them except code compatibility. No modern CPU would be allowed to fly mission critical SW, too easily upset by radiation.
rockets
I would also like to see the Shuttle replaced by a more cost effective and safer vehicle but I don’t expect it to happen until many more fundamental materials, engine advances have occurred, & even then it will be one of the NASA contracters ie Lockheed to produce it.
There is a competition with a $10M IIRC reward to the 1st small team to build a cheap alternative that meats the objective. This was shown on Discovery TV with many interesting alternates, but this is really toy money compared to what it takes.
As for India, China, Russia, they may do it much cheaper, but would any US astronaut want to ride along, mostly not I think.
My best idea is to always send up the heavy stuff on cheap disposable Energia rockets, and put fewer folks up in a much smaller simpler Shuttle with no payload abilty and have another way to bring down cargo if need be. I wonder why such a smaller vehicle couldn’t be launched from a near space flying jet like the old X flights.
Knowing too much about planes also makes me not want to fly, but if you have to, best forget how it works.
But what do I know.
They really need to invest in that technology. It wouldn’t cut costs down to 1,000$/pound, it would cut them down to 10$/pound.
Given enough funding the space elevator program could probably be ready within 5 years, now that would be a leap.
The other countries have a poor record on human rights, pollution control, workers rights and conditions, graft corruption, enslavement/political prison workforce, trade secret theft, etc,etc, etc.
Yes it can get cheaper but at what cost? Funny how cost changes one’s social beliefs.
I am not a Jew, but really? Is that a good example of a educated person? Wow, what a long line of humans and still the same old thing.
//Russians do the same missions for only a *fraction* of the cost for each mission. //
Tell me the last time the Russians launched a *shuttle* into orbit to help work on the ISS?
You can’t be suggesting that the Russian spacecrafts are anywhere close to the complexity and ability of a shuttle. No russian craft can do 1/10th the things a shuttle can do while in space. Why? USA spends lots of money on shuttle design/enhancements. So, naturally the costs are goint to be way more than our Russian counterparts.
Sheesh.
no, the teacher mission was to be in november….it was to take place on colombia but the teacher was not on this mission.
Hello,
There’ve been a couple people talking about the computers running the space shuttle. As far as I’m aware, the original (and probably still current) systems in operation are AP-101s. The instruction set has a fair degree of similarity to the IBM 360 series. The IBM 360s are the IBM mainframes whose children are now called the “zSeries”. Look on it as the difference between a 386 and AMD’s x86-64.
There are multiple AP-101s running duplicate copies of the flight software (I don’t know whether the same software or independently derived), with voting mechanisms — if one system gets hit by a cosmic ray that causes bits to flip in a manner that is not caught, and therefore says “Go Left”, it would be outvoted by the other systems saying “Go Right”.
On several missions not too long ago, astronauts were also carrying IBM thinkpad laptops running Solaris x86.
Check out groups.google.com for more information — look for AP-101 in alt.folklore.computers and the “space shuttle computer FAQ” in sci.space.shuttle.
One of my former clients does assembly language programming in Houston at NASA. I hope she’s doing OK, this is a bitter blow.
Futile to say on a mostly anonymous forum on the internet, but I will anyway. Delighters in gallows humor, those with deep political feelings, and the rest of you who obtain special pleasure in shocking the squares: Please speak no evil of the dead.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
Bit of an inconvience that the shuttle broke up on re-entry.
Just a quick questions, when NASA first saw the cracks in the shuttle, why didn’t they ground the fleet? the Russians already have a shuttle almost exactly like the 2-3 the US has. Its sitting out in the middle of no where, why didn’t NASA offer to buy it off the Russians for a small sum and use that whilst their own fleet are given the once over. The Russian shuttle’s name is Buran. Only used a couple of times, later on they went back to old reliable soytz. It isn’t pretty, but it works.
It’s been years since I thought about how incredibly dangerous space flight is. I have nothing but respect for the shuttle crew and everyone who works in the space program. And I have nothing for respect for NASA and the American people, who will respond to this accident by being still more determined to succeed.
The US deserves the respect and thanks of the rest of the world for continuing with a space program that is still mostly and science and knowledge and adventure, and for the benefit of everyone in the world.
Thank you, USA, NASA, Columbia.
>>Just a quick questions, when NASA first saw the cracks in the shuttle, why didn’t they ground the fleet? the Russians already have a shuttle almost exactly like the 2-3 the US has. Its sitting out in the middle of no where, why didn’t NASA offer to buy it off the Russians for a small sum and use that whilst their own fleet are given the once over. The Russian shuttle’s name is Buran. Only used a couple of times, later on they went back to old reliable soytz. It isn’t pretty, but it works.<<
NASA did ground the fleet at times, but they get de-grounded eventuly. Far as the Buron there is only one flight worthy, it only flew once by computer control. Though it is very very close the the Space Shuttle it’s very differant inside. It’s much newer and actully is better than the US shuttles. It has more lifting power and better systems. But the problem is there is just one, though others could be assembled with the parts. But to get it going NASA would have to rework it’s whole infustructor. It’s not a easy task. Your not hoping in a differant car. To get the Buran’s going would take many years. I agree that in many ways it would be nice to use them. But it would be hard to do. Also it has only flown once, thats not much testing. Also it uses the same design as the US shuttle, it’s the design of the shuttle that it the big problem. Being a multi-stage semi reusable semi giant roman candle death trap is not good. If we want a good craft it needs to be a cheap simple smaller one peice design. That is what the X33 is to be. But the bummer of a truth is the phyics and mechanics of are against us. To get something in one peice that is light enought to be able to carry all the fuel it needs inside it is very hard to get right. In time we will get there, and the X33 might have done it, but it’s dead to. One differance from the Shuttle vs the Buran was I belive the Buran used Liquid Fuel Boosters in stead of solid fueled. At the time of it’s design it was easist for Rockwell to go with SRB’s the Russian had us to build from and got it right.
And for the Space elevator people. If you think scrap falling from a shuttle is bad, the fallout from a 300 mile tall tower is going to be a fair bit worse. Also there is the problem in constructing one.
By Charlie: …people die every day… this is a massive over reactoin from the world media.
True that people die everyday, however, what makes it (or anyone else’s death) unique is the way people die and why (e.g. the situation).
You see, according to what you just said, it is possible to also say that the two World Wars doesn’t really matter, people die every day. Or even, Sep11, people die that day too, just like any other day.
I am starting to think that NASA really needs 3 core systems. For the cheap launches, an updated Delta rocket could get a lot of jobs done…one with more payload. The Delta right now is pretty reliable. This system could also be used for sending probes out for interplanetary study. For the service launches, NASA needs a replacement for the shuttle (not a simple task, maybe redesign the program?). A new space plane is in order. One more system…should be created for interplanetary travel, something like Apollo, with a craft that is USED TO RETURN HOME and equipped for long distance flight. Not sure what the launch vehicle would be [bring back the Saturn V
]. Kinda funny, but no one mentioned that we could not go back to the moon if we wanted to because all of the moon crafts are mothballed with no replacements! Like the Delta, these basic launch systems could be improved and upgraded over time to increase reliability. Now only if we could find a way to pay for all of this? Perhaps you could check a box on your income taxes to send money directly to NASA 
…It still Amazes me how much NASA has accomplished over 30 years ago…Gemini, Apollo, Viking, Voyager…all amazing programs. I mean Viking landed on Mars in 1974?!?!
Dano.
2 catastrophic failures out of 113 flights? That’s not exactly brilliant figures. Then again, this _is_ rocket science…
Poor bastards.
Need Another Seven Astronauts!
>Or even, Sep11, people die that day too,
>just like any other day.
It is quite possible to take that stance without being e.g a terrorist. True, someone attacked and killed roughly 5000 civilians, but it’s not an astronomical difference compared to LETTING thousands and thousands and thousands of people STARVE to death EVERY day.
The most prominent difference is that it happend in the US of A and not in a 3rd world country. Most of the OSNews readers can relate to living in the US whereas VERY few of us has ANY clue how it is to see your family, friends, and entire country STARVE to death.
As always, the things that are closest to us hurt the most when we lose them…
(As for Columbia, _I_ consider it to be a huge loss as I’m interested in space exploration.)
That was hardly funny or tasteful even the first time…
When reading about Buran vs. the Space Shuttle I get the feeling about Betamax vs VHS. It does seems that the Buran is the superiour piece of technology. A joint venture between the US and Russia would be nice to see, but that would require (shock horror) cooperation of a whole new scale.
If it weren’t for issues of national arrogance, why should the Americans not use Russian launch vehicles to maintain access to the ISS? At least, this would help the Russians fund their program. (hey, it’s not like it’s the cold war any longer.)
You said it. National pride and arrogance is likey to stand in the way for that. Sadly. 🙁
>That was hardly funny or tasteful even the first time…
Oh, I’m sorry, I guess now it’s Need Another Seventeen Astronauts…
Seriously, any death is tragic, but as pointed out by so many others, the deaths of a few–or even the few thousand in the WTC–pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands that die each year of starvation. I’m appalled that we–the global first-world society–spend billions and billions of dollars annually on astronomical aspirations, yet feel nothing (at least where money is concerned) about the thousands that die daily of starvation. It costs less than a freaking dollar a day to feed a person in the third world. Every single death of starvation is preventable, and for a cost less than NASA’s budget!
Until we actually value human life, I’ll remain cynical and bitter.
Astronauts know the risks when they take the job – and they take the job more than willingly. The reason i’m less shocked by this than i am by an unexpected accident is that astronauts _know_ that a small percentage of flights will end in catastrophic failure and death – and they still choose to do it.
So yeah i feel for the families, but not much. For each of those astronauts it was completely preventable, all they had to do was take a job with less wisk of dying (like a test pilot, stunt man, or deep sea diver maybe).
(They’re gamblers, they took a chance, and they lost.)
“Things like QNX probably run sub systems like monitoring. ”
AFAIK QNX is used to operate the crane in the cargo hold. This is a
similar application to the factory robotics for which QNX is often
used.
>Every single death of starvation is preventable, and for
>a cost less than NASA’s budget!
Not to mention the truely astronomicla sums the US is wasting on its armed forces instead of doing something less caveman-like.
Like a friend of mine put it: “If the US miitary budget alone was directed to real space exploration rather than posturing and annihilation we could have a construction facility in orbit before the end of the decade and the beginnings of colonies on the Moon and Mars.
Ain’t going to happen though. Probably blow ourselves to the stone age instead.”
With that, I concur.
that is what Kay Baily Huchenson was aluding to today on FNS….I think she and some of her counter parts in teh senate are going to put a bill forward taht will take the high cost functions of NASA and use Defence money to get them done…NASA will still administer the whole thing independantly, but funding for launches and shuttle upkeep and staff will come from the pentagon. I assume tests on new purpulsion and launch systems will also be funded by the DoD under her plan…..I like the idea.
Can you all please leave politics at the door, Show some respect.
I think you’re right, these stupid news channels, at the beginning of each broadcast, should announce the estimated number of deaths in the world for the current day due to starvation and preventable or curable disease. Perhaps it would help shame the First World into action.
I think it would be great if the USA and Russia joined forces regarding their respective space programs.
The thing is though, these lives that are lost are not more important than anyone else who died, especially because of hunger and disease, it is what they represent that makes them newsworthy. As has been posted, they represent everyone, to a large degree. They are the hope and dream of everyone who wants an end to poverty, hunger and disease, that have a vision of humankind reaching further and further outwards and, in the process, discovering more and more that can help us here on earth.
The whining I see about spending on the space program and defense programs has probably improved the lives over everyone on this planet. Without the space program it is very likely you wouldn’t be on the internet blaming American’s for letting people starve in former European colonies.
Don’t forget one thing: you’re talking about ISS, not ASS (or USASS)
you’re talking about a project that’s not only mantained by USA. Infact, the first, basic structure of station “comes” from MIR 2 project (and the other half from the “alpha” project).
Not to mention that the station doesn’t really need shuttle to remain operational. Progress for resupply and soyuz for crew transport is enough (and maybe some heavy launch vehicles for station assembly)
>The whining I see about spending on the space program and
>defense programs has probably improved the lives over
>everyone on this planet. Without the space program it is
>very likely you wouldn’t be on the internet blaming
>American’s for letting people starve in former European
>colonies.
I think you’re extrapolating a bit more than what’s required to be really OTT from what I’ve written so far.
Being against spending money on the military doesn’t imply being against spending money on space exploration.
Being against spending huge amounts on the military doesn’t automatically mean that you’re against spending ANY money on the military.
Studying logics is a Good Thing (TM)…
I agree I may have extrapolated a bit much from your statement and others. And while in many ways money is wasted (particularly with the the money we spend on defense) I don’t believe that the money we are spending on defense or space exploration is denying anyone food in this world. I think hunger today stems from bad decisions made in the past and corrupt governments today. My belief is that we have gained a lot from the money spent on space exploration (computer technology) and that money from defense spending has made our lives better as well (the internet for example). And while these improvements in our lives may not be visibly impacting the lives of the worlds poorest I believe these tools help us to better help those who need help the most.
What i want to know is what the Dod has spent/ is spending on space programs and how much if any is buried in the nasa budget. The US military is extremely dependent on space/satellites.
I find it hard to beleive that they have nothing to knock out chinese, russian, N. korean satellites and nothing to put up satellites more quickly or to defend US satellites.
I don’t agree that taking money away from space exploration is a good idea. If you want to feed all those starving people than start at home. No one needs all the crap that the average person lives on in western nations, like say SUVs, daimonds, three computers, a play station etc. Space exploration could actually move society ahead.
Why would they want to destroy russian satellites?!
Cold war is over for over a decade, did you noticed?
Ever better: Russians are your allies! Can you believe in that?! ;P
Pitty for the astronauts. When I heard the news, a Cretan proverb came in mind:
“?????? ??? ?? ???? ????? ??? ??????? ???????, ? ??????? ??? ????? ???, ?????? ??? ?????????.”
Pitty for the astronauts. When I heard the news, a Cretan proverb came in mind:
“Opoios sth gh kala patei, kai 8alassa gyreuei, o diaolos tou kwlou tou, koukia tou magereuei.”