Posted by tallman at 11:12pm Aug 3 '05NASA recently launched the first shuttle since Columbia was destroyed. Lots of people were excited about this... until a big chunk of insulating foam came off the Discovery's external fuel tank during launch. It was a near repeat of Columbia's final doomed launch. So the crew has been spending a lot of time going over the ship and making sure it's OK for re-entry. As far as I can see, it looks like the crew has dodged a bullet on this one. Or so we all hope.
NASA says that they're going to cancel all future shuttle launches until they are sure they've solved this problem. So my question is this: Is it time to just give up on the shuttle and start designing something better?
The space shuttle is 35 year old technology. It was a glorious technical achievement, despite the fact that NASA oversold its viability. But it's beginning to show it's age. Old equipment has a higher rate of operational failure. It's just the way things work. Keeping the shuttle flying is becoming increasinly risky. At what point do we decide that it isn't worth risking 7 of our best and brightest?
There have been 113 shuttle flights. 2 have ended in catastrophic failure. That's a pretty high failure rate, and I think we should be able to do better than that, but not with the shuttle. Trying to keep the shuttle going would probably be a waste of money...
Perhaps we need a new system. If so, development probably should have started ten years ago. But I guess there's no time like the present, eh? Perhaps we can leverage some private efforts. Them X Prize folks seem to have their heads on straight, maybe they can help...
So what do you think? Has the shuttle's time passed? Should we keep it going? Or should we just give up and start new?
~[private]
NASA says that they're going to cancel all future shuttle launches until they are sure they've solved this problem. So my question is this: Is it time to just give up on the shuttle and start designing something better?
The space shuttle is 35 year old technology. It was a glorious technical achievement, despite the fact that NASA oversold its viability. But it's beginning to show it's age. Old equipment has a higher rate of operational failure. It's just the way things work. Keeping the shuttle flying is becoming increasinly risky. At what point do we decide that it isn't worth risking 7 of our best and brightest?
There have been 113 shuttle flights. 2 have ended in catastrophic failure. That's a pretty high failure rate, and I think we should be able to do better than that, but not with the shuttle. Trying to keep the shuttle going would probably be a waste of money...
Perhaps we need a new system. If so, development probably should have started ten years ago. But I guess there's no time like the present, eh? Perhaps we can leverage some private efforts. Them X Prize folks seem to have their heads on straight, maybe they can help...
So what do you think? Has the shuttle's time passed? Should we keep it going? Or should we just give up and start new?
~[private]
The Space Shuttle - tallman