The Shuttle and the Hubble-Repair Myth
Greg Kuperberg
purpose of NASA's manned spaceflight program. I don't know what the true
purpose is or should be, but it *isn't* science. As Nicolaas Blomebergen
(Nobel Prize in Physics, 1981) told Congress in 1991, "microgravity is
of microimportance". Sadly that applies as much to STS-107 as to any
previous shuttle flight.
Unmanned spaceflight at NASA has a towering record of scientific
achievement. The closest that shuttle astronauts ever came to that track
was when they repaired the Hubble, but even then, they were more hindrance
than help. For the cost of launching one Hubble on the shuttle and later
repairing it, they could have launched several with unmanned rockets.
They could have been bigger, flown sooner, and gone into better orbits.
I quote from What's New (http://www.aps.org/WN/):
1. NASA: THE SHUTTLE AND THE HUBBLE-REPAIR MYTH.
For the first time, the need for a human presence in space is being
questioned openly on Capitol Hill. But at a House Science Committee
hearing yesterday, Sean O'Keefe invoked the Hubble repairs as an example
of man doing what robot could not. It's a NASA myth; Hubble was designed
to be serviced. It was supposed to be like calling AAA for a jump start;
NASA promised a shuttle launch every week. But the repair missions cost
more than Hubble, and no other science satellite has ever been repaired in
orbit. Moreover, Hubble had to conform to a NASA decree that everything
that went into space had to be launched with the shuttle. This confined
Hubble to a far from optimum low-Earth orbit that took it in and out of
the Earth's shadow and exposed it to the rain of space garbage from past
missions. Moreover, Hubble's dimensions had to conform to the shuttle's
cargo bay, and its launch was delayed for three years by the Challenger
accident. Ironically, the Challenger accident finally forced NASA to drop
its shuttle-only launch policy. Hubble has gone on to achieve greatness,
not because of the shuttle and the man-in-space program, but in spite
of it.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *
Paul F. Dietz
> But the repair missions cost
> more than Hubble, and no other science satellite has ever been repaired in
> orbit.
CGRO?
Paul
Paul F. Dietz
> CGRO?
I misremembered -- just deployed by the shuttle, not repaired.
Paul
Kurt W. Wagner
> > orbit.
How about the repair of Solar Max?
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.Projects/Human.Exploration.and.Development.of
.Space/Human.Space.Flight/Shuttle/Shuttle.Missions/Flight.011.STS-41-C/Missi
on.Summary
Kurt
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote in message
news:KP2dnXDpMrL...@dls.net...
no_one
Intelsat 6
dual HS-376 recovery
not science, but still repair/returned by shuttle
"Kurt W. Wagner" <kur...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:rU18a.634045$HG.116...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
Duncan Young
Solar Max?
Skylab?
And re Hubble - the critical flaw - the mirror testing - had nothing
to do with the shuttle - and everything to do with a reluctance for
NASA to use DoD systems. Hmmm, shades of STS-107...
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
No, but Solar Max was.
And one of the planetery probes I believe was deployed by the shuttle, had
problems during checkout and was "fixed" by the astronauts on the scene.
> Paul
>
Clark S. Lindsey
"'Hubble would not have produced all of the great science it has
without the astronaut's ability to service it…it's that simple,'
Beckwith said. 'While the scientists may not have liked the manned
space program at first, it's the manned space program that has
given us the ability to do things with Hubble that we now take
for granted,' he said.....
'Let me make a prediction,' Beckwith said at the National
Space Symposium here. 'In 20 or 30 years, all astronomy will be
done from space, maybe sooner. Space is definitely the place you
want to be for an observatory. The only reason we don't do it
all the time is because it's expensive. But as it becomes more
routine to go to space in another few decades, all astronomy will
be done from space. It's the best place to be.'
High Praise at NSS for Space Telescopes - Space.com - April 10, 2001
www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/nss_telescope_future_010410.html
Clark Lindsey
www.hobbyspace.com
gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote in message news:<b3pcv8$nqh$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu>...
Robert Kitzmüller
> 1. NASA: THE SHUTTLE AND THE HUBBLE-REPAIR MYTH.
> repair missions cost more than Hubble, and no other science satellite
> has ever been repaired in orbit.
How about Solar Max?
Greg Kuperberg
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) <moo...@greenms.com> wrote:
>No, but Solar Max was.
>
>And one of the planetery probes I believe was deployed by the shuttle, had
>problems during checkout and was "fixed" by the astronauts on the scene.
Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
Which is part of the reason that many recent science satellites, for
instance Chandra, can't be retrieved for repair.
On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
Doug Ellison
>Hubble has gone on to achieve greatness,
> not because of the shuttle and the man-in-space program, but in spite
> of it.
Were it not for shuttle missions - Hubble would now be the same
short-sighted wreck it was at launch. It's instruments would all have likely
failed, it's attitude control caperbility would have died years ago.
Hubble has, is, and will continue to achieve greatness BECAUSE of the
Shuttle. Without the Shuttle - Hubble would be no more.
Doug
Doug Ellison
"Greg Kuperberg" <gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:b3qofi$3vi$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu...
> In article <nK48a.108404$9U3....@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
> Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) <moo...@greenms.com> wrote:
> >No, but Solar Max was.
> >
> >And one of the planetery probes I believe was deployed by the shuttle,
had
> >problems during checkout and was "fixed" by the astronauts on the scene.
>
> Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
> expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
> Which is part of the reason that many recent science satellites, for
> instance Chandra, can't be retrieved for repair.
>
> On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
> expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
Chandra is in the orbit it's in because that's the most optimal for X-Ray
astronomy
DOug
Paul F. Dietz
> Were it not for shuttle missions - Hubble would now be the same
> short-sighted wreck it was at launch. It's instruments would all have likely
> failed, it's attitude control caperbility would have died years ago.
Were HST to have been done without the shuttle, they would have built
several of them. We'd be on perhaps the third generation one by
now. Old ailing telescopes can often be used creatively long
past their design lifetimes (consider the history of IUE, which operated
for eighteen years), so we'd probably have more than one working
at the same time. Also, they'd have been designed with more
redundancy, given that servicing would not be possible. Add redundant
gyros, for example.
Paul
Paul F. Dietz
> Chandra is in the orbit it's in because that's the most optimal for X-Ray
> astronomy
And HST isn't in its optimal orbit, since servicability was an important
part of its spec. The point here is that when it came time to build Chandra,
servicability had become less important. NGST continues the trend.
Paul
Jorge R. Frank
> I wrote:
>
>> CGRO?
>
> I misremembered -- just deployed by the shuttle, not repaired.
No, you were right the first time: CGRO's antenna wouldn't deploy and the
crew had to perform an EVA to fix it.
--
JRF
Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.
Doug Ellison
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote in message
news:7d-dnQMYVaS...@dls.net...
So extra Gyros. I presume extra solar panels ( to allow longer on orbit life
time with the degredation they suffer ), some form of propulsion to maintain
orbit ( would deorbit itself in a few years - unless you pumped it up to
800km odd )
So - what you launching this with? Surely not a Titan 2. They're no cheaper
than a shuttle launch !!
Doug
Greg Kuperberg
Clark S. Lindsey <clarkl...@hobbyspace.com> wrote:
>Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute:
>
>"'Hubble would not have produced all of the great science it has
>without the astronaut's ability to service it…it's that simple,'
>Beckwith said. 'While the scientists may not have liked the manned
>space program at first, it's the manned space program that has
>given us the ability to do things with Hubble that we now take
>for granted,' he said.....
Scientists like astronauts so much that they put Chandra out of their
reach after launch. And they put the James Webb Space Telescope, the
successor to Hubble, out of reach too and scheduled it to be launched
unmanned.
Since STSI runs Hubble, Beckwith is in no position to criticize any
aspect of the mission. One astrophysicist that I know put it this way:
If the government delivers milk to you by Rolls Royce, then the cost
of the car and the chauffeur isn't your problem; you still get your
quart of milk every day. Obviously this is not a very honest stance.
In order to like it, you have to have no loyalty whatsoever to science
on earth, only to science in space, because many of the payments on the
Rolls Royces has come from the general science budget.
Now that two of the precious Rolls Royces have crashed and killed 14
chauffeurs, and now that the remaining ones are committed to an equally
expensive hotel, it's not a very practical argument either, even for
astrophysicists. Which is why Beckwith's institute is taking JWST in
another direction entirely. His prediction that all astronomy will soon
be done in space is close to the truth, but it will have little to do
with astronauts.
Paul F. Dietz
> So extra Gyros. I presume extra solar panels ( to allow longer on orbit life
> time with the degredation they suffer ), some form of propulsion to maintain
> orbit ( would deorbit itself in a few years - unless you pumped it up to
> 800km odd )
If HST were beyond LEO, the panels would not be exposed to atomic
oxygen, would be illuminated 100% of the time, and would not experience
the thermal cycling the current scope's panels do.
Yes, going beyond 800 km would be good. IUE was geostationary, IIRC,
and NGST is going to be even farther out.
Paul
Duncan Young
> "Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote in message
> news:KP2dnXDpMrL...@dls.net...
> > Greg Kuperberg wrote:
> >
> > > But the repair missions cost
> > > more than Hubble, and no other science satellite has ever been
> repaired in
> > > orbit.
> And one of the planetery probes I believe was deployed by the shuttle, had
> problems during checkout and was "fixed" by the astronauts on the scene.
>
>
> > Paul
> >
No - but that is what should of happened with Galileo... The initial
plan was to open and close the the HGA prior to TJI ... but the
"close" electronics were reused for the thermal requirements of the
VEEGA trajectory. Of course the HGA damage was sustained during that
redesign - if Challenger had not been lost one bright January morning,
that checkout would of happened April 1986, with no hiccups, and
Galileo would have progressed to Jupiter with a good HGA...
...and exploded on entry into Jovian orbit.
But that is another story.
Duncan
rschmitt23
What's important now, since the Columbia diaster, is whether or not NASA
will actually fly the next Hubble servicing mission with only three orbiters
remaining. The HST is still operating OK, still making important scientific
discoveries, still has a lot of life expectancy left, etc. etc. But NASA
apparently is committed to finishing the ISS construction and can't afford
to lose another crew and vehicle, especially if that loss occurs while
servicing a 13-year old spacecraft, no matter how important the HST
scientific data may be.
I think that with the disasterous end of STS-107 we have seen the last of
the free-flying shuttle sortie missions. NASA will use the remaining
orbiters for ISS only. Assuming that the CAIB definitely links TPS damage
to the recent disaster, an RSI tile repair kit will be quickly developed and
sent to the ISS on the first shuttle flight after the present stand-down is
over. Three or four EVA maneuvering units will be included. And extra crew
consumables (air, water, food) will be stockpiled in the ISS. All future
shuttle crews will receive training in the underwater tanks to do TPS repair
in zero g.
If there is the slightest suspicion that the orbiter TPS has been damaged
during a future launch or from an orbital debris hit, EVAs will be made
while the orbiter is docked to the ISS to inspect the tiles and the RCC
parts and an attempt will be made to repair the damage. The ISS will be a
temporary safe haven for the shuttle crew. However, the clock will be
running because the orbiter fuel cells only have about 20 days worth of LOX
and LH2. Extra time can be bought by carrying an extended duration kit in
the payload bay, but this eats up payload lift capability and could be a
problem for some of the heavier ISS payloads yet to be launched.
However, if the TPS damage is too severe, or if there is the slightest doubt
that the repair was successful, the shuttle crew will have to bunk with the
ISS crew until the next Soyuz spacecraft arrives. Depending on the Soyuz
launch schedule, some of the stranded shuttle crew may have to spend a few
more months in orbit than originally planned until the next one or two Soyuz
spacecraft arrive at the ISS. Then NASA will be faced with a decision
either to junk the orbiter immediately (deorbit it without the crew) or to
leave it docked to the ISS and junk it in the future when the ISS itself is
deorbited. With only two orbiters remaining, the shuttle program will be
dead and gone.
Later
Ray Schmitt
"Greg Kuperberg" <gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
news:b3pcv8$nqh$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu...
Greg Kuperberg
rschmitt23 <rschm...@cox.net> wrote:
>What's important now, since the Columbia diaster, is whether or not NASA
>will actually fly the next Hubble servicing mission with only three orbiters
>remaining.
No, what's important now is for NASA to launch the next telescope,
JWST, and beyond that to spend more time on short-term, state-of-the-art
projects like the fantastic WMAP cosmology mission. Yes, Hubble is still
useful, but the fact is that the data from it is well into diminishing
returns. A serious science project is not like a classroom, where the
equipment has the same value from year to year. Rather you take the
data that you want, maybe with a few repeats, then you move on and build
another experiment. Yes, Hubble can get some new life with new cameras,
but it will still be the same dated platform in the same sucky orbit.
Mid-wavelength astrophysicists are waiting for something new. (Although
they can also bide time with Chandra, which is short wavelength.)
NASA has handled both HST and the Shuttle itself like a driver who keeps
repairing the car long after it should have been traded in. It only makes
sense if you have a romantic attachment to old cars, or to auto mechanics.
Derek Lyons
>Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
>expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
That's only if you use the Shuttle. It's not an intrinsic factor in
on-orbit repair.
>On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
>expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
An intrinsic characteristic of the Shuttle, not of manned cargo
delivery in general.
D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:
Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html
Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html
Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to o...@io.com, as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.
Derek Lyons
>Doug Ellison wrote:
>
>> Were it not for shuttle missions - Hubble would now be the same
>> short-sighted wreck it was at launch. It's instruments would all have likely
>> failed, it's attitude control caperbility would have died years ago.
>
>Were HST to have been done without the shuttle, they would have built
>several of them.
Yep, when one died, or was nearly dead, they'd start serious work on
the next. And *each one* would be subject to budget variations,
launch shedule delay, outright cancellation, etc...
> We'd be on perhaps the third generation one by now.
Never mind that HST is actually on it's third generation or so...
Almost every instrument has been replaced at least once.
>Old ailing telescopes can often be used creatively long
>past their design lifetimes (consider the history of IUE, which operated
>for eighteen years), so we'd probably have more than one working
>at the same time.
Not likely. Unless the second offered significantly different
capabilities than the first, they'd have a hard time getting it on the
budget.
>Also, they'd have been designed with more redundancy, given that servicing
>would not be possible. Add redundant gyros, for example.
And all that redundancy comes at a cost... Each pound of redundant
support systems means one less pound of science instruments. (Or
buying a larger and more expensive booster, or settling for a lower
orbit because you are tied to a given booster.)
The problems with the costs of servicing Hubble are because it uses
the Shuttle, they are *not* intrinsic to manned servicing. If you
have a less expensive vehicle, the costs go down.
Derek Lyons
>Doug Ellison wrote:
>
>> So extra Gyros. I presume extra solar panels ( to allow longer on orbit life
>> time with the degredation they suffer ), some form of propulsion to maintain
>> orbit ( would deorbit itself in a few years - unless you pumped it up to
>> 800km odd )
>
>If HST were beyond LEO, the panels would not be exposed to atomic
>oxygen, would be illuminated 100% of the time, and would not experience
>the thermal cycling the current scope's panels do.
Let's put back the part you snipped and refuse to answer:
"Doug Ellison" <mai...@douglasellison.co.uk> wrote:
>So - what you launching this with? Surely not a Titan 2. They're no cheaper
>than a shuttle launch !!
D.
Greg Kuperberg
Derek Lyons <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
>>Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
>>expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
>
>That's only if you use the Shuttle. It's not an intrinsic factor in
>on-orbit repair.
>
>>On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
>>expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
>
>An intrinsic characteristic of the Shuttle, not of manned cargo delivery
>in general.
You have a lot of latitude to sing the praises of launch vehicles that
have never been built. Who knows, maybe one day astronauts will help
science instead of obstructing it. But that is no reason to stick to an
existing manned spaceflight program that few scientists want. There may
be valid reasons to send astronauts into space. At the moment, science
is not one of them.
Twisted Kipper
"Duncan Young" <smu...@mac.com> wrote in message
news:6eb47d23.03030...@posting.google.com...
>
> Solar Max?
>
> Skylab?
Skylab?
Joe D.
>
> Were it not for shuttle missions - Hubble would now be the same
> short-sighted wreck it was at launch. It's instruments would all have likely
> failed, it's attitude control caperbility would have died years ago.
>
> Hubble has, is, and will continue to achieve greatness BECAUSE of the
> Shuttle. Without the Shuttle - Hubble would be no more.
>
It's true the Hubble repairs were impressive, and it's nice HST was salvaged,
although NASA estimated it could have achieved maybe 50% of science goals
without the repairs.
However -- there's a problem with O'Keefe always trumpeting the HST servicing
as a key justification for the shuttle's worth. HST is going away, eventually.
The replacement JWST cannot be serviced by the shuttle. Neither can the shuttle
service Chandra, The Space Infrared Observatory, nor will it be able to service
the upcoming Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
It's great the shuttle could service the one major space observatory it could reach.
However using HST to justify the shuttle is ultimately a losing argument, since it can't reach
HST's replacement, nor any of the others above.
-- Joe D.
Doug...
gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu says...
>
> <snip>
>
> You have a lot of latitude to sing the praises of launch vehicles that
> have never been built. Who knows, maybe one day astronauts will help
> science instead of obstructing it. But that is no reason to stick to an
> existing manned spaceflight program that few scientists want. There may
> be valid reasons to send astronauts into space. At the moment, science
> is not one of them.
Now we're just playing semantics games. After all, how do you define
"science"? Is basic research, with no engineering application, all you
can define as "science"? Where, in your opinion, does engineering
research fit?
Let's look at what just a little of what was actually being done on STS-
107, for example:
- Flame ignition and propogation in microgravity -- is that "science"?
It may give you some clues to the geometry of the chemical interactions
during ignition and burning that are swamped by gravity effects on earth,
but I imagine a lot of the data is desired for engineering purposes. For
example, the better you understand how flames start and spread in
microgravity, the better you can design future manned spacecraft,
especially spacecraft that will spend years in space.
- Plant and animal growth/behavior experiments -- are they "science"?
They may give some clues as to how the organisms operate in microgravity
conditions, but aren't the data they gather more targeted at how to
develop microgravity "farming" for long-duration missions (i.e., to Mars
and beyond, and to asteroids)?
It seems like any science that has any engineering justification gets
discarded as "tainted" by "pure research" scientists, and yet it seems to
me that it's important work for future expansion of manned spaceflight
(especially future exploration missions), and that such research can be
designed to yield both engineering and "pure" scientific results.
Isn't this whole discussion just another chapter in the long-running feud
between "pure" and applied scientific research? Isn't there room for
both?
Can't we all just get along?
:o)
Doug Van Dorn
dvan...@mn.rr.com
Derek Lyons
>In article <3e711c67...@supernews.seanet.com>,
>Derek Lyons <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
>>>Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
>>>expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
>>
>>That's only if you use the Shuttle. It's not an intrinsic factor in
>>on-orbit repair.
>>
>>>On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
>>>expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
>>
>>An intrinsic characteristic of the Shuttle, not of manned cargo delivery
>>in general.
>
>You have a lot of latitude to sing the praises of launch vehicles that
>have never been built.
It's obvious to anyone that is familiar with the field that the
Shuttle is too expensive, and the reasons are equally well known.
It's equally obvious that in order to be successfully received, any
successor will have to be cheaper. It's also well known that the
engineering and technology to do so is available.
> Who knows, maybe one day astronauts will help science instead of
>obstructing it.
You have not demonstrated that they are in fact obstructing it.
>But that is no reason to stick to an existing manned spaceflight program
>that few scientists want.
That's a bullshit statement. Pick any science project and you'll find
that 'few scientists want it'. Science is a huge field with many
small fiefs within. The opinions of physicists on chemistry or
biology experiments on orbit are essentially meaningless.
>There may be valid reasons to send astronauts into space. At the moment,
>science is not one of them.
The clueful statement in you've produced so far.
Derek Lyons
>However -- there's a problem with O'Keefe always trumpeting the HST servicing
>as a key justification for the shuttle's worth. HST is going away, eventually.
>The replacement JWST cannot be serviced by the shuttle. Neither can the shuttle
>service Chandra, The Space Infrared Observatory, nor will it be able to service
>the upcoming Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
However- there's a problem with your self adopted blinders. HST isn't
the only shuttle serviceable platform in orbit. In fact, the platform
that the shuttle was designed from the start to support is in orbit,
under construction, and in limited operation.
Chris Bennetts
> So extra Gyros.
You'd need a few, given the number that have been swapped during the past
four servicing missions.
[...]
> So - what you launching this with? Surely not a Titan 2. They're no
cheaper
> than a shuttle launch !!
I'm pretty sure you mean Titan 4 here.
--Chris
Chris Bennetts
> NASA has handled both HST and the Shuttle itself like a driver who keeps
> repairing the car long after it should have been traded in. It only makes
> sense if you have a romantic attachment to old cars, or to auto mechanics.
Or if you have a car that has unique capabilities for which there are no
real substitutes, or the cost of the substitutes is out of reach.
--Chris
Terrell Miller
news:sN98a.8479$Wl3.8...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
one solar panel sheared off during launch. The other didn't deploy. The
first Skylab crew had to do two EVAs just to get the station into some
semblance of habitability.
--
Terrell Miller
mill...@bellsouth.net
Capt. Stanley Perkins of the Los Angeles County Fire Department says most
club owners are cooperative, but they occasionally bring up the cost of
safety requirements. "We just stop the conversation right there. We tell
them, your concern is money. Our concern is people," Perkins says.
-quoted in USA Today
Paul F. Dietz
> Or if you have a car that has unique capabilities for which there are no
> real substitutes, or the cost of the substitutes is out of reach.
Or if you have a car that you have claimed has unique capabilities, so
you have to try to demonstrate them, even if it doesn't make much sense
to do so.
Paul
Tim Smith
> - Flame ignition and propogation in microgravity -- is that "science"?
> It may give you some clues to the geometry of the chemical interactions
> during ignition and burning that are swamped by gravity effects on earth,
> but I imagine a lot of the data is desired for engineering purposes. For
> example, the better you understand how flames start and spread in
> microgravity, the better you can design future manned spacecraft,
> especially spacecraft that will spend years in space.
How long does the experiment take? If it isn't too long, you don't even
need to be in space for it. Zero g is trivial to achieve in the lab for
short periods--just drop things in a vacuum.
--
Evidence Eliminator is worthless: "www.evidence-eliminator-sucks.com"
--Tim Smith
Twisted Kipper
"Terrell Miller" <mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:9Mb8a.4064$6v1....@fe08.atl2.webusenet.com...
> "Twisted Kipper" <fi...@fishyfish.net> wrote in message
> news:sN98a.8479$Wl3.8...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> >
> > "Duncan Young" <smu...@mac.com> wrote in message
> > news:6eb47d23.03030...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > >
> > > Solar Max?
> > >
> > > Skylab?
> >
> >
> > Skylab?
>
>
> one solar panel sheared off during launch. The other didn't deploy. The
> first Skylab crew had to do two EVAs just to get the station into some
> semblance of habitability.
Well yeah, I just wondered if the original writer knew that when they listed
it with all the shuttle stuff.
I've been waiting for someone to ask why Columbia couldn't have used Skylab
as a lifeboat.
Greg Kuperberg
Doug... <dvan...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>Now we're just playing semantics games. After all, how do you define
>"science"? Is basic research, with no engineering application, all you
>can define as "science"? Where, in your opinion, does engineering
>research fit?
In my opinion applied science is as important as any other kind of
science. I am in awe of John von Neumann, for one reason because he
(building on work of Alan Turing) invented software, the defining feature
of modern computers. I also have great respect for people such as
Nicolaas Bloembergen, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for laser
spectroscopy.
But in Bloembergen's testimony to Congress in 1991 on manned spaceflight,
he said, "microgravity is of microimportance". At the time he was the
President of the American Physical Society, which is the main professional
society of research physics in the United States. His quote sums up what
most physicists, both pure and applied, think of microgravity research as
it relates to physics. That includes flame combustion, whether you want
to call it applied physics or engineering. Given the enormous cost of
microgravity experiments on the shuttle, the results are small potatoes.
Actually the APS has so little interest in microgravity research that
most of the time it doesn't even speak against it. It has little to
gain from picking a fight with NASA. That's why the discussion has
been so lop-sided: Everyone has heard of NASA and it has vast powers
to generate publicity; very few non-scientists have heard of
the APS and it testifies quietly in Washington. It is just too bad that
Congress hasn't been listening much until last month.
The same goes for the American Chemical Society, the American Cancer
Soceity, and the American Society for Cell Biology, all of which have
criticized manned spaceflight as it applies to them.
Jorge R. Frank
news:b3rlmk$80u$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu:
> But in Bloembergen's testimony to Congress in 1991 on manned
> spaceflight, he said, "microgravity is of microimportance". At the
> time he was the President of the American Physical Society, which is
> the main professional society of research physics in the United
> States. His quote sums up what most physicists, both pure and
> applied, think of microgravity research as it relates to physics.
And should not be construed as having meaning *beyond* how it relates to
physics. He is, for example, utterly unqualified to evaluate the value of,
say, biological research in space.
Science is no less prone to "sandboxing", infighting, fiefdoms, than any
other field of human endeavour.
Derek Lyons
>In article <UQ98a.4872$Ki.1...@twister.kc.rr.com>, Doug . . wrote:
>> - Flame ignition and propogation in microgravity -- is that "science"?
>> It may give you some clues to the geometry of the chemical interactions
>> during ignition and burning that are swamped by gravity effects on earth,
>> but I imagine a lot of the data is desired for engineering purposes. For
>> example, the better you understand how flames start and spread in
>> microgravity, the better you can design future manned spacecraft,
>> especially spacecraft that will spend years in space.
>
>How long does the experiment take? If it isn't too long, you don't even
>need to be in space for it. Zero g is trivial to achieve in the lab for
>short periods--just drop things in a vacuum.
If you want more than a few hundreds of milliseconds, you need a
fairly lengthy drop. hardly trival IIRC there's only a few
facilities in the US that can do it.
http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/zero-g/zero_descript.html
http://www.urbanlegends.com/science/penny_falling_impact.html has some
interesting information as well.
Greg Kuperberg
Jorge R. Frank <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote:
>And should not be construed as having meaning *beyond* how it relates to
>physics. He is, for example, utterly unqualified to evaluate the value of,
>say, biological research in space.
Which is why the American Society of Cell Biologists also criticized
microgravity research, as I said. As far as I have seen, professional
science societies that might have been grateful for microgravity research
have instead said, "not in our name". The only exception that I know
is scientists funded directly by the NASA microgravity program.
George William Herbert
>I've been waiting for someone to ask why Columbia couldn't have used Skylab
>as a lifeboat.
Oohhhhh....
So *many* levels there. Nice.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Joe D.
>
> However- there's a problem with your self adopted blinders. HST isn't
> the only shuttle serviceable platform in orbit. In fact, the platform
> that the shuttle was designed from the start to support is in orbit,
> under construction, and in limited operation.
>
the shuttle exists to service ISS. I think that's called a symbiotic
relationship. It's too bad that outside this circular self justification, little
of meaningful value is produced.
-- Joe D.
Joe D.
>
> ... Bloembergen's testimony to Congress in 1991 on manned spaceflight,
> he said, "microgravity is of microimportance". At the time he was the
> President of the American Physical Society, which is the main professional
> society of research physics in the United States. His quote sums up what
> most physicists, both pure and applied, think of microgravity research as
> it relates to physics. That includes flame combustion, whether you want
> to call it applied physics or engineering. Given the enormous cost of
> microgravity experiments on the shuttle, the results are small potatoes.
Here's another example of the mis-match between the cost/return ratio
of ISS science and other "big science" that could have been achieved
for the same or less investment: The Superconducting Super Collider
would have cost about half of ISS, yet would have produced vastly
more meaningful science. Yet now we have ISS which produces little
meaningful science and the US must go to CERN in Europe for high energy
physics.
-- Joe D.
Derek Lyons
>"Derek Lyons" <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:3e643272...@supernews.seanet.com...
>>
>> However- there's a problem with your self adopted blinders. HST isn't
>> the only shuttle serviceable platform in orbit. In fact, the platform
>> that the shuttle was designed from the start to support is in orbit,
>> under construction, and in limited operation.
>>
>IOW ISS exists to give the shuttle a meaningful destination, and
>the shuttle exists to service ISS.
IOW NASA's goal was to produce a space station, and the Shuttle was a
requirement for economically building one. Unfortunately, the Shuttle
turned out to be not economical.
>I think that's called a symbiotic relationship.
Not quite, but close enough.
>It's too bad that outside this circular self justification, little of meaningful
>value is produced.
It's circular to those who don't understand the history of the
program. Shuttle needs not justify itself in terms of secondary
goals, when it performs so well (if not cheaply) at it's primary.
Derek Lyons
>Yet now we have ISS which produces little meaningful science
One does not usually expect something in the process of construction
to fulfill it's designed role, even partially.
Alan Barclay
Derek Lyons <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>It's circular to those who don't understand the history of the
>program. Shuttle needs not justify itself in terms of secondary
>goals, when it performs so well (if not cheaply) at it's primary.
It does need justify itself when it's time to pay the bills.
Some day some one is going to ask NASA to truely justify itself,
and NASA isn't going to get away with the fantasy spinoffs.
Reed Riddle
gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
> But the repair missions cost
> more than Hubble, and no other science satellite has ever been repaired in
> orbit. Moreover, Hubble had to conform to a NASA decree that everything
> that went into space had to be launched with the shuttle. This confined
> Hubble to a far from optimum low-Earth orbit that took it in and out of
> the Earth's shadow and exposed it to the rain of space garbage from past
> missions. Moreover, Hubble's dimensions had to conform to the shuttle's
> cargo bay, and its launch was delayed for three years by the Challenger
> accident. Ironically, the Challenger accident finally forced NASA to drop
> its shuttle-only launch policy. Hubble has gone on to achieve greatness,
> not because of the shuttle and the man-in-space program, but in spite
> of it.
Lots of wrong stuff in there. Shuttle was responsible for the repair of
Solar Max, extending its life by a few years IIRC. Hubble cost $2
billion, at least four times as much as a shuttle launch. There have
been very few telescopes sent out into space, and almost all of them
have gone to LEO; NGST will be the first major astronomy instrument to
go outside LEO. Hubble's dimensions came about because that was the
common size of the mirror used in spy satellites at the time...Hubble
is, in effect, a redesigned spy satellite facing outwards (yes, I know
it's not that simple :) ).
And, without the shuttle, Hubble would never have been repaired and
still sending blurry images, and the instrument suite would have been
the same crappy ones first sent up. Go check the STScI website to see
how much better the current instruments are than those before. I doubt
that a second Hubble would have been lofted after the first one was
screwed up...Congress wouldn't have allowed the funding.
But hey, what do I know.....
Reed
--
Dr. Reed L. Riddle, Assoc. Dir., Whole Earth Telescope Operations
Iowa State University Department of Physics & Astronomy
Homepage: http://www3.iitap.iastate.edu/~riddle/
Remove "DAMN SPAM" from my email address to reply.....
"This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would
have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do."
-- Angela Chase, "My so-called life"
charleston
news:6eb47d23.03030...@posting.google.com...
> No - but that is what should of happened with Galileo... The initial
> plan was to open and close the the HGA prior to TJI ... but the
> "close" electronics were reused for the thermal requirements of the
> VEEGA trajectory. Of course the HGA damage was sustained during that
> redesign - if Challenger had not been lost one bright January morning,
> that checkout would of happened April 1986, with no hiccups, and
> Galileo would have progressed to Jupiter with a good HGA...
> ...and exploded on entry into Jovian orbit.
> But that is another story.
Ah yes it is the story of the Shuttle Centaur boondoggle. No, even if
Challenger had survived, Galileo was going nowhere in outer space in 1986.
Daniel
Greg Kuperberg
Joe D. <j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>Here's another example of the mis-match between the cost/return ratio
>of ISS science and other "big science" that could have been achieved
>for the same or less investment: The Superconducting Super Collider
>would have cost about half of ISS, yet would have produced vastly
>more meaningful science.
It could hardly be more ironic. The supercollider was the most expensive
science experiment ever proposed and many scientists opposed it for
that reason, even though everyone agreed that it would have produced
great science. Meanwhile the ISS is a monument to trivial science and
it makes the supercollider look like a bargain.
Rand Simberg
gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>You have a lot of latitude to sing the praises of launch vehicles that
>have never been built. Who knows, maybe one day astronauts will help
>science instead of obstructing it. But that is no reason to stick to an
>existing manned spaceflight program that few scientists want.
No, it's not.
>There may
>be valid reasons to send astronauts into space. At the moment, science
>is not one of them.
Yes, one of the many reasons that the current manned space program is
a disaster. Until we get past this science fetish, we'll continue to
waste money.
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: postm...@fbi.gov
Joe D.
> NGST will be the first major astronomy instrument to
> go outside LEO.
NGST won't be launched for several years, but there are several other
major astronomical observatories that have already been launched, and
one (SIRTF) will be launched in two months. None of these can be reached
by the shuttle.
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) is a very major astronomy instrument.
It was the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle (about 50,000 lbs, inc'l IUS). Its
orbit takes it 75,000 miles from earth, far beyond LEO.
XMM-Newton (XMM) is the European X-Ray spectroscopy obervatory. It was
a major instrument having a launch weight of over 8,000 lbs. Its orbit has a 71,000 mile apogee,
far beyond LEO.
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) is in an approx 550 mile orbit, which might technically
be LEO but it's higher than shuttle can reach, which is the point of this thread. It weighs
about 5,000 lbs -- a major observatory instrument.
Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), the European infrared observatory, was the largest infrared
space observatory ever launched, until SIRTF is launched in April 2003. It's orbit was 650 miles,
maybe technically LEO but far higher than the shuttle can reach. The launch weight
was 5200 lbs, a big instrument.
The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is also considered a major
observatory, in fact one of the four "great observatories". It will be launched in April
to an orbit about 62,000 miles from earth, also far beyond LEO.
rschmitt23
Flame ignition and propagation experiments in microgravity is an old
business. When I worked on the Skylab program in 1969-70 we needed to know
how combustible materials behaved in zero-g because it was planned to equip
Skylab with ultraviolet fire detection sensors (essentially uv sensitive
Geiger tubes). We needed combustion info so we could set the threshold
levels on the sensors correctly to prevent false alarms when sunshine
entered the spacecraft through various quartz windows in the hull.
Solution: we flew specially designed experiments on NASA's KC-135 Vomit
Comet. Several hundred parabolas were flown during which samples of
materials ranging from paper to cloth to plastics were ignited during the
30-45 seconds of microgravity. The resulting fireballs were photographed on
color movie film and simultaneously viewed by one of the uv fire sensors. We
were among the first to document the spherical fireballs commonly seen in
microgravity fires.
Later
Ray Schmitt
"Derek Lyons" <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3e625ee1...@supernews.seanet.com...
Derek Lyons
>Derek:
>
>Flame ignition and propagation experiments in microgravity is an old
>business.
<remainder of excellent stuff snipped>
So, despite the fact that fire chemists are still studying this stuff
in 1G, and learning new things, one old set of experiments should
suffice for zero-G? Or are you proposing that all possible
experiments can be done within the limits of the Vomit Comet?
Derek Lyons
>In article <3e63806b...@supernews.seanet.com>,
>Derek Lyons <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>It's circular to those who don't understand the history of the
>>program. Shuttle needs not justify itself in terms of secondary
>>goals, when it performs so well (if not cheaply) at it's primary.
>
>It does need justify itself when it's time to pay the bills.
Which does fairly well. It fulfills it primary design role.
>Some day some one is going to ask NASA to truely justify itself,
>and NASA isn't going to get away with the fantasy spinoffs.
Not so long as NASA remains a source of votes and employment in key
Congressional districts, no one will ask the hard questions.
Derek Lyons
>And, without the shuttle, Hubble would never have been repaired and
>still sending blurry images, and the instrument suite would have been
>the same crappy ones first sent up. Go check the STScI website to see
>how much better the current instruments are than those before. I doubt
>that a second Hubble would have been lofted after the first one was
>screwed up...Congress wouldn't have allowed the funding.
That's the fundamental flaw in the thinking of ELV-Hubble supporters
succinctly capsulized. They assume that because it's "cheaper" the
flow on money will be ongoing. In reality each and every bird would
have to justify itself.
Derek Lyons
>Meanwhile the ISS is a monument to trivial science and
>it makes the supercollider look like a bargain.
Since you have a time travel machine that lets you go out to the end
off ISS's life and see how much science it produced, would you fetch
me back the price of AFLAC stock at close of market 5 June 2007, and
the results of the '03 World Series?
rschmitt23
Just saying that there's been a lot of previous work done in this type of
research on the KC-135, on Skylab, on Mir, on other shuttle sortie missions,
and, I believe, even on the ISS. So it's not surprising that STS-107 had
this type of work going on. We used the Vomit Comet in 1969 because it was
the best available way at that time to quickly get the info we needed for
the Skylab fire detection system. Today, we would use the orbiting assets
mentioned above for this type of work.
Later
Ray Schmitt
"Derek Lyons" <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3e677b3c...@supernews.seanet.com...
Paul F. Dietz
> Since you have a time travel machine that lets you go out to the end
> off ISS's life and see how much science it produced,
Anyone but the terminally deluded doesn't need a time machine
to predict this.
I'm already seeing the excuse machine being fired up, just like
it was for the shuttle.
Paul
Terrell Miller
> Since you have a time travel machine that lets you go out to the end
> off ISS's life and see how much science it produced, would you fetch
> me back the price of AFLAC stock at close of market 5 June 2007, and
> the results of the '03 World Series?
Braves in five
--
Terrell Miller
mill...@bellsouth.net
Editors are not writers. All they can really tell you is "Well, I don't
think this works," you say, "How doesn't it work?, "I don't know. It just
doesn't work."
-Dennis Lynds
Duncan Young
> news:6eb47d23.03030...@posting.google.com...
>
> >
> >
> > Skylab?
>
>
> Skylab?
It was an science mission; it was repaired in orbit by people... I was
addressing the statment in a absolute sense...
Might as well through in Kvant-1 as well...
Duncan Young
> In article <h%78a.17807$Pa.15...@news2.west.cox.net>,
> rschmitt23 <rschm...@cox.net> wrote:
> >What's important now, since the Columbia diaster, is whether or not NASA
> >will actually fly the next Hubble servicing mission with only three orbiters
> >remaining.
> returns. A serious science project is not like a classroom, where the
> equipment has the same value from year to year. Rather you take the
> data that you want, maybe with a few repeats, then you move on and build
> another experiment. Yes, Hubble can get some new life with new cameras,
> but it will still be the same dated platform in the same sucky orbit.
> Mid-wavelength astrophysicists are waiting for something new. (Although
> they can also bide time with Chandra, which is short wavelength.)
Long temporal baseline, consistent, datasets (e. g. monitoring
Jupiter's atmosphere)?
Targets of oppotunity (supernova, comets, Shoemaker-Levy 9)?
Hubble is an ongoing asset...
Greg Kuperberg
Duncan Young <smu...@mac.com> wrote:
>> Skylab?
>It was an science mission; it was repaired in orbit by people... I was
>addressing the statment in a absolute sense...
This is all a load of quibbling. The point is: Servicing satellites
with astronauts is so useful that Hubble and ISS are the only missions
still cursed with it.
Duncan Young
> "Reed Riddle" <NOdrr...@SPAMqwest.net> wrote in message news:NOdrriddle-2C694...@news.uswest.net...
> > NGST will be the first major astronomy instrument to
> > go outside LEO.
>
> NGST won't be launched for several years, but there are several other
> major astronomical observatories that have already been launched, and
> one (SIRTF) will be launched in two months. None of these can be reached
> by the shuttle.
>
> The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) is a very major astronomy instrument.
> XMM-Newton (XMM) is the European X-Ray spectroscopy obervatory. It was
>
> Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) is in an approx 550 mile orbit, which might technically
> Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), the European infrared observatory, was the largest infrared
> The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is also considered a major
Not to mention the International Ultraviolet Explorer.
Paul F. Dietz
> Not to mention the International Ultraviolet Explorer.
Hipparchos, WMAP, ...?
Paul
Stephen Souter
<j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> "Doug Ellison" <mai...@douglasellison.co.uk> wrote in message
news:%E58a.7668$Vx2.666772@wards...
> >
> > Were it not for shuttle missions - Hubble would now be the same
> > short-sighted wreck it was at launch. It's instruments would all have likely
> > failed, it's attitude control caperbility would have died years ago.
> >
> > Hubble has, is, and will continue to achieve greatness BECAUSE of the
> > Shuttle. Without the Shuttle - Hubble would be no more.
>
> It's true the Hubble repairs were impressive, and it's nice HST was salvaged,
> although NASA estimated it could have achieved maybe 50% of science goals
> without the repairs.
You've been reading too many of NASA's press releases. :-) NASA are the
people who invented the term "successful failure" to describe Apollo 13.
They have also been trumpeting Galileo as a success despite its stuck
antenna, tape recorder problems, etc etc. Don't get me wrong! Galileo has
certainly achieved a lot, but it would be fair to say it could also have
achieved a whole lot more--if only somebody could have gone out there with
a repair kit and a few spares.
> However -- there's a problem with O'Keefe always trumpeting the HST servicing
> as a key justification for the shuttle's worth. HST is going away, eventually.
> The replacement JWST cannot be serviced by the shuttle. Neither can the
> shuttle service Chandra, The Space Infrared Observatory, nor will it be
> able to service the upcoming Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
>
> It's great the shuttle could service the one major space observatory it could
> reach. However using HST to justify the shuttle is ultimately a losing
> argument, since it can't reach HST's replacement, nor any of the others above.
Just MHO, but I'd have said that was an argument for building a vehicle
that *could* go out there to service and repair Hubble's replacement.
As somebody else pointed out, without the Shuttle the Hubble would have
had to have a lot more redundancy built in. That in turn would have made
it larger, bulkier, and undoubtedly more expensive. (It also, incidently,
raises another issue: could any other American launch vehicle of that era
have been able to launch something of that size into LEO?)
The very fact that you do build such redundancy in does not make it immune
to failure or near-failure. Just as Galileo only had the one high-gain
antenna, so a Hubble launched without the Shuttle would only have had the
one main mirror. Meaning that if it had gone up with the one it was
launched with in all event no amount of redundancy in the world would have
fixed that faulty vision. Instead, like Galileo's antenna, it would have
had to be suffered and worked around. That in turn would have reduced its
capabilities, which in turn would have meant that some of the objective it
was expected to achieve would have had to have been (quietly) dropped.
Just as the grand goals of Galileo had to be scaled back thanks to its
stuck antenna.
(IIRC, some of the goals that would have been lost had that vision not
been fixed would have been some of its most important, such as estimating
the age of the universe.)
Have we all forgotten the opprobrium and ridicule that got heaped on NASA
because it sent up a space telescope with faulty vision? That has only
faded because the Hubble was able to be fixed, and has subsequently given
us lots of pretty pictures to ooh! and aah! at. (When was the last time
anybody has seen one of the pre-fix images grace a coffee-table book?)
Scientists and Congress might have been less forgiving had the Hubble gone
up with a faulty mirror which could not *be* fixed.
It was the loss of the Mars Observer which spelt the end of big expensive
planetary probes. A NASA which had been humiliated by a Hubble which had
kept its faulty vision may well have doomed its hopes for an even bigger
and more expensive NGST.
--
Stephen Souter
s.so...@edfac.usyd.edu.au
http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/
Stephen Souter
it bulkier, heavier and undoubtedly more expensive.
Moreover, the very fact that you do build such redundancy in does not make
it immune to failure or near-failure. Just as Galileo only had the one
high-gain antenna, so a Hubble launched without the Shuttle would only
have had the one main mirror. Meaning that if it had gone up with the one
it was launched with in all event no amount of redundancy in the world
would have fixed that faulty vision. Instead, like Galileo's antenna, it
would have had to be suffered and worked around. That in turn would have
reduced its capabilities, which in turn would have meant that some of the
objective it was expected to achieve would have had to have been (quietly)
dropped. Just as the grand goals of Galileo had to be scaled back thanks
to its stuck antenna and faulty recorder.
(IIRC, some of the goals that would have been lost had Hubble's vision not
been fixed would have been some of its most important, such as estimating
the age of the universe.)
Have we all forgotten the opprobrium and ridicule that got heaped on NASA
because it sent up a space telescope with faulty vision? That has only
faded because the Hubble *was* able to be fixed, and has subsequently
given us lots of pretty pictures to ooh! and aah! at. Scientists and
Congress might have been less forgiving had the Hubble gone up with a
faulty mirror which could not *be* fixed.
After all, it was the loss of the Mars Observer which spelt the end of big
expensive planetary probes. A NASA which had been humiliated by a Hubble
which had kept its faulty vision may well have seen its hopes sink for an
Stephen Souter
gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
> In article <6eb47d23.0303...@posting.google.com>,
> Duncan Young <smu...@mac.com> wrote:
> >> Skylab?
> >It was an science mission; it was repaired in orbit by people... I was
> >addressing the statment in a absolute sense...
>
> This is all a load of quibbling. The point is: Servicing satellites
> with astronauts is so useful that Hubble and ISS are the only missions
> still cursed with it.
That comment says more about our throw-away society than the usefulness of
servicing.
Do you discard your car for a new one every time it gets a flat or runs
out of fuel? That is effectively what goes on with the average space probe
right now and is one of the reasons space probes, especially the
interplanetary sort, are so expensive--and will stay expensive.
Imagine the size and cost of the average motor car if every single car sold:
* Had to carry the sort of redundancy space probes do;
* Was a custom-built job tailor-made to the specs of the buyer.
Dan Goldin
"Stephen Souter" <s.so...@edfac.usyd.edu.au> wrote in message
news:s.souter-030...@mac39a36.edfac.usyd.edu.au...
I think you need to simplify your analysis -- it's simply about demand --
the demand for cars is vast compared to space probes.
Joe D.
news:s.souter-030...@mac39a36.edfac.usyd.edu.au...
> antenna, tape recorder problems, etc etc. Don't get me wrong! Galileo has
> certainly achieved a lot, but it would be fair to say it could also have
> achieved a whole lot more--if only somebody could have gone out there with
> a repair kit and a few spares.
No human can go fix Galileo, even if a vehicle was available. The radiation is far beyond
human limits. Galileo and Casini (if it malfunctioned) are yet more examples of
complex, expensive space science instruments that cannot be serviced by
the shuttle -- rather than typical, HST is unique in its ability to be serviced. When HST
is replaced by JWST, the shuttle will have lost the one major space instrument
it can service.
>
> > However -- there's a problem with O'Keefe always trumpeting the HST servicing
> > as a key justification for the shuttle's worth. HST is going away, eventually.
> > The replacement JWST cannot be serviced by the shuttle. Neither can the
> > shuttle service Chandra, The Space Infrared Observatory, nor will it be
> > able to service the upcoming Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
> >
> > It's great the shuttle could service the one major space observatory it could
> > reach. However using HST to justify the shuttle is ultimately a losing
> > argument, since it can't reach HST's replacement, nor any of the others above.
>
> Just MHO, but I'd have said that was an argument for building a vehicle
> that *could* go out there to service and repair Hubble's replacement.
>
I'm sure NASA would love this -- a multibillion dollar deep space shuttle
to preserve the legitimacy of manned satellite servicing. However I doubt
it would be cost effective since unlike HST, none of these satellites have
servicible components.
> As somebody else pointed out, without the Shuttle the Hubble would have
> had to have a lot more redundancy built in. That in turn would have made
> it bulkier, heavier and undoubtedly more expensive.
JWST is less bulky, lighter and less expensive than HST yet will have vastly
greater performance. It's true you want certain redundancy and reliability for
a non-serviceable satellite, and this entails cost and weight. However -- adding design
elements for human serviceability (connectors, plugs, hinges, removable racks,
longer cables, greater component spacing, etc) *also* adds to cost and
often decreases reliability.
> Have we all forgotten the opprobrium and ridicule that got heaped on NASA
> because it sent up a space telescope with faulty vision? That has only
> faded because the Hubble *was* able to be fixed, and has subsequently
> given us lots of pretty pictures to ooh! and aah! at. Scientists and
> Congress might have been less forgiving had the Hubble gone up with a
> faulty mirror which could not *be* fixed.
The HST mirror problem was an idiotic mistake that a 12-yr old grinding
his own mirror for a science fair wouldn't have made. Any ridicule was richly
deserved. Nonetheless I'm glad servicing missions were able to fix it.
A certain % of missions will fail, whether manned or unmanned. If unmanned
you just fix the problem and try again. It's always been that way. Many of
the Ranger moon probes failed. We didn't give up, we fixed the problem and
sent more. By contrast if a manned mission fails fatally, it's a national crisis, and
usually gets a lot more negative congressional attention than an unmanned failure.
-- Joe D.
Paul F. Dietz
> That comment says more about our throw-away society than the usefulness of
> servicing.
>
> Do you discard your car for a new one every time it gets a flat or runs
> out of fuel?
Do you reuse food cans? Pens? Lightbulbs?
Sometimes reusability makes sense, but you can't argue from that
that it always makes sense. The detaila matter.
Paul
Gert van Spijker
> "Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote in
> news:IbOdnTnWafA...@dls.net:
>
> > I wrote:
> >
> >> CGRO?
> >
> > I misremembered -- just deployed by the shuttle, not repaired.
>
> No, you were right the first time: CGRO's antenna wouldn't deploy and the
> crew had to perform an EVA to fix it.
Of course some Shuttle opponents will argue that this was done on
purpose to 'prove' the value of the Shuttle concept ;-)
BTW: antenna deployment seems to be an (apparently simple) operation
with a very high failure rate. Does anybody have a clue why?
Gert van Spijker
William C. Keel
> "Greg Kuperberg" <gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message
> news:b3qofi$3vi$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu...
>> In article <nK48a.108404$9U3....@twister.nyroc.rr.com>,
>> Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) <moo...@greenms.com> wrote:
>> >No, but Solar Max was.
>> >
>> >And one of the planetery probes I believe was deployed by the shuttle,
> had
>> >problems during checkout and was "fixed" by the astronauts on the scene.
>>
>> Even if Park overlooked these examples, the fact remains that it is more
>> expensive to fix a satellite with astronauts than to launch a new one.
>> Which is part of the reason that many recent science satellites, for
>> instance Chandra, can't be retrieved for repair.
>>
>> On top of that, if a satellite is launched using the shuttle, it is more
>> expensive from the get-go, and inevitably gets delayed too.
> Chandra is in the orbit it's in because that's the most optimal for X-Ray
> astronomy
Though they wouldn't have minded launch on an expendable, except that
Chandra had a long-standing "launch on Shuttle" chit and would
otherwise have had to buy a booster out of project funds...
(according to the CfA folks at the first year's proposal review)
Bill Keel
Al Brennan
with:
>Doug Ellison wrote:
>
>> So extra Gyros. I presume extra solar panels ( to allow longer on orbit life
>> time with the degredation they suffer ), some form of propulsion to maintain
>> orbit ( would deorbit itself in a few years - unless you pumped it up to
>> 800km odd )
>
>If HST were beyond LEO, the panels would not be exposed to atomic
>oxygen, would be illuminated 100% of the time, and would not experience
>the thermal cycling the current scope's panels do.
Here's a related question: since the JWST is going to orbit around L2,
what will it be using as its energy source? I haven't been able to
dig this info up in cyberspace yet.
>Yes, going beyond 800 km would be good. IUE was geostationary, IIRC,
>and NGST is going to be even farther out.
Al Brennan
with:
>Doug Ellison wrote:
>
>> So extra Gyros. I presume extra solar panels ( to allow longer on orbit life
>> time with the degredation they suffer ), some form of propulsion to maintain
>> orbit ( would deorbit itself in a few years - unless you pumped it up to
>> 800km odd )
>
>If HST were beyond LEO, the panels would not be exposed to atomic
>oxygen, would be illuminated 100% of the time, and would not experience
>the thermal cycling the current scope's panels do.
I found the answer to my own question:
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/QuestionOfTheWeek/2002/2002-11-01.html
Mark Anderson
> I've been waiting for someone to ask why Columbia couldn't have used Skylab
> as a lifeboat.
Maybe it would be a good idea to launch a bunch of Skylabs; one for every
type of orbit the Shuttle will fly. That way, if a problem occurs, there
would be a depot available already in orbit that could provide a lot of
options for rescue. They could be like space gas stations.
Stephen Souter
<di...@dls.net> wrote:
> Stephen Souter wrote:
>
> > That comment says more about our throw-away society than the usefulness of
> > servicing.
> >
> > Do you discard your car for a new one every time it gets a flat or runs
> > out of fuel?
>
> Do you reuse food cans? Pens? Lightbulbs?
My mother reuses plastic ice cream cartons, and there is a thing called
"recycling" which (in a sense) reuses certain kinds of items...like food
cans.
Pens: my ballpoint pens have never got to point where they could be
reused. Like odd socks, they tend to vanish mysteriously. :-) But
ballpoint pens are a comparatively new invention. There are however pens
you can buy which come with a nib and require a separate bottle of ink. If
the nib wears out or the ink runs out you replace them. You do not buy an
entirely new pen. (If only because some pens of that sort can set you back
quite a few dollars!)
As for lightbulbs, no I do not reuse lightbulbs. But on the other hand, I
do not have to replace my entire car or house every time one blows, which
is basically what happens with most space probes at the moment. :)
> Sometimes reusability makes sense, but you can't argue from that
> that it always makes sense. The detaila matter.
Of course the details matter, but then nowhere did I claim that every
single item was or should be reusable.
But then not every item on the HST is reuseable either. Many are, however,
easily REPLACEABLE. If a gyro fails, for example, the whole HST does not
have to be hauled back to a workshop on Earth. The old non-functional gyro
can be replaced in situ by the Shuttle astronauts with a new functioning
one--much as you yourself do not have to hire an electrician to replace a
blown lightbulb in your house. You can buy one at the local convenience
store and do the replacing yourself.
Paul F. Dietz
> Of course the details matter, but then nowhere did I claim that every
> single item was or should be reusable.
You did, however, ignore the important detail -- the cost -- that
distinguishes your rather obnoxious analogy from the reality of
servicing HST.
If the cost of servicing a car approached (or exceeded!) the cost
of buying a new one, then damn straight I would junk it if it broke.
> But then not every item on the HST is reuseable either. Many are, however,
> easily REPLACEABLE. If a gyro fails, for example, the whole HST does not
> have to be hauled back to a workshop on Earth. The old non-functional gyro
> can be replaced in situ by the Shuttle astronauts with a new functioning
> one--much as you yourself do not have to hire an electrician to replace a
> blown lightbulb in your house. You can buy one at the local convenience
> store and do the replacing yourself.
"Easily" replaceable? Heroically replacable, I'd say, when the fully-loaded
cost of the replacement mission approaches a billion dollars.
Paul
Joann Evans
Ummm...maybe it would be better to have some small, easily turned
around RLV (Delta Clipper would've been fine, had it performed as
advertised) in sufficent numbers, that it wouldn't take long to prepare
one for a rescue mission from the ground.
In other words, you don't cover the ocean with bouys that have fuel
and survival gear, you have a Coast Guard.
Assuming, of course, that the rescuees even *know* they're in trouble
first. All other things being equal, this ability still wouldn't have
helped Columbia. (But it *would* do wonders for ISS crew rotation and
limited re-supply.)
Joann Evans
>
> In article <b3ucv0$2h5$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu>,
> gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
>
> > In article <6eb47d23.0303...@posting.google.com>,
> > Duncan Young <smu...@mac.com> wrote:
> > >> Skylab?
> > >It was an science mission; it was repaired in orbit by people... I was
> > >addressing the statment in a absolute sense...
> >
> > This is all a load of quibbling. The point is: Servicing satellites
> > with astronauts is so useful that Hubble and ISS are the only missions
> > still cursed with it.
>
> That comment says more about our throw-away society than the usefulness of
> servicing.
And our unwillingness to get serious about a low-cost, practical
manned RLV.
We need to get to where we can say; "Well of *course* we send someone
up to fix it." As much as we would for any unattended research device in
a remote place on Earth.
It's not that human-serviceable satellites are a bad idea, it's that
the shuttle is not the best means to get humans to them.
Joann Evans
[snipped]
> Isn't this whole discussion just another chapter in the long-running feud
> between "pure" and applied scientific research? Isn't there room for
> both?
>
> Can't we all just get along?
>
> :o)
>
> Doug Van Dorn
> dvan...@mn.rr.com
Can't we just have a manned RLV that's economical enough to render
the whole issue moot?
Make it pratical to pretty much go up there and do what you need. We
need to get to where we don't bother asking the questions, anymore than
we would in, say, Antarctica. (Numerous unattended weather and
environmental stations, for example, but no one advocates sailing them
in a remote-controlled boat all the way from the Northern
Hemisphere....)
Gary Sanford
wrote:
>"Greg Kuperberg" <gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu> wrote in message news:b3rlmk$80u$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu...
>>
>> ... Bloembergen's testimony to Congress in 1991 on manned spaceflight,
>> he said, "microgravity is of microimportance". At the time he was the
>> President of the American Physical Society, which is the main professional
>> society of research physics in the United States. His quote sums up what
>> most physicists, both pure and applied, think of microgravity research as
>> it relates to physics. That includes flame combustion, whether you want
>> to call it applied physics or engineering. Given the enormous cost of
>> microgravity experiments on the shuttle, the results are small potatoes.
>
>Here's another example of the mis-match between the cost/return ratio
>of ISS science and other "big science" that could have been achieved
>for the same or less investment: The Superconducting Super Collider
>would have cost about half of ISS, yet would have produced vastly
>more meaningful science. Yet now we have ISS which produces little
>meaningful science and the US must go to CERN in Europe for high energy
>physics.
>
>-- Joe D.
We should have had both, but science in general has never been an
American obsession. Engineering, maybe, but not science.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary Sanford
sanf...@attglobal.net
Greg Kuperberg
Stephen Souter <s.so...@edfac.usyd.edu.au> wrote:
>My mother reuses plastic ice cream cartons, and there is a thing called
>"recycling" which (in a sense) reuses certain kinds of items...like food
>cans.
If she fetched them with Concorde flights, it would be a lot like
economizing with the shuttle program.
Rand Simberg
Sanford <sanf...@sprynet.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
>>Yet now we have ISS which produces little
>>meaningful science and the US must go to CERN in Europe for high energy
>>physics.
>>
>>-- Joe D.
>
>We should have had both, but science in general has never been an
>American obsession. Engineering, maybe, but not science.
Interesting, then, that we dominate the Nobels...
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: postm...@fbi.gov
Derek Lyons
>"Derek Lyons" <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:3e6e842b...@supernews.seanet.com...
>
>> Since you have a time travel machine that lets you go out to the end
>> off ISS's life and see how much science it produced, would you fetch
>> me back the price of AFLAC stock at close of market 5 June 2007, and
>> the results of the '03 World Series?
>
>Braves in five
Damm. I'll never hear the end of it from my Aunt then.... And I was
really thinking my M's might have a chance, especially with our
pitchers getting back into the groove.
D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:
Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html
Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html
Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to o...@io.com, as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.
matt
"Rand Simberg" <simberg.i...@org.trash> wrote in message
news:3e991cee....@nntp.ix.netcom.com...
> On Tue, 04 Mar 2003 01:40:37 +0000, in a place far, far away, Gary
> Sanford <sanf...@sprynet.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >>Yet now we have ISS which produces little
> >>meaningful science and the US must go to CERN in Europe for high energy
> >>physics.
> >>
> >>-- Joe D.
> >
> >We should have had both, but science in general has never been an
> >American obsession. Engineering, maybe, but not science.
>
> Interesting, then, that we dominate the Nobels...
>
> --
> simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
> interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
not really unless you really want to consider Americans all the imported
scientists ...
matt tudor
Rand Simberg
<ma...@gigahertzelectronics.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:
>> >We should have had both, but science in general has never been an
>> >American obsession. Engineering, maybe, but not science.
>>
>> Interesting, then, that we dominate the Nobels...
>not really unless you really want to consider Americans all the imported
>scientists ...
As an American, I'm proud to do so. America is an idea, not a place
of birth.
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Stephen Souter
<j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> "Stephen Souter" <s.so...@edfac.usyd.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:s.souter-030...@mac39a36.edfac.usyd.edu.au...
> > They have also been trumpeting Galileo as a success despite its stuck
> > antenna, tape recorder problems, etc etc. Don't get me wrong! Galileo has
> > certainly achieved a lot, but it would be fair to say it could also have
> > achieved a whole lot more--if only somebody could have gone out there with
> > a repair kit and a few spares.
>
> No human can go fix Galileo, even if a vehicle was available. The radiation
> is far beyond human limits.
You're exaggerating the problem. As I understand it, the radiation belts
around Jupiter are only lethal in the inner Jovian regions. A
(spacesuited) human being on Io or Europa (and probably Ganymede) would
doubtless die a painful death, but one on Callisto would be quite safe.
Ditto for a spacecraft's electronics. Which is why Galileo spends much of
its time orbiting out of harm's way. Galileo does not spend ALL or even
MOST of its time bathed in lethal radiation.
> Galileo and Casini (if it malfunctioned) are
> yet more examples of complex, expensive space science instruments that
> cannot be serviced by the shuttle -- rather than typical, HST is unique in
> its ability to be serviced. When HST is replaced by JWST, the shuttle will
> have lost the one major space instrument it can service.
So what's your point? That manned space flight is a white elephant and we
ought to stay behind on Earth and let little robots do the job for us?
:)
Without doubt the Shuttle is an expensive piece of hardware, but so is
your average space probe. In fact, pound for pound even a low-cost space
probe like Mars Pathfinder probably costs more to BUILD than the Shuttle.
(The shuttle is expensive to RUN only because there are human beings on
board who need need round-the-clock monitoring, whereas the minders of an
unmanned probe like Pathfinder only need to be checked up on every now and
again.)
> > > However -- there's a problem with O'Keefe always trumpeting the HST
> > > servicing as a key justification for the shuttle's worth. HST is
> > > going away, eventually.The replacement JWST cannot be serviced by
> > > the shuttle. Neither can the shuttle service Chandra, The Space
> > > Infrared Observatory, nor will it be able to service the upcoming
> > > Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
> > >
> > > It's great the shuttle could service the one major space observatory
> > > it could reach. However using HST to justify the shuttle is
> > > ultimately a losing argument, since it can't reach HST's replacement,
> > > nor any of the others above.
> >
> > Just MHO, but I'd have said that was an argument for building a vehicle
> > that *could* go out there to service and repair Hubble's replacement.
>
> I'm sure NASA would love this -- a multibillion dollar deep space shuttle
> to preserve the legitimacy of manned satellite servicing. However I doubt
> it would be cost effective since unlike HST, none of these satellites have
> servicible components.
So the future of space exploration lies in spending hundreds of millions
of dollars on single-shot unmanned probes that have to be built like Rolls
Royces precisely BECAUSE, once launched, they can't be repaired when
things go wrong?
> > As somebody else pointed out, without the Shuttle the Hubble would have
> > had to have a lot more redundancy built in. That in turn would have made
> > it bulkier, heavier and undoubtedly more expensive.
>
> JWST is less bulky, lighter and less expensive than HST yet will have
> vastly greater performance.
Sounds great. But tell me, aren't we talking about the same people who
also promised us an inexpensive space shuttle and space station? :-)
> It's true you want certain redundancy and
> reliability for a non-serviceable satellite, and this entails cost
> and weight. However--adding design elements for human serviceability
> (connectors, plugs, hinges, removable racks, longer cables, greater
> component spacing, etc) *also* adds to cost and often decreases
> reliability.
The only reason satellites are built with so much redundancy et al is
because for most satellites there *is* no service and repair service
available to make such things...well, redundant, *not* because that is an
inherently better (and cheaper) way of building satellites.
If such a service was available do you imagine most satellites would be
built so that they could not make use of it?
> > Have we all forgotten the opprobrium and ridicule that got heaped on NASA
> > because it sent up a space telescope with faulty vision? That has only
> > faded because the Hubble *was* able to be fixed, and has subsequently
> > given us lots of pretty pictures to ooh! and aah! at. Scientists and
> > Congress might have been less forgiving had the Hubble gone up with a
> > faulty mirror which could not *be* fixed.
>
> The HST mirror problem was an idiotic mistake that a 12-yr old grinding
> his own mirror for a science fair wouldn't have made. Any ridicule was
> richly deserved.
No doubt. But then most mistakes can probably be classed as "idiotic" by
those gifted with the wisdom of hindsight.
> Nonetheless I'm glad servicing missions were able to fix
> it. A certain % of missions will fail, whether manned or unmanned. If
> unmanned you just fix the problem and try again. It's always been
> that way.
"Always"?
When MPL crashed and burned (so to speak) did NASA "fix the problem and
try again"? Not only did NASA not do so, it scrapped the NEXT Mars lander
altogether just in case it too should come to a similar end.
Then there's Mars Observer. When it failed the best NASA could do was send
up existing duplicates of MOs instruments aboard three smaller (and less
expensive) successor probes, one of which (MCO) itself flopped. That is
doubtless better than nothing, and the successors have had some striking
successes, but it's not the same as trying again with a second (fixed) MO.
If for any reason Cassini flops what is the likelihood of there being a
Cassini 2? There may well be other Saturnian probes, just as there were
other Mars probes after MO, but that isn't the same thing. Those would be
different probes with different suites of instruments and different
objectives.
> Many of the Ranger moon probes failed. We didn't give up,
> we fixed the problem and sent more.
Ranger is a poor analogy.
* Each Ranger mission cost a fraction of what a modern-day space probe
costs (the later ones in particular were little more than flying
cameras).
* Being lunar missions they had a fast turn-around time. If a Mars
mission flops NASA may have to wait two years to send the next--not
counting the time taken to go cap in hand to Congress to beg for
money to pay for sending up a successor, or the time taken to build
it.
* Ranger ran up six losses in a row. Imagine if NASA lost six Mars
probes in a row. (Not impossible. Think of the poor Russians!) Do
you seriously think Congress is going to keep on handing over
money to NASA with a cheery: "Here, go fix the problem and have
another go"?
> By contrast if a manned mission fails
> fatally, it's a national crisis, and usually gets a lot more negative
> congressional attention than an unmanned failure.
So it's not the fact that people were killed which bothers you but all
that bad publicity their deaths generate? Losing a billion-dollar robotic
probe generates less "negative congressional attention" than losing seven
(human) lives.
So what's your solution? Abandon manned spaceflight until NASA (or
somebody) can guarantee there will never be another astronaut killed in
the line of duty?
red floyd
> "Terrell Miller" <mill...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>"Derek Lyons" <derek...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>news:3e6e842b...@supernews.seanet.com...
>>>the results of the '03 World Series?
>>
>>Braves in five
>
>
> Damm. I'll never hear the end of it from my Aunt then.... And I was
> really thinking my M's might have a chance, especially with our
> pitchers getting back into the groove.
>
Not a chance. My Angels will repeat, beating Atlanta in 6.
Derek Lyons
Heh, first you have to get past my M's in the AL-West :)
Jorge R. Frank
news:b3rnc0$86m$1...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu:
> In article <Xns9331C49A...@204.52.135.10>,
> Jorge R. Frank <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote:
>>And should not be construed as having meaning *beyond* how it relates
>>to physics. He is, for example, utterly unqualified to evaluate the
>>value of, say, biological research in space.
>
> Which is why the American Society of Cell Biologists also criticized
> microgravity research, as I said.
Cell biology is, of course, a subspecialty of biology. As such, they can
be expected to be critical of any government funding that doesn't flow to
their little sandbox. As I said, scientists are no more immune to this
behavior than anyone else.
> As far as I have seen, professional
> science societies that might have been grateful for microgravity
> research have instead said, "not in our name". The only exception
> that I know is scientists funded directly by the NASA microgravity
> program.
As long as we are willing to cast aspersions on the motives of those who
accept such funding, we must also be willing to accept the fact that the
criticisms of those who do not get such funding may not have the highest of
motives.
--
JRF
Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.
Paul F. Dietz
> Cell biology is, of course, a subspecialty of biology. As such, they can
> be expected to be critical of any government funding that doesn't flow to
> their little sandbox. As I said, scientists are no more immune to this
> behavior than anyone else.
It's rare we see the ad hominem fallacy in so pure a form. Bravo.
Paul
Reed Riddle
"Joe D." <j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> "Reed Riddle" <NOdrr...@SPAMqwest.net> wrote in message
> news:NOdrriddle-2C694...@news.uswest.net...
> > NGST will be the first major astronomy instrument to
> > go outside LEO.
>
> NGST won't be launched for several years, but there are several other
> major astronomical observatories that have already been launched, and
> one (SIRTF) will be launched in two months. None of these can be reached
> by the shuttle.
>
> The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) is a very major astronomy instrument.
> It was the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle (about 50,000 lbs,
> inc'l IUS). Its
> orbit takes it 75,000 miles from earth, far beyond LEO.
>
> XMM-Newton (XMM) is the European X-Ray spectroscopy obervatory. It was
> a major instrument having a launch weight of over 8,000 lbs. Its orbit has a
> 71,000 mile apogee,
> far beyond LEO.
>
> Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) is in an approx 550 mile orbit, which might
> technically
> be LEO but it's higher than shuttle can reach, which is the point of this
> thread. It weighs
> about 5,000 lbs -- a major observatory instrument.
>
> Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), the European infrared observatory, was the
> largest infrared
> space observatory ever launched, until SIRTF is launched in April 2003. It's
> orbit was 650 miles,
> maybe technically LEO but far higher than the shuttle can reach. The launch
> weight
> was 5200 lbs, a big instrument.
>
> The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is also considered a major
> observatory, in fact one of the four "great observatories". It will be
> launched in April
> to an orbit about 62,000 miles from earth, also far beyond LEO.
I never said LEO meant the shuttle could get to it. ;) And, I
shouldn't have said "major", they all are major to us...expensive,
groundbreaking, etc. I did forget that Chandra was so high though, it
definitely qualifies.
Where an astronomicall instrument goes depends on lots of factors, but
mainly on the science objectives. That's why SoHO is at the Earth-Sun
L1 point, and that's why NGST (er, JWST) is going where it is going.
HST was always designed to be where it is, and there isn't an astronomer
out there who is unhappy that the shuttle has worked on it.
I'd always rather be able to work on an instrument after it has been in
operation, either to improve it or fix something, rather than make a
second, new one and toss it out there. Every instrument is unique, and
has issues, even "copies", because professional telescopes aren't made
on an assembly line. There is more to the telescope than just cost...
But, that's my experience talking. :)
Reed
--
Dr. Reed L. Riddle, Assoc. Dir., Whole Earth Telescope Operations
Iowa State University Department of Physics & Astronomy
Homepage: http://www3.iitap.iastate.edu/~riddle/
Remove "DAMN SPAM" from my email address to reply.....
"This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would
have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do."
-- Angela Chase, "My so-called life"
Jorge R. Frank
news:JqadnYCrQJk...@dls.net:
Actually, it's a reducio ad absurdam of Greg Kuperberg's ad hominem, but
I'll give you half-credit anyway.
Joe D.
> In article <wIF8a.885$ld1.2...@news.uswest.net>, "Joe D."
> <j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
> > Galileo and Casini (if it malfunctioned) are
> > yet more examples of complex, expensive space science instruments that
> > cannot be serviced by the shuttle -- rather than typical, HST is unique in
> > its ability to be serviced. When HST is replaced by JWST, the shuttle will
> > have lost the one major space instrument it can service.
>
> So what's your point? That manned space flight is a white elephant and we
> ought to stay behind on Earth and let little robots do the job for us?
> :)
No, just reserve manned space exploration for situations where the
added science return justifies the higher cost and risk.
> > I'm sure NASA would love this -- a multibillion dollar deep space shuttle
> > to preserve the legitimacy of manned satellite servicing. However I doubt
> > it would be cost effective since unlike HST, none of these satellites have
> > servicible components.
>
> So the future of space exploration lies in spending hundreds of millions
> of dollars on single-shot unmanned probes that have to be built like Rolls
> Royces precisely BECAUSE, once launched, they can't be repaired when
> things go wrong?
No, the future of space exploration lies in building unmanned space probes
about how they're built right now. Except for HST, essentially no space probe or satellite
can be human serviced. This will continue unchanged for the foreseeable future.
My main point is O'Keefe continuously trumpeting HST as a justification
for the shuttle's existence is ultimately a losing argument when HST is
eventually going away, and its successor can't be human serviced.
I seriously doubt NASA will build a deep space shuttle for servicing
satellites.
> > It's true you want certain redundancy and
> > reliability for a non-serviceable satellite, and this entails cost
> > and weight. However--adding design elements for human serviceability
> > (connectors, plugs, hinges, removable racks, longer cables, greater
> > component spacing, etc) *also* adds to cost and often decreases
> > reliability.
>
> The only reason satellites are built with so much redundancy et al is
> because for most satellites there *is* no service and repair service
> available to make such things...well, redundant, *not* because that is an
> inherently better (and cheaper) way of building satellites.
In essence the issue is switchable, wired-in redundancy vs human-pluggable redundancy.
Chief Grumman LM engineer Tom Kelly discussed this in his book Moon Lander.
The LM was a manned vehicle but the same principle applies. Originally NASA
wanted line-replacement units for the LM. Spares would be carried somewhere in
the LM/CSM and if a unit broke the astronaut would get the spare and swap it out.
Grumman studies and prototypes showed this significantly degraded reliability.
To make units human replaceable required extra plugs, cables, hinges, wider spacing,
non-optimal component placement and cooling, etc. Grumman ultimately convinced NASA
to just wire in the redundancy, and if needed electronically switch out the failed unit and switch
in the good unit. Essentially this is the way non-serviceable satellites are constructed.
I'm not saying it's superior in every case, but there are technical costs and downsides to designing
things for human serviceability.
> If such a service was available do you imagine most satellites would be
> built so that they could not make use of it?
It comes down to cost. If the all-up, fully burdened cost of a servicing
mission makes it worthwhile, and if you have a manned vehicle that will reach the satellite,
then that's fine -- make a service call. However it's currently a moot point -- besides HST,
the shuttle can't reach any of these to service them. If it could reach a deep space location (say L2)
the additional cost over the already high shuttle cost wouldn't be feasible.
If some future manned deep space vehicle has a sufficiently
low fully burdened cost to make servicing missions worthwhile,
then fine -- at that point start designing satellites for human serviceability.
> > Nonetheless I'm glad servicing missions were able to fix
> > it. A certain % of missions will fail, whether manned or unmanned. If
> > unmanned you just fix the problem and try again. It's always been
> > that way.
>
> "Always"?
>
> When MPL crashed and burned (so to speak) did NASA "fix the problem and
> try again"? Not only did NASA not do so, it scrapped the NEXT Mars lander
> altogether just in case it too should come to a similar end.
>
> Then there's Mars Observer. When it failed the best NASA could do was send
> up existing duplicates of MOs instruments aboard three smaller (and less
> expensive) successor probes, one of which (MCO) itself flopped. That is
> doubtless better than nothing, and the successors have had some striking
> successes, but it's not the same as trying again with a second (fixed) MO.
By always try again I meant try the same objective again, not send an exact carbon-copy
of the same vehicle. The upcoming Mars probes illustrate this. When MPL and
Mars Observer failed, NASA didn't give up on Mars. New Mars probes are being
prepared right now, incorporating the lessons of past failed probes. With unmanned
probes it's much less costly to have a failure, learn from the mistakes and continue.
>
> If for any reason Cassini flops what is the likelihood of there being a
> Cassini 2? There may well be other Saturnian probes, just as there were
> other Mars probes after MO, but that isn't the same thing. Those would be
> different probes with different suites of instruments and different
> objectives.
The goal is to explore Saturn or explore Mars, not to send an exact copy
of a previously failed probe. If Cassini failed a future probe would be sent to
Saturn, incorporating any lessons learned from the past failures. With unmanned
probes you can do that without the extreme cost that happens with manned failures.
>
> > By contrast if a manned mission fails
> > fatally, it's a national crisis, and usually gets a lot more negative
> > congressional attention than an unmanned failure.
>
> So it's not the fact that people were killed which bothers you but all
> that bad publicity their deaths generate? Losing a billion-dollar robotic
> probe generates less "negative congressional attention" than losing seven
> (human) lives.
My point was we want space exploration to continue even after the
inevitable setbacks. As we currently see with STS-107, in addition to the
human tragedy, loss of a manned space vehicle is very disruptive from
an organizational and political standpoint.
>
> So what's your solution? Abandon manned spaceflight until NASA (or
> somebody) can guarantee there will never be another astronaut killed in
> the line of duty?
>
Manned spaceflight is fine, as long as it's in the appropriate place. Namely
if the additional science return justifies the additional cost and risk, then
go ahead and use men. However the topic subject is HST servicing. We already have
a vehicle that can reach HST, the cost is questionable but close enough so
go ahead and service it.
However HST is eventually going away and its successor can't be reached
by the shuttle or any planned manned vehicle, nor can the shuttle reach
hardly anything worth servicing besides HST. My main point is O'Keefe
should be more careful about using HST as the all-encompassing answer to
congressional questions about "why do we need the shuttle?" In a few years
after HST is gone some influential politician might use the reasoning against
NASA.
Greg Kuperberg
Jorge R. Frank <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote:
>Cell biology is, of course, a subspecialty of biology. As such, they can
>be expected to be critical of any government funding that doesn't flow to
>their little sandbox. As I said, scientists are no more immune to this
>behavior than anyone else.
That is just so totally backwards from reality. The only "little sandbox"
in the picture is astronaut-tended microgravity research at NASA.
A roster of professional societies representing legions of scientists
across disciplines have criticized it for 20 years. Even the handful of
PIs in the sandbox are divided between toeing the party line, keeping a
low profile, and admitting that there's a better way. Paul Ronney, who
designed one of the lead experiments on STS-107, admitted to the New York
Times that unmanned spaceflight is a more efficient way to fund science.
In fact for the most part scientific societies have ignored manned
spaceflight at NASA, even though it gets as much money from Congress
as the entire National Science Foundation. As far as I know, the
American Mathematical Society (of which I am a member) has never spoken
against the shuttle or the space station, even they do compete with
NSF for money and NSF provides important support for math research.
Meanwhile cell biologists are much more amply funded by NIH, which is
as much a Congressional darling as NASA is.
So why did the American Society for Cell Biology diss microgravity
research? Precisely because they were supposed to be major beneficiaries.
NASA insists that protein crystal growth in space is interesting for
cell biologists. The cell biologists have long said, sorry, we couldn't
care less. But as long as astronauts were involved, Congress and NASA
refused to take no for an answer. Maybe now they might, now that seven
more heroes are dead.
Unclaimed Mysteries
Make my funk the P-Funk, "Greg Kuperberg" <gr...@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu>
wrote in part:
>
> That is just so totally backwards from reality. The only "little sandbox"
> in the picture is astronaut-tended microgravity research at NASA.
If microgravity-related research specialists were so passionate they would
have been kicking and screaming LOUDER for a free-flyer lab.
Corry
--
It Came From C. L. Smith's Unclaimed Mysteries.
http://www.unclaimedmysteries.net
"No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual
warfare." -James Madison
Theodore W. Hall
seems to be ... to see what happens to humans in microgravity.
Materials science (assuming it has something to gain from
microgravity) would be better handled by remote sensing and
manipulation, or robotics. Humans bouncing around the lab
disrupt the purity of the microgravity. Whatever is lacking
in the technology for remote sensing, manipulation, or
robotics, might be developed with the money currently spent
on life support.
With regard to life science, the rationale is that we need to
understand long-duration human exposure to microgravity
before sending a crewed expedition to Mars or other planets.
However, each additional mission mostly reconfirms what was
already known from Skylab, Salyut, and Mir.
Probably the best countermeasure for microgravity
deconditioning would be artificial gravity. Critics argue
that artificial gravity adds too much mass or complexity to
spacecraft design. However, microgravity doesn't avoid
complexity; it merely defers it from mechanical engineering
to life science. How many billions of dollars have already
been spent on microgravity life science, looking for counter-
measures other than artificial gravity, with only limited
success?
Artificial gravity is grossly underfunded.
[sci.space.shuttle removed from followups.]
---
Ted Hall
Paul F. Dietz
>>It's rare we see the ad hominem fallacy in so pure a form. Bravo.
>
>
> Actually, it's a reducio ad absurdam of Greg Kuperberg's ad hominem, but
> I'll give you half-credit anyway.
It's not, and your credit is rejected. Greg was observing a fact
about who is supporting microgravity research in the community.
You were overtly stating there is a bias on the other side, without
any evidence.
But let's consider this issue of bias further, shall we? Clearly,
the scientist who stands to receive money for research in an area
has a much larger conflict of interest in its evaluation than a
scientist elsewhere (since freeing up the funds is less likely
to get that second scientist as much mony.) However, that second
scientist *does* stand to lose something, if junk science is done
elsewhere in his field's name. He may feel an obligation to set
the record straight to protect his field's reputation. Note that
he can be expected to do this if he honestly feels the research
is of low value.
The near complete lack of support for microgravity research among
everyone in the scientific community but the 'kept women' is also
telling. Don't tell me you think they're *all* dishonesst?
Paul
Joe D.
> Critics argue that artificial gravity adds too much mass or
> complexity to spacecraft design. However, microgravity doesn't avoid
> complexity; it merely defers it from mechanical engineering
> to life science. How many billions of dollars have already
> been spent on microgravity life science, looking for counter-
> measures other than artificial gravity, with only limited
> success?
Exactly. Centrifugal "artificial gravity" systems aren't cheap nor simple.
However neither is ISS, the main purpose of which is human microgravity
research so as to avoid building an artificial gravity system. Plus you can add the shuttle
cost, the main purpose of which is servicing ISS. I doubt the additional
cost of adding centrifugal artificial gravity to a manned Mars vehicle exceeds the ISS plus
shuttle investments (which may never provide enough data to safely support a
manned Mars mission). At least with mechanical artificial gravity, you know it works.
Building it is an engineering exercise, not science research with an unpredictable
outcome.
-- Joe D.
Greg Kuperberg
Joe D. <j...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>Centrifugal "artificial gravity" systems aren't cheap nor simple.
>However neither is ISS, the main purpose of which is human microgravity
>research so as to avoid building an artificial gravity system.
In fact they are planning a large 2g centrifuge for the space station.
So at least on that wing of the station they will be taking away
gravity and putting it back again. Which will interfere with the
microgravity experiments on the rest of the station by causing vibrations.
On the other hand, human presence and the station's debris-dodging
motions will also interfere with microgravity experiments.
Why would they make a glass sculptor share a canoe with a break dancer?
Maybe it's precisely because it isn't cheap or simple. But then, I'm
not an appointed EXPERT in these disciplines, so what do I know.