Shuttle going bye-bye?

From NASA Watch:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20..._consider.html


"Is OMB Considering Shuttle Termination?

Editor's 19 Sep note: David Radzanowski at OMB issued an action to NASA
at the beginning of September asking the agency to provide him with an
estimate of what shutdown costs would result from a termination of the
Space Shuttle program in FY 2006. NASA provided a response to OMB on 9
September.

Editor's 21 Sep note: Reporters have been calling NASA PAO to get a
comment on this NASA Watch posting. PAO's response is something along
the lines of "we continue to hold meetings with OMB ..." i.e. no
confirmation, no denial. Meanwhile, OMB PAO has been calling NASA and
asking them what they should say in response to media inquiries. Stay
tuned."

I suspected something like this might be in the works after Katrina
damaged Michoud (JSC is evacuated now due to Rita, BTW) and the
President went looking for a way to cut spending rather than raise taxes
to fix the damage to New Orleans.
Combined with the desire to speed up work on the CEV, and the continued
foam shedding on the ET, I'd say that the Shuttle is standing on mighty
thin ice at the moment....particularly when you save loads of money on
the ISS if you ground it now also.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

..particularly when you save loads of money on the ISS if you ground it now
also.

Just so long as they don't do so in my backyard, like Skylab

i'am very intersted in it ,but my english is poooooooor.

Since the shuttle is regarded as a "less that safe" spacecraft, why is NASA
reusing some of it's most faulty launch components to construct our future
hope in space? WHy does this dog chase it's tail?

R.Glueck wrote:
Since the shuttle is regarded as a "less that safe" spacecraft, why is NASA
reusing some of it's most faulty launch components to construct our future
hope in space? WHy does this dog chase it's tail?

Believe it or not, the space shuttle has achieved
one of the world's best space launch reliability
records. It sits at the top of the active list with
Tsyklon 2, Delta 2, and Soyuz-U. The launch system
itself has actually only failed one time in 114
flights. During the entire history of the space age,
no other space launch system has suffered so few
failures after so many launches.

- Ed Kyle

R.Glueck wrote:
Since the shuttle is regarded as a "less that safe" spacecraft, why is NASA
reusing some of it's most faulty launch components to construct our future
hope in space? WHy does this dog chase it's tail?


They're not.

The shuttle is a combination of "less than safe" components, and "state
of the art" components. The idea with CEV is to use the best components
from Shuttle, or "less than safe" components as necesary in safer modes.

The best parts of the shuttle are the SRBs (with the o-ring enhancements
since Challenger) and the engines. The SRBs are the only thing that come
close the Saturn V F1 engines in terms of lifting power. The icing
issue, and the foam issue, are non-issues with the CEV because the CEV
rides at the top of the stack. Even if ice or foam does come off the
rocket, it's BELOW the capsule, so no harm can come to the CEV.

Ed Kyle wrote:
R.Glueck wrote:

Since the shuttle is regarded as a "less that safe" spacecraft, why is NASA
reusing some of it's most faulty launch components to construct our future
hope in space? WHy does this dog chase it's tail?


Believe it or not, the space shuttle has achieved
one of the world's best space launch reliability
records. It sits at the top of the active list with
Tsyklon 2, Delta 2, and Soyuz-U. The launch system
itself has actually only failed one time in 114
flights. During the entire history of the space age,
no other space launch system has suffered so few
failures after so many launches.

- Ed Kyle


Agreed.

Statistically, the Shuttle is far superior to other systems. However,
the two times it has failed, 7 people died each time.

If we combine the best features of Shuttle with the CEV, and design a
system that procludes the weaknesses of Shuttle, we have a winning combo.