NASA Astronaut on Columbia Repair (and others)

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sat, 09 Dec 2006 19:02:20 GMT, in a place far, far away,
Christopher P. Winter made the
phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:49:06 GMT, George Evans
wrote:

in article , Fred J. McCall at
wrote on 12/8/06 8:58 AM:

snip

I always find it funny when 'private enterprise' fans scream that
their problem is that they don't get all that big government funding.

This seems like a non sequitur, since no one has been "screaming," or
even saying, anything of the sort, at least in this thread.

I guess you find your own delusions, funny, Fred.

They don't seem to understand what 'private enterprise' is...

This is a very good point. Just to take one (probably silly) example, Bill
Gates in sitting on a pile of fake money about three times the size of
NASA's total annual budget. He might want the chance to make some of that
money real. I can see the pitch. Gatespace, mankind's Gatesway to the stars.


The fact that the poster says they haven't gotten the money doesn't mean
that the poster necessarily expects that money to come from government
sources.

In fact, I made no such assumption, and had no such expectation. In
facct, I wasn't even complaining about the lack of money. I was
simply stating it as fact, and one relevant to the nonsensical claim
that NASA does anything better than private enterprise, other than
getting money.

You see rand you might want to check out NASA's technology transfer
program before you state how NASA spends money, as the private sector
is a direct beneficiary of NASA funding through the technology transfer
program.


http://sbir.nasa.gov/SBIR/sttr2006/p...rds/press.html
"National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program
2006 SBIR/STTR Phase 1 Press Release

NASA SELECTS 287 SMALL BUSINESS RESEARCH AND TECH PROJECTS
NASA has selected 260 proposals for negotiation of phase 1 contract
awards in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, and 27
proposals for negotiation of phase 1 contract awards in the Small
Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.

The selected SBIR projects have a total value of approximately $25
million. The selected STTR projects have a total value of approximately
$3 million. The SBIR contracts will be awarded to 206 small high
technology firms in 32 states. The STTR contracts will be awarded to 25
small high technology firms in 14 states.

The programs are competitive, three-phase award systems that provide
qualified small businesses with opportunities to propose innovative
ideas that meet specific research and development needs of the federal
government. Business program participants include women-owned and
disadvantaged firms. The STTR program requires collaboration of
research institutions in the resulting contracts.

Phase 1 is a feasibility study to evaluate the scientific and technical
merit of an idea. The SBIR awards may last up to six months while STTR
awards may last up to one year. Both programs award Phase 1 contracts
up to $100,000. Phase 2 expands on the results on the development of
Phase 1. Phase 2 Awards are for up to two years in amounts up to
$600,000. Phase 3 is for the commercialization of the results of phase
2 and requires the use of private sector or non-SBIR federal funding.

Participating contractors submitted 1,709 Phase 1 SBIR proposals and
201 Phase 1 STTR proposals. The criteria used to select the winning
proposals included technical merit and feasibility; experience,
qualifications and facilities; effectiveness of the work plan; and,
commercial potential and feasibility.
For information about NASA's SBIR and STTR programs, and a complete
list of selected companies, visit: http://sbir.nasa.gov"


tom

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:17:59 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
:Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
:such a way as to indicate that:
:
:
:
:Rand Simberg wrote:
:
:NASA's overall fatality rate is still less than 2%, equal to the Russians.
:Nobody else has enough flights to even compare, in a statistically
:significant way.
:
:
:
:The point is, that's no reason to prefer NASA over the private sector.
:
:
:
:Which has made two manned spaceflights up to the moment. :-)
:
:Three, actually. All of them successful...

And none of them even close to orbital...

--
"It's always different. It's always complex. But at some point,
somebody has to draw the line. And that somebody is always me....
I am the law."
-- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
Soyuz 1.
One of the solar arrays never deployed so it was short of power and
couldn't maneuver properly because the center of balance was off due to
the undeployed panel.
They managed to get it lined up for retrofire eventually, but the main
chute didn't deploy properly due to a design defect, and when the reserve
chute was deployed it tangled with the main one, so that cosmonaut Komarov
was killed on impact:
http://www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz1.htm

Soyuz had a lot of problems during this period of development. Both the US
and the Soviets were eager to get their new craft up and flying due to the
race to the moon.

Had the Block 1 Apollo CSM flown, it wouldn't have been surprising to have
similarly serious failures during the flight. Of course, the (Block 1)
Apollo 1 fire was a deadly serious failure...

After the Soyuz 1/Apollo 1 failures, the Soviets and the Americans both went
back to the drawing board and fixed some serious, lingering, problems with
their respective designs.

After that, the US was lucky it didn't lose the Apollo 13 crew. Had it not
been for the LEM, the failure would have lead to death in a similar manner
to that of Soyuz 11's crew.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
They're not pushing boundaries. They're retreating back to the
concepts of forty years ago.

Partly. They're also trying to build ISS 2, but on the lunar surface. They
want to return to the old days in terms of capsules and lunar landers, but
scale up the lander so it's big enough to land ISS like modules on the moon.

So they're really returning to the conceps of 20 to 40. ;-)

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Jeff Findley" wrote:

:Had the Block 1 Apollo CSM flown, it wouldn't have been surprising to have
:similarly serious failures during the flight.

It would have surprised me.

:Of course, the (Block 1)
:Apollo 1 fire was a deadly serious failure...

Yes, and it wasn't the sort of thing that would occur during flight,
was it?

:After the Soyuz 1/Apollo 1 failures, the Soviets and the Americans both went
:back to the drawing board and fixed some serious, lingering, problems with
:their respective designs.

Could you provide a list of what you think were the "serious,
lingering, problems" in the Apollo Block I design that were fixed that
you consider most likely to cause a fatal accident?

:After that, the US was lucky it didn't lose the Apollo 13 crew. Had it not
:been for the LEM, the failure would have lead to death in a similar manner
:to that of Soyuz 11's crew.

No, it wouldn't have been "in a similar manner to that of Soyuz 11's
crew" at all. Start with the difference between freezing to death on
a Moon flight and dying of hypoxia on reentry from an orbital flight
and go from there.

The main reason for getting out of the main module and using the LEM
was because there was concern about main module damage from the
explosion and a desire to 'save' it for reentry. The issue for Apollo
13 was electrical power, not breathable atmosphere.

--
"Rule Number One for Slayers - Don't die."
-- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Jeff Findley wrote:

Soyuz had a lot of problems during this period of development. Both the US
and the Soviets were eager to get their new craft up and flying due to the
race to the moon.



They really rushed it... the unmanned tests hadn't gone well at all.
The problem with the parachute was due to the fact that they covered the
inside of the parachute storage housing with a spray-on insulation used
on the descent module's exterior. This caused the chute to stick when
they attempted to deploy it due to the roughness of the insulation.
If the launch of Soyuz 1 had gone well they would have launched Soyuz 2
the next day and docked the two ships to transfer two of Soyuz 2's three
crew to Soyuz 1.
The unlaunched Soyuz 2 had the same problem as Soyuz 1 in regards to its
parachutes, so you would have ended up with a total of four dead
cosmonauts and two piles of burning debris on the ground in Russia when
they tried to land.

Pat

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:

:Had the Block 1 Apollo CSM flown, it wouldn't have been surprising to
have
:similarly serious failures during the flight.

It would have surprised me.

:Of course, the (Block 1)
:Apollo 1 fire was a deadly serious failure...

Yes, and it wasn't the sort of thing that would occur during flight,
was it?

Possibly not in the same way it did on the ground (due to the high pressure
O2 atmosphere during the ground test), but the subsequent investigation
uncovered some serious problems with the spacecraft as designed, built,
managed, and tested.

:After the Soyuz 1/Apollo 1 failures, the Soviets and the Americans both
went
:back to the drawing board and fixed some serious, lingering, problems
with
:their respective designs.

Could you provide a list of what you think were the "serious,
lingering, problems" in the Apollo Block I design that were fixed that
you consider most likely to cause a fatal accident?

There are lots of details he

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1980011953.pdf

There were issues with the cooling system, the wiring, tank welds, certain
mylar capacitors, and etc.

As with the Challenger and Columbia disasters, the Apollo 1 fire was not
only a setback, but an opportunity to address these sorts of lingering
problems, especially since the first crewed vehicle would be a Block II CSM.

:After that, the US was lucky it didn't lose the Apollo 13 crew. Had it
not
:been for the LEM, the failure would have lead to death in a similar
manner
:to that of Soyuz 11's crew.

No, it wouldn't have been "in a similar manner to that of Soyuz 11's
crew" at all. Start with the difference between freezing to death on
a Moon flight and dying of hypoxia on reentry from an orbital flight
and go from there.

The main reason for getting out of the main module and using the LEM
was because there was concern about main module damage from the
explosion and a desire to 'save' it for reentry. The issue for Apollo
13 was electrical power, not breathable atmosphere.

Without the LEM there was enough oxygen for the crew to die from
hypothermia? I wrote "had it not been for the LEM" since I was thinking of
either the explosion happening on, say, Apollo 8, or on a landing mission
after the LEM was spent and discarded. In either case, I thought the only
O2 left to the crew would be in the CM's tanks.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

George Evans wrote:
in article , Eric Chomko
at wrote on 12/8/06 10:23 AM:

Rand Simberg wrote:

snip

The point is, that's no reason to prefer NASA over the private sector.

How about going into space vs. not going into space? I prefer going into space
and since NASA is the only one that is going into space, NASA wins by default.

Thank you, it was time to clean off my screen anyway.

Oops, besides the Russians of course...


George Evans

Rand Simberg wrote:
On 8 Dec 2006 11:06:10 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Eric Chomko"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

And this constant whining about no one gives us money has got to go.

It's not "whining." It's stating of a fact to point out how
nonsensical your argument is.

Your whining is disproving his point?

No, you moron. Learn to read.

So you whined just to whine?

I didn't whine.

Call me a moron but never say I'm unproductive.

I never would. When it comes to spouting idiocy, your output is
prodigious. I wouldn't be proud of it, though.

Nor shall I be ashamed of it simply for you to use it against me.
You're no team player, Simberg. You work alone for a reason. Commercial
spaceflight needs all types, but mostly team players. Your personality
is the exact opposite of what your goal is centered around.

You're like a short guy trying to play basketball rather than being a
jockey.

Eric

On 11 Dec 2006 13:20:17 -0800, in a place far, far away, "Eric Chomko"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Call me a moron but never say I'm unproductive.

I never would. When it comes to spouting idiocy, your output is
prodigious. I wouldn't be proud of it, though.

Nor shall I be ashamed of it simply for you to use it against me.
You're no team player, Simberg. You work alone for a reason.

I don't work alone, you moron.