STS-114 Astronaut Charles Camarda removed from leading the MMT

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Craig Fink wrote:


The agency is risking their survival if we lose another shuttle before
2010.



No, just losing the shuttle program which is going away 2010 anyway. The
other stuff would go on.


I don't think it would; the Moon program was Griffin's baby, and he his
reputation is riding on this next flight in particular as he signed off on
it.
If the Shuttle does suffer major damage or is lost, then I think that's
probably it for NASA's manned space program; they just won't look
competent to handle a new program if they can't even handle the Shuttle.

Pat

It seems to me that NASA has shown that they *can* 'handle the Shuttle':
this mission is the 115th flight.

Analogy: there have been many airliner crashes (e.g. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...al_air liners).
We have not abandoned 'manned flight' because of these accidents; we have
diagnosed the problems and made corrections so as to prevent recurrence.
And continued flying people in airliners. And, as I see it, we should do
the same with manned space flights.

Just my opinion.....

Hi Ho Silver wrote:


It seems to me that NASA has shown that they *can* 'handle the Shuttle':
this mission is the 115th flight.



They've had a fatal flight and a fleet grounding in the past two flights.

Analogy: there have been many airliner crashes (e.g. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...al_air liners).
We have not abandoned 'manned flight' because of these accidents; we have
diagnosed the problems and made corrections so as to prevent recurrence.
And continued flying people in airliners. And, as I see it, we should do
the same with manned space flights.

Just my opinion.....



Yes, we did indeed go on to better and safer airliners; but we've still
got the same Shuttle.
What we've got is something like the De Havilland Comet 1 airliner as
far as safety, and the Hindenburg as far as economy and ease of
operation goes; what we need is something like a Boeing 707.
Ideally, after Challenger they'd have permanently grounded it, learn
what they could from its flaws (and even at that point its fragility,
complexity of operation, reliance on good weather at both the launch and
landing sites, poor turnaround time, and overall bad economics in regard
to putting things into orbit were obvious), and then, if they decided
that the whole concept was workable, build a second generation reusable
vehicle using everything they'd learned from the STS experience.
But of course there wasn't money to do that, so we got stuck with the
equivalent of the Wright Flyer for the next twenty-five years. The first
of anything is seldom very good for anything except as a learning
experience in how not to do things the second time around.

Pat

Hi Ho Silver wrote:
We have not abandoned 'manned flight' because of these accidents; we have
diagnosed the problems and made corrections so as to prevent recurrence.

That's because a) airliners are very safe and b) airliners are so
important to the global economy that it would be massively damaged by
the elimination of air travel. Few people outside NASA would be
affected if they stopped flying shuttles tomorrow.

How many people do you think would get on a 747 if there was a one in
fifty chance of dying before they got to their destination?

Mark

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:54:14 -0500, Henry Spencer wrote
(in article ):

In article , Craig Fink
wrote:
Now we need just ONE astronaut to back out due to family pressure...

No, I believe NASA usually has backup astronauts ready to go.

Not any more. NASA long ago stopped naming complete backup crews, because
they were so rarely needed. On complex missions, they did occasionally add
one backup mission specialist, and non-NASA crewmembers typically did have
backups so NASA wouldn't have to delay a flight if one of them broke a leg.
But nowadays, if somebody gets sick you just delay the flight, and more
drastic problems late in training have been so rare that it hasn't been worth

major precautions against them.

Well, Expedition 13 has a complete backup crew.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/st...edition13/inde
x.html

Do I get a shirt? :-p

--
Herb

"Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which,
unfortunately, no one we know belongs."
~Anonymous

Herb Schaltegger wrote in
.com:

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:54:14 -0500, Henry Spencer wrote
(in article ):

In article , Craig Fink
wrote:
Now we need just ONE astronaut to back out due to family
pressure...

No, I believe NASA usually has backup astronauts ready to go.

Not any more. NASA long ago stopped naming complete backup crews,
because they were so rarely needed. On complex missions, they did
occasionally add one backup mission specialist, and non-NASA
crewmembers typically did have backups so NASA wouldn't have to delay
a flight if one of them broke a leg. But nowadays, if somebody gets
sick you just delay the flight, and more drastic problems late in
training have been so rare that it hasn't been worth

major precautions against them.

Well, Expedition 13 has a complete backup crew.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/st...pedition13/ind
e x.html

Do I get a shirt? :-p

Could be. Henry didn't qualify his statement by saying that NASA doesn't
name *shuttle* backup crews. ISS is another matter, of course.


--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

Many at NASA are in the mode of being cautious, maybe too cautious.

The Shuttle has never been what it was supposed to be and it never
will, it was not what the engineers wanted in the first place, but it
is what we have and so we've used it as best we could.

It is not a safe vehicle to fly in, but it has gotten safer as we fly
it, we now have improved solid rocket boosters and we have improved
SSME as well as ET.

We lost one shuttle after 25 flights and then another after about
another 100 flights so it is getter safer and more reliable, but is it
safe enough ?? We can never answer that question because we will
always find people who will volunteer to fly it as it is.

The odds are now better than one in 50 chance of catastrophic failure
because we have made the craft safer, so I would think we will not lose
another Shuttle in the time it has before retirement maybe 20 flights.

We made the Apollo craft safer as we moved through that program, after
Apollo 1 we made it safer. Apollo 8 being the most dangerous of all
the Apollo missions and then after Apollo 13 we made it safer again,
showing how we improved the craft as we went along.

The Soviets did the same thing with Soyuz, so the Shuttle should be Ok,
it's better and so are the missions plans, meaning the crew has a
better chance of survival than the craft itself.

I say we finish the ISS with the Shuttle and then build something
better and the CEV is the way to go.

But I'm just an optimist.

On 28 Jun 2006 17:23:32 -0700, in a place far, far away,
" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

The odds are now better than one in 50 chance of catastrophic failure
because we have made the craft safer

Where in the world did *this* number come from?

On 28 Jun 2006 17:45:26 -0700, "
wrote:


I just use the number that was posted earlier, I would actually think
the odds would be better than 2 out of 120 (I'm not 100% sure of the
number of flights before Columbia)
or better than 1 out of 60 because of the increased reliability, so we
should be able to make another 20 flights.

Challenger was lost on Shuttle flight No.25 (STS-33/51L).
Columbia was lost on Shuttle flight No.113 (STS-107).

Brian

Brian Thorn wrote:
On 28 Jun 2006 17:45:26 -0700, "
wrote:


I just use the number that was posted earlier, I would actually think
the odds would be better than 2 out of 120 (I'm not 100% sure of the
number of flights before Columbia)
or better than 1 out of 60 because of the increased reliability, so we
should be able to make another 20 flights.

Challenger was lost on Shuttle flight No.25 (STS-33/51L).
Columbia was lost on Shuttle flight No.113 (STS-107).

Brian

the older the vehicle gets the better the chance something aging will
cause a bad day........

theres a long list of age related troubles that were fixed.

what about the ones we dont know about?

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006 10:25:03 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:



Hi Ho Silver wrote:


It seems to me that NASA has shown that they *can* 'handle the Shuttle':
this mission is the 115th flight.



They've had a fatal flight and a fleet grounding in the past two flights.

Analogy: there have been many airliner crashes (e.g. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...al_air liners).
We have not abandoned 'manned flight' because of these accidents; we have
diagnosed the problems and made corrections so as to prevent recurrence.
And continued flying people in airliners. And, as I see it, we should do
the same with manned space flights.

Just my opinion.....



Yes, we did indeed go on to better and safer airliners; but we've still
got the same Shuttle.
What we've got is something like the De Havilland Comet 1 airliner as
far as safety, and the Hindenburg as far as economy and ease of
operation goes; what we need is something like a Boeing 707.
Ideally, after Challenger they'd have permanently grounded it, learn
what they could from its flaws (and even at that point its fragility,
complexity of operation, reliance on good weather at both the launch and
landing sites, poor turnaround time, and overall bad economics in regard
to putting things into orbit were obvious), and then, if they decided
that the whole concept was workable, build a second generation reusable
vehicle using everything they'd learned from the STS experience.
But of course there wasn't money to do that, so we got stuck with the
equivalent of the Wright Flyer for the next twenty-five years. The first
of anything is seldom very good for anything except as a learning
experience in how not to do things the second time around.

Pat


Well said. Sadly many felt it was an exercise in how not to do
something the FIRST time around. All it needs is duct tape and a
Confederate flag painted on the side.