18 Shuttle flights between now and 2010

I am a huge supporter of NASA, but I am wondering if NASA will
really be able to fly 18 shuttle flights between now and 2010, according to
this article below. They will have to fly 4 or 5 shuttle flights a year
starting in 2006. How realistic is this?

http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dl...53/1007/news02

Ray

"Ray" wrote in news:L0u1f.6006$ar6.4338@trndny01:

I am a huge supporter of NASA, but I am wondering if NASA will
really be able to fly 18 shuttle flights between now and 2010,
according to this article below. They will have to fly 4 or 5 shuttle
flights a year starting in 2006. How realistic is this?

http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dl...07/NEWS02/5100
70353/1007/news02

Your math is wrong. 18 shuttle flights (plus a possibly 19th for HST)
over 2006-2010 is an average rate of *less* than four flights per year.
For example:

2006 3
2007 4
2008 4
2009 4
2010 3

Four flights per year is very realistic for a three-orbiter fleet. During
the first ten years after the post-51L return-to-flight, 1988-1998[1],
the fleet flew 66 times. If you throw out Columbia's 14 flights after
Endeavour debuted, you get an average rate between 5-6 per year. So an
average rate of 3-4 per year for a three-orbiter fleet has quite a bit of
pad in it. Note that the period in question had several lengthy
standdowns, such as the hydrogen leak fiasco of 1990.

The keys to achieving that rate will be twofold. One, ET foam-shedding
has to continue to decrease until it's below the documented limits
(hopefully NASA will achieve this on STS-121). Two, NASA must return to
night launch capability[2]. This will result in some loss of capability
for the ground-based cameras to detect impacts and damage. However, NASA
has so many other means of detection/inspection (ground-based radar,
aerial cameras, ET/SRB cameras, wing-leading-edge sensors, ET umbilical
cameras, shuttle crew handheld cameras, RMS cameras, OBSS, ISS crew
handheld cameras) that this should not be a big problem.

[1] - this period is more representative of the 2006-2010 flight rate
than 1998-2003 because there was a backlog of payloads waiting to fly on
the shuttle, so shuttle availability was limited by the shuttle itself
and not the payloads. In 1998-2003, on the other hand, shuttle flights
were mostly limited by availability of ISS hardware to launch.

[2] - the daytime launch limitation, combined with existing launch window
constraints, only provides four or five good launch opportunities per
year, which effectively eliminates most of the pad in the schedule since
even a small launch delay can force a launch to slip two months or more
for the next daytime opportunity.
--
JRF

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

in article L0u1f.6006$ar6.4338@trndny01, Ray at wrote
on 10/7/05 5:40 AM:

I am a huge supporter of NASA, but I am wondering if NASA will
really be able to fly 18 shuttle flights between now and 2010, according to
this article below. They will have to fly 4 or 5 shuttle flights a year
starting in 2006. How realistic is this?

http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dl...02/510070353/1
007/news02

They have doubled that rate before, so it seems reasonable to me.

George Evans

no doubt there will be safety stand downs, that flight rate is a
dream...

in article , Bob Haller
at wrote on 10/7/05 5:55 PM:

no doubt there will be safety stand downs, that flight rate is a
dream...

It's more likely that you're dreaming--dreaming of the early demise of the
shuttle.

George Evans

early demise would be a good thing. kill the shuttle before it kills
again

I think it very realistic if every thing goes right, foam, money,
politics, weather. If all goes well I think the number will look
somthing like this.

2006 2
2007 3
2008 4
2009 4
2010 5 (I think it will be more likly a 4 here)

But given the past few years flight record, I think we will be lucky to
get one or two flights a year. NASA has stage fright, and good reason
to; to a point. Everytime some foam comes off look for the shuttle to
be down for 6 or 7 months. Given that I look for the numbers to look
like this

2006 2
2007 1
2008 1 (retired)

Bob Haller wrote:
early demise would be a good thing. kill the shuttle before it kills
again

I think it may take no more than 20 Shuttle crushes to stop the
program. Here is how I arrived to this number.

It took 1 accident to kill the Concorde program. The life loss was
little over 100 people. To arrive to the same magic number 100 with an
accident death rate 7 people per flight it would take about 20
accidents.

in article ,
blade_pride at wrote on 10/10/05 12:53 PM:

I think it very realistic if every thing goes right, foam, money,
politics, weather. If all goes well I think the number will look
somthing like this.

2006 2
2007 3
2008 4
2009 4
2010 5 (I think it will be more likly a 4 here)

But given the past few years flight record, I think we will be lucky to
get one or two flights a year. NASA has stage fright, and good reason
to; to a point. Everytime some foam comes off look for the shuttle to
be down for 6 or 7 months. Given that I look for the numbers to look
like this

2006 2
2007 1
2008 1 (retired)

Isn't that a little like meeting you for breakfast and concluding that,
based on the last 10 hours, you sleep most of the time?

George Evans

Attempting to fly safely will mean more safety groundings than
flying.....

Just wait and watch....