back to article Antiques in spaaaaace! Retired space shuttles cannibalised for parts

NASA’s budget woes have forced it to consider sending museum pieces into space. With funding cuts looming, NASA engineers are saving cash by cannibalising parts from retired shuttles in museum displays to use on the International Space Station (ISS). The space shuttle programme was shut down in 2011, and the US’s four shuttle …

  1. dogged

    Quick! Call Ian McShane!

  2. i steal your leccy

    Re: Main Photo

    Is that a BEKO or a Samsung fridge freezer being delivered?

    Kudos to the delivery men!

    1. John 110
      Joke

      Re: Main Photo

      "Is that a BEKO or a Samsung fridge freezer being delivered?"

      It's in Space, It's obviously a Smeg.

      "...It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere..."

      1. wolfetone Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Main Photo

        They have to have somewhere to store the irradiated haggis don't they

  3. Drudgery Leak

    NASA - they put the re-use into reusable space plane

  4. Anonymous Custard
    Coat

    Remake, reuse, recycle

    OK, so who's the lucky astronaut who's going to end up wearing Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 suit?

    Still I guess it could be worse, it could be the Apollo 13 ones (if they ever got the stains out after their fright...).

    But then I suppose some styles never go out of fashion... ;-) A bit like my coat over there...

  5. knarf
    Alien

    Pppsssstt....

    Well the they have a StarGate and some cool alien tech.

  6. Slx

    It's a shame they're slicing back the budget on these things and I think you can largely blame an unholy alliance in the Republican Party of economic liberals who think all funding for anything other than the military should be cut and anti-science people who probably feel it conflicts with their creationist and flat earth beliefs and blog about it furiously on their space age technology driven computer...

    However, I don't see anything wrong with recycling and reusing what mostly amounts to very expensive, very high spec plumbing.

    A tank, is a tank is a tank. They don't go obsolete very rapidly!

    1. Vulch

      It's actually got some clever stuff like bellows inside to make sure you can get the water back out again and sensors to tell how full it is so not just a tank.

      According to an ex-shuttle worker commenting on http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/08/19/photos-water-tanks-removed-from-shuttle-for-new-use/ the manufacturer for these tanks went out of business and this is a lot easier than trying to source suitable new tanks.

    2. Gene Cash Silver badge

      > blame an unholy alliance in the Republican Party of economic liberals

      Hahaha. No, this has been happening for decades. It goes all the way back to Nixon, who hated the space program because it was Kennedy's pet project, and Kennedy made a fool of Nixon several times.

      Nixon is the one responsible for 7 dead astronauts, because he canned the reusable flyback booster, forcing NASA to fall back to SRBs.

      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
        Meh

        No no, it's Robert Goddard's fault for inventing (depending on your definition) the liquid propellant rocket.

      2. MrXavia

        No, the deaths are due to bad design& planning...

        the shuttle had no Abort method, so the first crew, while likely surviving the explosion, had no means of escape.

        Second crew, again bad design & planning, they knew about foam hitting the wings, but since they had no space suits on board (I only just heard about that) to go examine the damage, there was nothing to be done...

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. dorsetknob
    Facepalm

    Nasa contacts BBC Top Gear

    Dear Sir

    With regards to our funding problem due to Budget shortfalls we are forced to enquire

    Is your Reliant Space Shuttle available for hire and yes we will employ Jeremy Clarkson as the Pilot

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nasa contacts BBC Top Gear

      If you don't mind picking up all the pieces and reassembling it ;)

      As a space geek and a car nerd, that was the best Top Gear ever. I was gutted at the end result, but kudos for the attempt - so close ...

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Re: Nasa contacts BBC Top Gear

        "As a space geek and a car nerd, that was the best Top Gear ever. I was gutted at the end result, but kudos for the attempt - so close ..."

        It truly was one of the great moments in all of Television History. Especially the bit when they put the Top Gear space stickers on the wings upside down...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nasa contacts BBC Top Gear

      I remember The Muppet Show's "Pigs in Space" but I don't recall a show called "Cnuts in Space".

    3. Mike Flugennock

      Re: Nasa contacts BBC Top Gear

      Pilot, hell. He'd probably plow the thing into the ground. Clarkson would be better used as the goddamn' nose cone.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sanctions?

    "Earlier this month, NASA extended the $490m contract with Russia's space agency until 2019."

    NASA: "Sanctions? what sanctions?"

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Sanctions?

      Yes, Bolden took the moment to stick it Congress:

      "We wouldn't need to be buying more Soyuz seats if you fully funded commercial crew"

      http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/human-spaceflight/bolden-calls-for-support-of-commercial-crew-in-letter-to-congress/

  10. Ben Norris

    Imagine if someone had said "We need to reuse stonehenge because it's a bit cheaper than digging up fresh rock"

    The short term funding issue should not mean throwing away important world heritage.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Pah!

      Imagine if someone had said "We need to reuse stonehenge because it's a bit cheaper than digging up fresh rock"

      The Romans did it all the time! And we know how that turned out.

    2. CoffeeFueled

      I'm fairly sure there's a standing theory that large parts of Stonehenge are missing because someone said 'we should reuse those big standing stones as it's cheaper than digging up or dragging over fresh rocks'.

      1. jelabarre59

        That's precisely what happened to Fort Ticonderoga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ticonderoga). What you see now is primarily a reconstruction, since local farmers stripped it to build fences and houses after the American Revolution.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why imagine ?

      It happened.

      Old castles, monasteries, priories, cathedrals, churches have all been robbed for their stone.

      What is unforgivable, is hearing that they used to sell souvenir hammers at Stonehenge so the Victorian visitor could tap themselves a memento. At the same time as telling Greece they couldn't be trusted to look after the Elgin Marbles.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Re: Why imagine ?

        they used to sell souvenir hammers at Stonehenge so the Victorian visitor could tap themselves a memento. At the same time as telling Greece they couldn't be trusted to look after the Elgin Marbles

        That is so wrong it's difficult to know where to start.

        1. James Hughes 1

          Re: Why imagine ?

          Large amounts of Hadrian's wall were used to make a road in the 18th century. Imagine, a wall that latest 1500 years, knocked down to build a road.

          Bummer.

  11. Mage Silver badge
    Pirate

    US Government is daft

    Though NASA's case not helped by relationships with greedy USA Aerospace and poor management.

    This is vandalism.

  12. 404

    Those shuttle air frames were certified for 100 missions - we never got close before the Feds junked the program - I'm still shocked how FAST they were decommissioned, as if to make sure they could never fly again.

    Bunch of soulless bastards... destroying what was another step to getting the hell out of here before stupid human tricks kill us all.

    Yeah, I'm still unhappy about it.

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      The shuttles should still have never flown 100 missions.

      The shuttles should have been something NASA learned from, and designed a second generation vehicle that was less expensive and even more reusable. But as usual, no funding.

      It would be like everyone still driving Model As, and Ford never making a Model T.

      1. Mike Flugennock

        I think you got 'em mixed up

        Actually, the Model T was made first, about a hundred years ago.

        The Model A -- a.k.a. "A Bone" or "Deuce" to '50s and '60s hot rodders -- was introduced in the early 1930s.

    2. Dr Scrum Master
      Unhappy

      "I'm still shocked how FAST they were decommissioned, as if to make sure they could never fly again"

      Not as fast as TSR-2...

  13. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Remember $1bn is what US presidents spend on getting re-elected so if all presi candidates pay up a $100 m NASA tax it'll be OK.

    It's also the cost (approx) of 4 Jumbo jets. So, 4 US airlines cough up and NASA is smiling.

    1. cd

      Great idea! i don't know how to do it, but NASA should run for president. They'd get more funding that way.

      1. 404

        If you look at US political news, you'll see that candidate 'Deez Nutz' is polling pretty high right now.

        Yep, that's how far gone the US is....

      2. Kharkov
        WTF?

        NASA should run for President?

        Ok, I can see the problem with that right away.

        NASA is a reality-based organization and U.S. politics right now... isn't.

        Bernie Sanders, currently leaping up the polls, wants to do something breathtakingly sensible like taxing high-frequency transactions (not enough to make them loss-making, or even to significantly affect their profitability) to pay for free college and he's regarded by the mainstream as a loon.

        On the Republican side, the Donald is seriously proposing the idea that the 14th Amendment (if you're born in the U.S., you're a citizen. No 'and's, 'if's or 'but's, this means you!) DOESN'T apply to people of the wrong colour - Sorry, didn't mean to type that, I meant, of course, if their parents had entered the country illegally - and, as far as I can tell, all but two of the other Republican candidates have said, "Great idea! Let's do that."

        The crazy man in a sane world would entertain, and undoubtedly be entertained by, the sane people but the sane man in a crazy world would be in a nightmare and, what's worse, nobody would notice because they'd ALL be in the same boat.

  14. Zebo-the-Fat

    So sad!

    It makes me feel sad that they have to use the shuttles for bits just because no one will pay to do the job properly

  15. Steve Aubrey

    Don't destroy it - we might need it!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      RE: Fallen Angels

      A strangely enjoyable book which I've never heard anyone else mention. One of the first ebooks I ever read, free from Baen Books when they used to give entire back catalogues ou to purchasers of later books.

      Reminded me to check out the Baen Library (http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx) - free ebooks for SciFi/Fantasy/Military SF readers.

    2. jelabarre59

      Re: Don't destroy it - we might need it!

      > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel)

      The fun part in that novel is how many friends of mine were "Tuckerized" in it (e.g. Orange==Yalow). The scene at the SF convention where they buried "Seth" in a box of packing peanuts actually *did* happen at a late '80's Lunacon (even down to the "kill Seth" chants).

  16. P.B. Lecavalier
    Trollface

    Next time: the 8086

    Coming up next, they take from them the intel 8086 processors.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/technology/ebusiness/12NASA.html

    This could explain why the "User Manual" of the shuttle was so huge (about 10,000 pages?), because with such technology, you deal with rather low level instructions, and that means many many instructions (well at least that's one place without Java).

    Sure, they could have upgraded those antiques, but it's like upgrading a 386 (good luck!!). The necessary funding to do that, and the stance of anti-science obscurantists (aka tea party republican death eaters) could only lead to the demise of the program. And add to this W. Bush and his priority of returning to the Moon and going to Mars (which is seemingly going nowhere), which cancelled a lot of things because funding got reallocated (funding moved to '/dev/null', I say).

    1. Kevin 6

      Re: Next time: the 8086

      They purposely used them as they were reliable, tried, and tested. Lets face it you don't want you flight control computer making a computational glitch when calculating your orbit, or the computer freezing when you are coming in for entry. Its not like they need to run a pretty GUI like desktop users do. Also remember the computer that got astronauts to the moon had less processing power then most wristwatches have today.

      I remember reading like 11 years ago Nasa was paying $400 or was it 600 per processor for new 486 SX chips's this was well into the P3 era.

      1. squigbobble

        Re: Next time: the 8086

        That's because they'll be rad-hard CPUs, not the ones you buy from dabs.com.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: Next time: the 8086

        "you don't want you flight control computer making a computational glitch when calculating your orbit,"

        Yeah, thankfully they didn't go bleeding edge with those new fangled Pentiums

  17. Mike Flugennock

    Not as horrible as it sounds, really

    As I recall, the fuel tanks and engines of the retired Shuttles were removed and the engines replaced with replicas before they went on display, owing to concerns about toxic residue, and the weight of a full-up SSME, which runs to nearly 4 tons (3390 kg). In the retired Shuttles you see in the museums, all you see is the outwardly visible hardware in replica, not the actual engines.

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Not as horrible as it sounds, really

      Yes... however there is a retired SSME viewing stand near the KSC visitor center Saturn V building where you can see an actual engine. It looks complicated as hell compared to a SpaceX Merlin.

      The other reason the engines were removed is they're using them on SLS. I hear there is still a fight to restart the production line.

  18. Mark 85

    Cannibalizing parts for a one-time use....

    The down side of this is that there's not many tanks left and the current method is for the space truck to deliver the water and the tank to the ISS. The empty is put back in the space truck and whole mess burns up in the atmosphere. The only ones that live to see another mission are ones returned by a Dragon.

    Someone really needs to pull their head out of their ass and think of the long-term like what happens when there's no more tanks left to send up there.

  19. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

    Antique Rocket Engine

    Let's hope they are not desperate enough to take parts from this

    http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30020790

  20. Stevie

    Bah!

    Well they won't be getting any parts from the one in New York, that I can tell you!

    Mainly because the one we got wasn't actually a real shuttle and doesn't have any real shuttle bits to scavenge.

    In your face, NASA!

    1. Ol'Peculier

      Re: Bah!

      You're lucky you've still got it after Sandy - it was hidden from public view when I visited a couple of years ago whilst they were sorting a new exhibition area for it. Hope it's back up.

      Fortunately I've been to see Discovery a couple of times and they seem to have moved the barriers so you can get a bit closer to it now as well. Bit knackered looking, but there again if I'd been around the world that many times I'd be looking rough as well...

  21. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    I assumed it WAS for 8086s

    "Next time: the 8086 "

    Actually, I was surprised to read they were pulling tanks, I assumed they were pulling electronics for the microchips. Two reasons they have the kind of tech they do:

    1) In space, anything past about a 486-era chip* beings seeing significant problems with errors due to the level of cosmic rays and such in space.

    2) Looooong development times, along with technology reuse.

    *As the process used to make the chip was shrunk, bit errors increased -- slightly under earth conditions but excessively in space conditions -- I read a Pentium in orbit would misexecute several times a day, so I have no idea how bad a i7 would be. The PowerPCs, MIPS, etc. that are on satellites now use several features to mitigate this.... First, some use different materials (they used to use silicon-on-sapphire which helps a lot.) Second, I think they still use much larger than typical process sizes (no 22nm for sure... a 486 was about 800nm.) This is one reason they end up using PowerPC and MIPS so much, because the die size can be kept reasonable using much older processes. Third, some chips duplicate the instruction pipeline, if there is a mismatch it can be backed up and re-executed (some don't have this, if it's part of a system that is run in duplicate or triplicate anyway, then it could be overkill.) But you get the large process size for free if you just use antique chips 8-)

  22. Spacy

    This Is Not New

    NASA has always had a policy of loaning pieces to museums with the proviso that they might want them back for spare parts. I remember them doing this with the Apollo and Skylab programs. (It probably happened for the Space Shuttle, too.)

  23. ravenviz Silver badge

    USS Gerald R. Ford

    Cost: $12.8 billion + $4.7 billion R&D (estimated)

    How many bits did they take from the USS Enterprise!

    Just sayin'.

  24. perlcat

    I'm calling BS on this one.

    I think that space exploration is a major priority. However, this smacks of budget-time theatrics where they say "Look what you forced us to do. Since we failed to plan ahead and remove non-viewable internal parts when we *gave* these away to museums, we now want to appear in the headlines. Give us money. "

    If they'd have planned ahead,any usable parts would already have been removed and stored, and using them would be a mere inventory adjustment. It was either a failure to plan ahead (which isn't a phrase you should use to describe people bulding great big, explosive rockets), or just more kabuki.

    This lack of planning is ironic; the reason that NASA is lacking for funds is because they are unable to come up with a plan for future exploration that resonates. Instead, they prefer to keep funding their bureaucracy, which is about as uninspiring as you can get. A more active NASA would have no problems getting funded. What they are doing now is the equivalent of an oil drilling company drilling dry holes in order to preserve their lease. If you doubt me, ask yourself -- we used to use the term "space-aged" to describe the technological offshoots of the space program. How long has it been since there have been significant 'space-aged' offshoots from the current program? It certainly couldn't have been from the national embarrassment* that was the Space Shuttle (the B52 of space exploration). Why did they have to reverse engineer the Saturn V engines? Surely they could have gone and used the blueprints and research data? Losing that information, so fundamental to their purpose, was way beyond criminal.

    The enormous bureacracy that is NASA was created as a *side effect* of the moon project, not the end goal. I think they may be unclear on that. As much as it pains me, I think that NASA should be eliminated, and a different agency created from the ground up. They've squandered enough technology to get us to Mars and back a dozen times.

    Read this and weep: it is not a triumphant story about a technological advance, but instead a sad reminder of how pathetically mismanaged NASA was and is: http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/ -- I dont think claiming a "technological advance" as a result of *duplicating* what I saw on a museum trip is anything resembling truthful. It's a "recovery of lost technology". Ask yourself who lost it, and why are we paying these idiots money to squander the resources they are in charge of.

    *It wasn't an embarrassment when it was new, but why didn't they replace it when it first became obsolete?

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