And the Culprit?
It sounds like the culprit might have bolted...
Space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour, the next two planned to fly, may have technical problems with their external fuel tanks. Both spacecraft are due to roll out to launch pads at the Kennedy Space Centre. NASA has just rescheduled roll-out of Atlantis to Kennedy's Launch Complex 39A, moving the event back from August 30th …
From the dates given it suggests that Endeavour must already be loaded with the Logistics Module and would have to launch and land with it still on board in the event of a rescue mission.
I know the shuttle has brought duff satellites back to earth before, but I would have thought that's an unusually heavy landing?
Or would they just ditch it in space?
They only load the payloads at the launch pad (if they didn't, then they'd have big problems maintaining power and cooling connections when they moved everything out (not to mention vibrations - obviously the payload has to survive them during launch, but that's a different type of vibration to the ones you get while going along the crawlerways)).
They send the payloads out to the pad before the shuttle, and then load them in once the shuttle gets there - I'd assume therefore they can just not load it and keep the payload in the rotating service structure if the rescue mission is needed, or just 'extract' it (ultimately if the rescue mission is needed, the likelihood is the shutles won't fly ever again, so the payload is basically useless at that point...)
"No. The ISS and Hubble are in different orbits. THe Shuttle can't travel from one to another."
Further to that, a back of the envelope calculation made in another forum gave the result that getting between the orbits of ISS and Hubble would take nearly as much propellant (~80%) as it takes to get into orbit in the first place!
Do you really think the "iShuttle" would have fared much better? "Photoshopping the ISS since 1999"
I for one hate the Idea of mothballing these things. I know the economics are hideous, But I think they should be put in a hanger and readied for future "Just in Case" scenarios. These things ARE space accomplishments for the past 30 years. I'm a fan of adding the Orion to the list of launch vehicles, not taking away from the list. Why leave ourselves with only one option?
The Shuttle hardware is now demonstrably beyond its safe operating lifetime, and every mission squeezed in before the current retirement date is a step closer to the brink of another catastrophe. Not that the completion of the ISS and the repair of Hubble are not worthy goals, but, given that Cold War II is just firing up and NASA has bugger-all chance of getting Constellation aloft any time soon (if at all, what with the time and budget over-runs, the infighting, the abiding lack of ambition), I strongly suspect that the sight of another Shuttle strewn across the Midwest in a million and one easily eBayable pieces will be the last nail in NASA's coffin: Congress will pull the plug and the rest of us will be left to fend off the creationists without the perspectives available to us from outside the atmosphere.
I missed being alive for the last moon landing by a couple of months: I do rather hope I don't miss the next one.
"I missed being alive for the last moon landing by a couple of months: I do rather hope I don't miss the next one."
Take it from me - it's no big deal. Unless you're doing it, I suppose...
Paris, because landing in France is always a big deal....and many other puns too poor to mention.