Shuttle Problems

Question

I say the secret police *** with the shuttle so King George's defense industry buddies could get contracts designing replacements.

Secret police = Department of Homeland Security. No public awarness (know the location of your local office? ever seen one in uniform outside an airport?), no warrants, no arrest reports..

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I say the secret police *** with the shuttle so King George's defense industry buddies could get contracts designing replacements. ... (know the location of your local office? ever seen one in uniform outside an airport?), no warrants, no arrest reports..[/nq]
They've been trying to design the replacement for the shuttle for umpteen years the thing is thirty years old.
You want to know why there are astronauts on board the space shuttle I mean why there actually have to be astronauts on board?

It's not to take it off, or to steer it, or even to land it despite what the press would make you think. The shuttle does all of that strictly by computer control. It's way too unstable to be controllable by a human pilot.
No. The reason that there have to be human beings on board is because the programs that they need to control the various operations take-off, orbit, landing, etc., are on those old fashioned seven inch floppy disks the kind that they made back in the nineteen-seventies and are still used on board the shuttle.
Given the tiny amount of data that can fit on those disks, they have to be manually extracted and reloaded say, when it's time to land.

That's what the astronauts are for to take out one disk and plug in the other.
Why? Why, in the thirty years the shuttle has been around, have they not updated, say to three and a half inch floppy, or a zip disk, or a cd drive?
Because that would mean having to reconfigure the code and in order to be sure that the newly reconfigured code was right essential when something as expensive a shuttle depends on it the code has to be checked by human hand/eye line by line, all the millions of lines of code.
That's what they did with that code that's on those seven inch floppies, which took countless thousands of manhours and that's why they've never upgraded the floppy disks and never upgraded the computers that read them.
Who drives a car that's thirty years old? Flies in a jet that's thirty years old? Uses a computer that's thirty years old?

Yet NASA, who desperately wants to represent the "cutting edge" the only way they have of getting anything into space is by way of a thirty-year-old piece of technology.
You talk about the replacement NASA wanted to have the replacement on the runway already they spent a fortune trying to perfect scramjet technology and couldn't make it work.
Personally, what I think the problem is, is that at the heart of technology that NASA needs to get a runway-to-space vehicle is the ability to push an atmospheric aircraft into hyper-mach numbers and I'm prepared to bet that as soon as anybody comes up with a vehicle that can go that fast, given its obvious military applications, the technology immediately vanishes into the defense department's black box.
I mean, do we really believe that they retired the SR-71 and had nothing available to replace it not even to match, never mind exceed its speed that somebody said "Hey, no problem, now that we've got stealth, it's fine from here on in, we'll just abandon the capability and we'll all just go lower and slower." Oh, yeah that certainly sounds like something a room full of generals would say.

So honestly, I think that what you suspect is happening now, I think happened a long time ago which is that the NASA developed technology was simply co-opted, leaving them essentially with nothing to replace the space shuttle with - and for years they've simply been dicking around trying to come up with something that the DOD won't steal.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I say the secret police *** with the shuttle so ... in uniform outside an airport?), no warrants, no arrest reports..[/nq]
[nq:1]They've been trying to design the replacement for the shuttle for umpteen years the thing is thirty years old. You want to know why there are astronauts on board the space shuttle I mean why there actually have to be astronauts on board?[/nq]
Human interest. Keep the taxpayers enthralled by the drama, so they keep supporting the program.
[nq:1]It's not to take it off, or to steer it, or even to land it despite what the press ... time to land. That's what the astronauts are for to take out one disk and plug in the other.[/nq]
And for the human drama. To shake fruit from the money tree.
[nq:1]Why? Why, in the thirty years the shuttle has been around, have they not updated, say to three and a half inch floppy, or a zip disk, or a cd drive?[/nq]
Actually, in the early '80s they sent some of the early Macintoshes up with some special programs (MacEKG) to see how the machines would work. They worked. Kinda like the silly little "microgravity experiments" they still send up now and then to attempt to justify the flights.

But no good science has come out of a shuttle flight in quite awhile - maybe since they decided to name a new scientific unit with the honorific of the Garn. A Garn is a measure of distance of "hurling" - as in Wayne's World hurling. It's named in honor of former Senator Jake Garn (R-UT), who was a former National Guard pilot and was given a ride in the shuttle to grease the money wheels for the program. He got up there and exhibited some spectacular womits in zero-g. So now particularly impressive womiting is measured in units of Garns.

Charming, huh? But hardly worthwhile science.
[nq:1]Because that would mean having to reconfigure the code and in order to be sure that the newly reconfigured ... the only way they have of getting anything into space is by way of a thirty-year-old piece of technology.[/nq]
A big part of that problem was that in the 70s when the thing was being discussed and planned it was sold as a cheap and reusable space truck. It would be turned around and each of them would fly once a week and the US would be colonizing near space. Cheaply. So cheaply that we could do away with those costly and complicated ELVs - expendable launch vehicles - also known as rockets.
So we put all our eggs in the shuttle basket. (Except the military which didn't believe the hype because they knew better; and they wanted to have a fallback position in case the hype was wrong; and because they wanted to have launch capabilities that did not depend on a civilian agency, even though they had the right to appropriate any flight at any time for reasons of "national security".
[nq:1]You talk about the replacement NASA wanted to have the replacement on the runway already they spent a ... that can go that fast, given its obvious military applications, the technology immediately vanishes into the defense department's black box.[/nq]
The heart of the problem is that NASA wants to have a man in the cockpit because they figure that's the only way they'll get press coverage and funding.
The problem is that robotics are now so good that the real space science is happening with robots, and the shuttle is relegated to a being a garbage truck for the equally useless International Space Station (i.e. no discernible scientific results).
Heck, even the Air Force and naval aviation is now fighting to keep humans in the cockpit even though it's well demonstrated that robots make far superior flying weapons and surveillance platforms.

But the glamor of the man defying the gods that slapped down Icarus is just too compelling, and the only conventional way to keep the money tap open at Capitol Hill. (The current estimate for the new fighter plane desperately wanted by the USAF and planned also for the Navy and Marines is $325million per copy. And the Air Force wants them in the low thousands...)
These astonishingly expensive fighter planes are driven by Officers and Gentlemen, who grow up to become generals and then aerospace industry executives whose salaries depend on selling more of these machines. It becomes self-perpetuating.
And how much glamor is there in some sergeant sitting at a keyboard and watching a monitor while remotely piloting a stealthy vehicle that doesn't have to carry all those redundant life support systems? And he gets up for coffee or pee-breaks now and then, and when his six-hour shift is over the next sergeant comes in to replace him at the console. Hardly as glamorous as strapping on a shiny jet (steed) and venturing out to joust against the black knights of the evil forces with lance (missile) and shield (radar).
[nq:1]I mean, do we really believe that they retired the SR-71 and had nothing available to replace it not ... - and for years they've simply been dicking around trying to come up with something that the DOD won't steal.[/nq]
Right now the one good use for the Shuttle is to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope. To replace the Hubble's failing gyros and improve its onboard electronics, and keep alive the renaissance in cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics that has been led by the Hubble for nearly twenty years. To let the Hubble fall back is possibly the greatest travesty of the gang in charge in Washington. The ISS is an absolutely worthless venture, even more so than the shuttle. It's apparent to everybody watching that the robots we send out now (when they aren't made with the Dan Goldin mantra of cheaply produced) are so superior to the gigantic - in size and cost - vehicles that accommodate humans that it's a silly question to wonder why we bother with the manned vehicles anymore.

We are learning a great deal of science with the robots, and we use the manned vehicles to provide human drama and risk (and trash).

It's a stunningly cynical way to run a supposedly "scientific" program.

"Free Katie Holmes!" - Iggy Pop

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]They've been trying to design the replacement for the shuttle for umpteen years the thing is thirty years old.(more good stuff snipped)[/nq]All good points. I would just add a couple of my own points... Not all are shuttles are nearing thirtyt years old. Endeavor was built in 1987 to replace the Challenger, That makes it just 18 years old. Also, there are limitations on the computing hardware technologies that can be used in space. The super high-density integrated circuits that you have in your laptop or desktop computers cannot be used in space. Technologies such as MOS suffer from latch-up (google to learn more) problems that are produced by energetic particles that are filtered out down here by our atmosphere.

Generally space requires digital circuitry to be implemented in the much more expensive and much lower integration densities that are possible using the very old TTL style of integrated circuits. This is a forced design decision that comes out of the need for extremely high reliability and the harsh environmental realities of outer space. In fact the age of this TTL technology comes from the mid 1950s... about half a century old! I worked for years as an electronics and software design engineer on many defense contract projects and I have seen this come up over and over again.

On another point. I do not believe that the reason people are onboard is to stuff old floppies into old floppy drives. They are there because it makes it a better story for NASA to have a human touch. Its all about public image and tax funding and careers. If it were all just about science, there would never have been a single astronaut.

Shuttle Problems

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