Shuttle hijinks

[Del]

Hello? The shuttles. Are. Too. Old.

Maybe they will get around to a new solution. Eventually.

 

[Jdvn1]

That's what they plan to do, I hear. Newer shuttles. It'll take a while, though, since it's a pricey endeavour.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's what they plan to do, I hear. Newer shuttles. It'll take a while, though, since it's a pricey endeavour.

Is that what prevented us from designing the next-gen shuttle? I recalled before 2000 that NASA selected a winning shuttle in a contest but nothing ever came out of it. Maybe the design on paper looked good (though not aesthetic it looked like a bloated version of the space shuttle), but it didn't passed certain tests.

Now we got 5 years left before the shuttle reach retirement. They should put out an open call on a new contest with the prize is a contract to provide a fleet of next-gen shuttles.

 

[Jdvn1]

The last contest like that I recall was for the Mars Lander, which they used (with modifications). I don't remember one for the normal shuttle, though.

There've been some private contractors doing this sort of thing anyway. Lots of ideas are going to be coming, I think, but I don't think they're needing any at the moment.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I wonder if they would take a game designer's concept sketches seriously....?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

 

[Jdvn1]

I wonder if they would take a game designer's concept sketches seriously....?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Hey, why not? Just get some engineers to try to back it up.

 

[Steve Jung]

I wonder if they would take a game designer's concept sketches seriously....?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

They'd probably say, "Lose all the spikes."

 

[wingsandsword]

Uh, they know it's outdated. That's why they're retiring them. Projected retirement date of 2010, with all remaining flights dedicated to maintenance/construction of the ISS to fulfil our international obligations.

For now, that's what we've got. Also, dings and dents in tiles and protrusions in insulating fabric filler has happened on virtually every . The media is hyping and exaggerating the importance of every little bit just to make more ratings. Every shuttle landing has come down with a few tiles outright missing and a few loose spots in the ceramic fabrics, the system was designed to work like that. The reason Columbia was lost was the hole was huge right in the RCC leading edge, from a massive hit to the wing, not that there was some little ding in the heat shield.

It's not like this isn't being worked on. Congress has backed the President's space plans, and there is currently the design competition for the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) as the centerpiece of Project Constellation, intended to be a general purpose manned spacecraft usable for both Low Earth Orbit use, as well as manned missions to the moon, mars, near earth objects like asteroids and the L2 Earth-Sun Lagrange Point, with the first manned missions planned for 2014.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Constellation.
http://exploration.nasa.gov/constellation/

 

[James Heard]

I nominate the next gen shuttles be named "Gygax" series shuttles, allowing for the common activity of imagination that all engineers must participate in during Middle School.

The other option, of course, is calling them Swirlies or Wedgies.

 

[Umbran]

Also, dings and dents in tiles and protrusions in insulating fabric filler has happened on virtually every .

To be specific, on average a space shuttle comes back to Earth with 150 dings, scrapes or other bits of minor damage. That's thje way it has been for the life of the program. The shuttle doesn't live an easy life, and this is normal wear and tear.

The media is hyping and exaggerating the importance of every little bit just to make more ratings.

Quite right. Like with medical news - there's a big difference between a higher rate of incidence, and a higher rate of reporting. Just because the news has more stories on it, doesn't mean it's actually happening more often than before.