Do you think the Space Shuttle should be replaced? Cartoon..

[Tyler]

I thought that it would be appropriate to post this again, seeing as how we have grounded the shuttle yet again...
Best of luck to the crew up there now!

[susnfx]

Houston, we have a problem.

[Brian Lee]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does. It's amazing to me how cynical the general public can be about systems they know so little about. :roll:

[TomB]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does. It's amazing to me how cynical the general public can be about systems they know so little about. :roll:

I don't think that anyone is saying that. Some people probably know quite a lot of these things, and I would bet that most folks that fly, know about the "safety" of aircraft these days.

I think some are just expressing that for their tax $$ they would prefer to see it go elsewhere, that's all.

Tom

[susnfx]

Brian, in view of your recent posts explaining astronomy and space flight, I'm sure there are some who have wondered about your background. I don't recall the nature of your educational background or what your job was at the planetarium--would you care to share this?

Susan

[s1m0n]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does.

However, airliners have a far better safety record as a percentage of total flights or hours in the air. We can assume that atmospheric aircraft undergo a far less stressful existance than do space shuttles.

The periods of peak stress involved in getting into and out of space both accellerate wear and tear on a shuttle, and also greatly raise the bar--a shuttle is tested much more rigorously by the forces she must withstand.

[Teri-K]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does. It's amazing to me how cynical the general public can be about systems they know so little about. :roll:

I don't think that anyone is saying that. Some people probably know quite a lot of these things, and I would bet that most folks that fly, know about the "safety" of aircraft these days.

I think some are just expressing that for their tax $$ they would prefer to see it go elsewhere, that's all.

Tom

I can't say that the shuttle itself should be replaced, but that the system hurling it into space needs redesign. When take-off is such that it causes possible and actual catastrophic damage to the craft, then I'd say tax dollars need to go into better lift-off.

As far as airplanes v. shuttle? That's comparing apples to oranges. An MD-80 doesn't normally have bits of the runway break apart and slam into it on takeoff, nor does it have to worry about exploding upon re-entry into the atmosphere. That's kind of like comparing the components, complexity and purpose of a child's tricycle to a Formula I racer.

[BillChin]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does. It's amazing to me how cynical the general public can be about systems they know so little about. :roll:

Much older? The Discovery in orbit is 25 years old and based on a 30 year old design. I know there are a few old 707s, 727s around, but the statement above is a huge stretch. Maybe when the design reaches 50 years old or 75 or 100 they will authorize a new sheet of paper. Or maybe the moon is as far as we'll ever get.

from
http://jcole.us/blog/archives/2005/01/1 ... y-airline/

avg age of aircraft
Jetblue 3.2736
...
Continental 9.2111
Alaska 10.3416
United 11.2737
...
Southwest 23.6350

[The Weekenders]

As long as people continue to oppose large funding for the space program, we will be stuck with the old shuttle design. I remember when that was made clear years ago after Nasa budget tightening.

[BillChin]

As long as people continue to oppose large funding for the space program, we will be stuck with the old shuttle design. I remember when that was made clear years ago after Nasa budget tightening.

I know the government doesn't work this way, but I would vote for suspending the program for several years and saving the money to do something new and interesting instead of sending old rustbuckets into space and having those huge repair bills that go along with maintenance on ships well past their designed lifetimes.

It is to the point now, where the shuttles are like old clunker cars, that require more money to maintain than they are worth. Costing more to try and fix than they cost originally to build. If they were cars, they would have found a home in the junk yard or the museum already.

I found a 2003 article about NASA planning to extend the operations of the shuttle fleet to 2020. Maybe it is time to scrap the manned space flight program until that time. There is no money, no desire, no science, no nothing really with the current operations, nothing except frustration and a lot of money down a sinkhole.

[I.D.10-t]

Meanwhile, commercial flights are getting to be more realistic. Maybe, soon we will need NASA less and less as universities purchase lab space for their experiments on commercial flights.

Optimistic, yes. Possibility of this happening, I do not know.

[Tyler]

Most of the airliners you travel on today are much older and have MUCH more wear than the shuttle does. It's amazing to me how cynical the general public can be about systems they know so little about. :roll:

That argument would only hold water if our commerical airliners were making extra-atmospheric trips every time they lifted off, and were required to break the pull of the Earth's gravitational pull in a perpendicular fashon instead of an exponential linear one (ie, gradual takeoff).
If the commercial airliner and the Space Shuttle shared a similar track record for catastrophy vs. percentage/ammount of flight time, no one would fly!
All of that aside, I have flown for business five times this year, and once for vacation, and only the plane I took to Mexico was beyond 25 years old. Basing an argument apon data gathered first hand, I'd say that there are few commercial airliners in service older than the space shuttle design. There has been very little design change in the fundamentals of the space shuttle in these 30 years...even after learning new and more efficient ways of meeting the needs of our space program. As has been expressed by Enders, i believe that budget cuts have hampered a new design from emerging.
Another idea that I entertain is that NASA has had no real competition since the Moon race. I think that will change with the advent of the private/commercial space industry. The commerical space industry has already made leaps and bounds much faster than NASA (granted that they have built their foundation on ground that NASA pioneered) and in the future may either cause NASA to do a better job faster (and more economically) or cause NASA to phase out.

Just some thoughts...

[Nanohedron]

Am I the only one who reads "SPACE SMUTTLE" on the cartoon rattletrap?

[TomB]

Am I the only one who reads "SPACE SMUTTLE" on the cartoon rattletrap?

That's the way I "see" it.

Tom

[Walden]

Am I the only one who reads "SPACE SMUTTLE" on the cartoon rattletrap?

That's the way I "see" it.

Tom

Possibly even SMUFTLE.