Comments on: Return to Flight

By: Chet Twarog

Chet Twarog — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:10:16 +0000

Darn It! I extended my vacation, made a special flight to Florida, and drove eastward from Orlando with windows down stuck in heavy traffic as thousands headed for the launch when scrubbed past my five day window I allowed for some glitches that should have been corrected after the two and a half years of fixes.
Shouldn’t the thousands of us be reimbursed?
Hey, why complain?
In 1975 the Apollo-Soyuz Mission was scheduled. I borrowed my fiance’s ten speed bicycle and biked from Ludlow, MA towards Cape Kennedy with only $25, a small suitcase, sleeping bag, and a lot of determination to see that launch. I started out two weeks ahead getting to Virginia Beach with bald tires worn through. But I got the needed monies from her to take a Greyhound to Titusville, sold the bicycle for an additional $25 and saw the Saturn IVB launch, on time, to orbit.
NASA made a huge error of developing a space plane for USAF and Civilian options–the everything machine which is too darn complicated that one malfunctioning switch out of four scrubs a launch of international attention for weeks.
And the error continues.
Hey, I am an optimistic pro-solar system colonization space enthusiast. I even had a fund drive (Space Exploration Fund) 1979-1980 and was able to contribute it directly to NASA’s General Accounting Office along with the Viking Fund group. I even was at Edwards AFB with my spouse at the first Space Shuttle landing.
So, yes, I was quite disappointed at the scrub on July 13th.
And, millions of you were, too.
We need the Burt Rutans more than ever.
And a Buck Rogers in the 21st Century!!!

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:23:34 +0000

BA, as I understand it there were two sensors that were faulty. They were under-reading when the tanks had about 2 million litres of H2(l) and O2(l) in them. Since these sensors control when the orbiter’s main engines shut off, this would have caused a premature shut-off and hence either the orbiter would not reach orbit, or it would reach too low an orbit, that would be unstable due to atmospheric drag. At least, that is what was reported on newscientist.com.

Anyway, since the shuttle is not in space, it’s not really space news. Also, Cassini is still taking some damn’ fine pictures. They’ve struck oil (well, probably some kind of liquid hydrocarbon at least) on Titan!

By: Shirazi

Shirazi — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:51:45 +0000

Nice blog. Happy to be here.

By: Svilen Mihaylov

Svilen Mihaylov — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 17:57:53 +0000

I agree with NASA, this flight is way too crucial for them to let something go wrong. If it does and in some way treatens the mission, even if the mission has problems originating from something totally different, they’ll get blamed that they did not cancel the mission to check the vehicle.

By: Dappadee

Dappadee — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:05:01 +0000

Oops this is a better link.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050711/full/050711-6.html

By: Dappadee

Dappadee — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:01:08 +0000

Quote: Yeah, duh, like thereâ€™s other space news right now!

I thought the following was pretty major myself.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/232413_sun14.html

By: Ian B

Ian B — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 03:34:49 +0000

But why would you leave a box containing transistors from a known defective batch in the shuttle and schedule a launch with them in place ? No doubt the story doesn’t give the full story.

Good on them for not bowing to public pressure to launch regardless. I wouldn’t have liked to make the call.

NASA – all the best on resolving it ASAP !

Ian