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the disaster with Columbia threatens the whole shuttle programm. it is claimed to be not safe enough. this event changed the statistics - about 2% of shuttles don't return. is in needed to close the shuttle programm, or you think this risk is needed for science ? economically wise it's more expensive, compared to the rocket. is there any benifit to upgrade shuttle or is it an "old" idea that needs to be closed ?

so what do you think about this ?

Columbia (1983 - 2003)
Challenger (1984 - 1986)
Discovery (1988 - Present)
Atlantis (1993 - Present)
Endeavor (1996 - Present)

Would you really ride on a 10 or 20 year old spacecraft that has undergone over 25 separate missions each? I sure wouldn't. Logic tells you that all mechanical things break down, you all saw what happened with Columbia and most of you know about the Challenger.

In general NASA is wasting money on sending space shuttles into space to release satelites. As you said its much better just to send up a rocket carrying it. I've never understood why they do this. According to Deception Point (a book by the dude who wrote Da Vinci code) they do it so they can have a space monopoly and make all the other aerospace companies go under.

Now, safety wise I really don't know. There are bound to be accidents in things like this but 2% I think would seem alittle high for the amount they ought to be making sure everything works completely.

There have only been 100 shuttle missions?[/NOTRIGHT]

Many experiments can be carried out on the Space Shuttle that cannot be done by rocket. As well as docking with the International Space Station, repairing existing satellites and spacewalking.

Columbia was a very old shuttle though, (the 2nd to be built, after Enterprise, I think.), and so was Challenger. I assume that the newer shuttles are far safer.

There have been around 130. But don't try to average them out on the different shuttles because the shuttles have different ages.



Launching shuttles is far more expensive than conventional rockets. You need to build a new fuel tank and boosters every single time. You have to recover all 3 used pieces. There is no room for technological advancement because you're stuck with a 20 year old vehicle.
Rockets on the other hand, can be improved upon after every single mission, you can re-use the capsule in which the astronauts sit in, but the most dangerous part, the rockets themselves, are new each time, and less deadly.
Shuttles also had disadvantages, being such a big vehicle, it was much harder and expensive to maintain, it had more chances for probalems and it did have more problems.



Soyuz has been docking with the ISS far more times than the shuttles. Why not make a desing based on Soyuz? Newer shuttles are almost the same as the older ones, at least mechanically they are. The only major features that change are better computer systems and such. Spacewalking can be done on any vehicle, it has been done since the Gemini missions in mid 1960's.
You really don't need such a big shuttle to repair satellites and conduct experiments. The actual volume of the quarters of a shuttle aren't that big really and you don't need to put an entire satellite in your cargo doors, just somehow attacht it to the vehicle.

Ever seen the Cowboy Beebop episode where they use an old spaceshuttle, and it's falling appart?

They called that shiz.

Let's take a trip back to the '50's and '60's. This was a time when space exploration was on everyone's minds. Americans and Soviets alike. They all wanted to be the first to get to space and do their crazy things up there.

What happened to beating the Soviets? Cmon people, take pride in the shuttle missions. What if another space race happened? But it's more like a Mars Race. You wouldn't be posting this unless you were unpatriotic if that was the case.[/NOTRIGHT]

Shuttle was created as a military project. & you know, that they didn't have cheap military projects. nobody counted money to get a nuclear bomb (for example) into space & drop it from there, cuz no usual AA rockets could get you there. a shuttle (if i recall correctly) can get up to 30 tons ino orbit & bring back up to 5 tons. it is a big advantage.

Ah yes, it could. Yet, Jammed, you fail to mention that we could simply launch an ICBM into space beyond the range of AA weapons, and have it drop onto the target from space. Thus, a shuttle is a costly beast that is inefficient.

The shuttle is a dumb idea. It costs a lot more than launching stuff into space with rockets. If you really wanted to have a shuttle-type thing, you could make a reusable capsule only, for the crew.

Summing this up: Rockets > Shuttles. The only reason we have shuttles is because shuttles look cooler than rockets.

actually there was only 1 ICBM rocket that could do that that. it was created in the USSR & was so called "space rocket". it could not only fly from any point on the Earth to any other, it could choose any "path".

(under "path" i mean this: all today's rockets shoose the shortest path - through the north/south pole, cuz otherwise they don't have enough range.)

(i mean when flying from one part of the world to another)

wait so tat rocket has the longest range?

it HAD, now it's project is closed.

This morning, I've been watching the Science Channel and found out that this man invented a filtration system that could filter 15L of water per minute, which costs about $6,500. This system filters 100% of everything in any source of water, be it urine, water mixed with toothpaste, water which was used to cook, muddy water, you name it.

Now they compared this to what they are doing to the ISS currently. 6 tons of water gets pumped into the ISS on every shuttle trip, it costs NASA $80 million to bring that water up there, for each trip.

This is a very nice comparative analysis on how expensive it is to use shuttles. I don't remember the exact figures, but the weight of 1 gallon of water costs thousands of dollars.

The Russians were a damn sight smarter when it came to being fiscally smart in the space business. See here, with a space rocket than just flies to a place and blows up, you don't need to spend millions if not billions of dollars developing and making a space shuttle that is liable to human error, killsats and destruction during both take-off and landing. You don't have to spend millions of dollars and many hours refueling and repreparing the shuttle for launch.

A space rocket is not liable to human error unless the wrong coordinates are given. It is only vulnerable during its take-off, which is done quickly. It doesen't need to be refueled and reprepared, saving time and money. There is no human crew, saving the public relations department incase the rocket crashes or fails.

And the Russians were smart enough to have launch payloads of space equipment on rockets. It's cheaper that way. They had their crews launched in mini-shuttles on rockets, too. They did a lot of things better than NASA.

wow, now that's something. how does it work ? chemical reactions or sorting out the bigger moleculs or... ???

i see most of you think that shuttle is a failure. but did you think so before Columbia crashed ?

The system is a set of 7 very fine filters. The first one removes any particles up to a micron thick and the second one removes any carbon base molecules. Then in a third filter, Iodine capsules are added to kill any viruses and bacteria that may be present. The next 2 filters remove the Iodine and the last two filters remove any small bugs that might've gotten through.

The entire system is about 4~5 feet tall and about 2~3 feet long and wide.

I've been seeing the Shuttle as a failure since when I learned of that the Discovery was temporarily taken down from the fleet for maintenance in the late 90's or early 2000's.

Yes, I did think so before Columbia crashed.