Due to budget and technical problems, the newest space shuttle will not be pushed ahead to 2013. The space shuttle Orion was originally being set to fly missions starting September 2013. However, because Congress has stalled budgeting for NASA, it looks unlikely that the shuttle will be ready before September 2014. Because of the delay, they will have to re-negotiate contracts with the vendors. The current fleet of shuttles are set to be retired by 2010. This means that until the new shuttles come online, NASA will have to rely on Russian shuttles and private cargo ships.

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And to think we were once leaders in space

well, I doubt the Russian shuttles will be an option unless they stop arseing around in Georgia.

Well, the current fleet of shuttles is supposed to retire in 2010, so we were going to have to find something to supplement our space operations until 2013, anyway. They're just pushing it back a year.

Just FYI, the Orion spacecraft is not a "space shuttle." That title is reserved solely for the STS spacecraft and the Soviet Buran.


And we aren't now?

Look, the Soviets beat us to space multiple times. They put the first satellite into orbit, the first animals and first man into space, put the first space probes on the moon. However, no one would argue that the American space program has not been more successful than the Soviet/Russian programs. To date, the US has put into space 305 people, which is more than the rest of the world combined and three times as many as the Russian/Soviet program. This is just a minor setback, and I'd rather them take their time and get the Orion built right and make it safe than rush it into service and risk another disaster.

Thank you

Sorry for nerd clarification, but components of the Orion and the two Ares models are being built where I live.

Well this sucks. I was looking forward to a renewed era of space exploration.
Come on CSA, it's your time to shine!

What's the difference?

The Space Shuttle is, well, a shuttle....


The Orion is a module-based design, like the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo crafts, as well as the still-in-use Russian Soyuz craft.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)

I think more specifically I'm confused on what makes something a "shuttle" vs. a "craft".

"Shuttle" means "reusable." As in it can shuttle back and forth. It's still a "craft," yes, but when the shuttle came along, all spacecrafts were one time only.

Ah, that makes sense.

Thanks.

Very true. The original Apollo program was a gigantic piece of crap. The design was rushed in order to meet Kennedy's "deadline" but they cut a whole lot of corners. In fact, after a simulator run Gus Grissom left a lemon on the simulator because it was so awful. And in fact, cutting those corners cost the lives of Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White and nearly took the lives of Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise. So yes, this thing needs to be right from the start even if Americans have to stay grounded an extra few years because it's not worth losing people just to get it out faster.

What, like a real lemon?

Actually, to cut costs and since it's the most expensive component, the Orion command module is reusable (each one will be used for about 10 flights).



I have to disagree. It was only the first, "Block 1," Apollo CM that was considered a lemon, and mostly because it was delivered to NASA in basically a half-finished state. The Block 2 spacecraft used for all of the actual missions was actually a pretty good spacecraft.

Yep, an actual lemon from a tree he had growing in his yard.




The second spacecraft was much better but still wasn't what they needed because December 31, 1969 was looming. Of course, it may have been more an issue of QC than design but either way there were faults. The guidance computer on the Apollo 11 LM malfunctioned during descent forcing Armstrong to take partial control of the landing. The telemetry equipment on Apollo 12 malfunctioned due to a lightning strike and almost aborted the mission (obviously a lightning strike is kind of a strange occurrence but the overload wasn't handled well by the system and required a lot of quick thinking and trickery by the crew). And if you didn't see the movie for some reason, bad wiring (incidentally the cause of the Apollo 1 fire) sparked a fire that exploded an oxygen tank on the Apollo 13 SM. Really, the Apollo craft wouldn't be so notorious if they'd thought ahead of time and not used a pure oxygen environment that cause aluminum to burn like wood from the beginning, but it was still pretty heavily flawed.

Seriously. To say the whole Apollo program was a rushed hack job would be a big cock slap in the face to all the engineers who put together a lot of amazing stuff well in a short amount of time.

Not to mention that the first Apollo spacecraft that went into space was only, like, the 16th or 17th time America had put humans into space total. So we were still kinda new at the whole thing.

The 1201 and 1202 alarms were not really a big problem and didn't force Armstrong to take manual control, the astronauts were told to simply ignore the alarms (which were due to a mistake in the checklist that told them to turn on the rendezvous radar, which they didnt' need for the landing). He did take manual control, however, because the computer was steering towards a field of boulders (the imagery used to choose the landing site wasn't high resolution enough to know exactly how smooth the local terrain was).


Lighting strikes are not such a strange occurance if one launches in the middle of a storm. They got lucky because the EECOM on duty just happened to know the exact fix having experienced something like that on a previous launch.


Again, this was due to the fact that the tank in question had been dropped during manufacture, and when it was ground-tested to see if it still leaked, they inadvertantly burned off the wiring's insulation. There would have been no problems with this particular tank if it hadn't been dropped and then still used.

I didn't know that.

Dag, look at trench, the space expert.

Yeah, but does he know more than these guys?

That inspires confidence
I know the tech's come a long way since the 60's, but something about the idea of a reusable module-style craft seems destined for trouble.

And yes, the NASA boys worked their asses off to get the Apollo module space-worthy in a very short time period following the Apollo 1 disaster. It is truly one the mankind's greatest technological achievements that they were able to get it ready to even get into space, much less land people of the frakking moon given the time table they had to work with.

Hopefully the learnings from the Shuttle will also be applied.

One of the Shuttle's biggest drawbacks is the head shielding (bascially, with the exception of the nose and the leading edge of the wings, most of heat shield is made out of glass - and a spaceship with the majority of it's outer skin being glass glued on to an alumuminum spaceframe isn't exactly the most robust concept ever considered).

For Orion, they're basically returning to Apollo style heat shields, with the design modification that a used heat shield can be completely removed and thrown away (something much easier to do on a small capsule as opposed to a plane the size of a DC8), which will eliminate one of the principal Shuttle headaches.

The shuttle really is a "really, this the best we got? well it'll have to do" concept.
I always got the impression that it was meant as "filler" while the next leap in space travel was worked on. Now it's 2008 and the Orion's still not ready
How the hell are we suppose to explore the solar system if we're saddled with a glorified glider from the 70's and a half finished Orion module? But I suppose if the money isn't there then there's nothing....what? The money is there? But it's being pissed away in a war that the US had no business pursuing in the first place? Spiffy.

Ahem. Sorry.

Anyway the concept of taking an Apollo style heat shield off a capsule and replacing it with an other, making the capsule itself reusable is a cool idea. I'm just questioning whether a capsule, even with a working head shield, is suitable for reuse following one, or even three, re-entries. Ten seems to be pushing it.

The major problem with the Space Shuttle is that it really wasn't the next logical step, but to secure funding had to become much more than NASA originally wanted.

A major factor was to guarantee the DoD's participation in the project, required the shuttle to be about 3x the size NASA originally conceived. As the military had specific requirements they wanted the shuttle to have, two of the major ones being the dimensions of the cargo bay, as well as a 1000 mile cross-range capability (the latter means that the shuttle could land within 1000 miles of it's orbital track). Of course, the much longer development times caused a shift in military priorities, and then after the Challenger accident, the military almost completely abandoned using the shuttle at all (I think there were only 1-2 military flights after that (including one where the shuttle came back with a bunch of tiles knocked off, so who knows what they were up to ).

The much smaller shuttle NASA orignally wanted may have allowed some more elegant first stage booster designs, and may have been much closer to the "reusable" spacecraft concept that was originally proposed. One of the cooler ones was a giant rocket plane about the size of the current Shuttle that would have carried a smaller space-going ship to it's launch point (a test-bed for the lifting-body design this smaller ship would have used is what Steve Austin crashes in during the opening credits of "The Six Million Dollar Man" ).


I don't think the "10 flights" is set in stone, I assume the capsule will be assessed after each flight and a call will be made about using it again (some might last five, some might last twelve).

Hmm... Well I suppose well have to wait and see how this comes out. I heard before it would be ready in 2010 but, yea...