Discovery launch just scrubbed

[Chichiri]

Due to a malfunctioning component on the orbiter. Nothing to do with the weather, ironically. Developing . . .

[commander bunnypants]

1. Damn

but good

CB

[karlrschneider]

2. Broken gas gauge

:eyes:

[VegasWolf]

31. The nose cone fell off. Soviet Union, here we come. nt

[LisaM]

3. Good - I had a bad feeling about it

it didn't feel right to me for some reason - they kept finding little things, weather was unpredictable, the whole thing seemed rushed. I'm glad they are playing it safe.

[leftofcool]

7. Me too but not for the same reasons.....

As I understand it, there were to be about 125,000 people to see the launch. I was worried about an attack.......one that might be manufactured if you get my drift.

Left of Cool

[LisaM]

9. That's very interesting

I wonder if they actually found evidence of something like that and are lying about why the launch was scrubbed.

[Not Me]

10. Eastbound traffic out of orlando on the Beeline Expy was heavy

this AM...I suspect there were at least 125K people headed out for the launch.

My office window faces East, so I can sit right here and see it go up.

2bad.

[The Witch]

my birthday launch....

:cry:

[MissB]

6. Happy Birthday!

:party:

[SaveElmer]

4. Sounds like its gonna be a while too!!

I predict there will be several of these...could be a few weeks before they try again!

[XNASA]

5. Detanking too.

Yep. It'll be awhile.

[Seabiscuit]

8. Good! The cable news programs were covering almost nothing but

the upcoming shuttle launch yesterday, at Rove's bidding, to shield Rove/Bush from the fallout of the recent revelations about Rove being Cooper's source for Plame's identity. I had expected about a week of nothing but shuttle shit from those media whore asswipes.

So what will they come up with next to avoid dealing with the Rove bome???

Oh, yeah, there may be another hurricane heading towards the Gulf oil rigs... bleaccccccchhhhhh!!!!

[Dem2theMax]

20. With all due respect,

"shuttle shit?"

I think the program, oh, and the lives of the astronauts, amount to a hell of a lot more than "shuttle shit."

[sled]

33. Hear!!! Hear!!!

What a waste...& now they spend days reporting things that didn't happen. Non-news, becomes the "news". And Orwell rolls...

[Seabiscuit]

39. When the media whores repeat the stories all day long to avoid the

Rove story and the DSM story, they're turning an otherwise significant event into "shuttle shit".

[Dem2theMax]

45. I'll stick with respect to the astronauts and the program. nt.

[Bumblebee]

25. They still are -- now it's the cancelation of...

Pity CNN. First Dennis fizzled out on them while they were in full gear, now this...

[OKNancy]

11. Kick

[sabra]

12. NASA delays shuttle liftoff due to technical issue

<<SNIP>>
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N13651773.htm

NASA delays shuttle liftoff due to technical issue

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 13 (Reuters) - NASA on Wednesday delayed the launch of its first space shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster after engineers discovered a problem with one of shuttle Discovery's fuel sensors, NASA's launch commentator said.

"We will not be able to fly today," said commentator George Diller.

<</SNIP>>

[coloradodem2005]

13. Better they do this than have another accident.

Maybe NASA is being more vigilant now.

[TeeYiYi]

14. Thank God . . .

. . . I couldn't believe it when I heard that they were still planning to fly with damaged tiles.

TYY

[ZR2]

15. What damaged tiles ?

The ones that were messed up last night by the windshield screen were replaced.

[TeeYiYi]

18. Yeah, interesting . . .

. . . I just read that. Last I heard, they were planning to fly without replacing them. I don't remember which news media was reporting that. It was this morning that I heard it though. Hmmmmm . . . I'll see if I can figure out who was reporting that story.

TYY

[daleo]

28. That's a pretty quick fix

I suppose they use quite sophisticated adhesives, but I think I would want it to set for a few days, anyway.

[Massacure]

30. NASA replace the tiles, it only took them about an hour.

[The_Casual_Observer]

16. In the old days the press would crucify NASA for this kind of thing

and get really shitty about any delay.

[Renew Deal]

17. That sucks

I'm glad everyone is safe, but that really sucks.

[Richard Steele]

19. And nothing to do with the part that FELL OFF and damaged sheilds?

Thank GOODNESS common sense (or overwhelming circumstances) prevailed.

"Discovery" is a piece of late-70s technology that was built by the lowest bidder in the early days of the REAGAN era, and it's seen more missions than any (surviving) shuttle.

(BIO: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/shuttleoperations/orbiters/discovery-info.html)

METAPHOR:
If it were an modern AUTOMOBILE,
it would be a Yugoslav KNOCKOFF of the 1977 Pinto,
with over 2 million miles on the odometer.

Would you take it on a long trip,
knowing that any problem a simple as a flat tire meant FIERY DEATH?

What if your MECHANICS told you that parts of the
"protective storage covers" sometimes just fell off and damaged vital gear as they rolled it around the garage?

[steve2470]

21. NASA Calls Off Launch of Shuttle Discovery

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPACE_SHUTTLE?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME


By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press Writer




CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A faulty fuel gauge on Discovery's external tank forced NASA to call off Wednesday's launch of the first shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster 2 1/2 years ago. The space agency did not immediately set a new launch date.

The decision came with less than 2 1/2 hours to go before launch, as the seven astronauts were almost done boarding the spacecraft. Up until then, rain and thunder over the launch site appeared to be the only obstacle to an on-time liftoff.

The same baffling problem cropped up during a launch pad test back in April, and NASA has been struggling ever since to figure out the source of the trouble. But the topic came up repeatedly at meetings of top-level NASA managers this week, and the space agency said that it believed it had worked around the problem by replacing cables and other electronics aboard the shuttle.

As recently as Monday, NASA deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale described the sensor problem seen in April as simply an "unexplained anomaly."

<snip>

[SaveElmer]

22. I predict...

It will take months to solve this problem...these types of failures take forever to track down...

I predict an October launch

[rocktivity]

23. A "baffling" problem shrugged off as an "anomaly"

Way to inspire confidence, NASA.

On the other hand, my co-workers shrugged me off when I said it was too cold for that other shuttle to take off.

:shrug:
rocknation

[jim3775]

24. A backup of a backup of a contingency failed...

NASA is just being as safe as possible.

[gulfcoastliberal]

26. Scrap the entire manned space program

They won't learn anything the Russians didn't learn from Mir, their "experiments" are never peer-reviewed, and it's a total waste of money and lives. Robots have brought back the useful, peer-reviewed published data. Humans in space are just a "gee whiz" waste of money. Just look at how NASA management treated the engineers who knew Colombia had a fatal hole in the wing. Just covered their ears and played dumb. I think the money going to space proograms is much better spent on machines, not people. Please name anything useful and groundbreaking discovered from sending people into space. It's all a bunch of hype. Let folks pay the space program the customary $20 million if they want to get launched up there. The space shutles have proven over and over to be almost complete failures and a waste of billions.

[daleo]

29. You make a lot of good points.

I sometimes wonder how much of the research actually done is secret military research, and that is what keeps the thing going.

[Massacure]

35. The money on the War in Iraq could pay NASAs budget for 10 years.

Btw, manned flight is far from a failure. Look at what NASA has spured over the years:

http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

Some are useful, others not so useful. But NASA 16 billion dollars a year out of a 2.4 trillion dollar budget, 0.006% of federal spending, is well worth it.

[gulfcoastliberal]

36. I don't dispute the gains from NASA's robot missions.

I dispute any kind of useful thing gained from launching people into space. I think the shuttles should all be scrapped immediately (rather than waiting till 2010) and dedicate the money for the boondoggle space station and manned shuttle missions to the robotic programs. After losing 2 shuttles I don't think NASA can justify continuing STS missions. Cassini/Huygens, the Mars rovers, the Deep Impact, the Galileo Jupiter mission, etc ad nauseum has been where real discoveries were made. Hundreds of safety problems are still waived before the shuttle launches; it's too risky and expensive to continue them. My only problem with NASA is this ridiculous space "shuttle" that they justified building based on unrealistic claims of dozens of launches each year. But I'm all for the robots and satellites and space-based telescopes that NASA launches.

[Massacure]

38. NASA has botched plenty of robot missions as well.

Besides, even though robots have a lot of cool uses, humans are just plain more versatile.

[Enraged_Ape]

27. As a major space fanatic, I say it's time to retire the shuttle

I mean, the brunt of the technology is at least 30 years old. It's time we come up with a new project of reusable, safer spacecraft to take its place.

And to all you anti-space-program people, eat me. If you want to complain about a waste of money, complain about the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars we're spending on this terrible, misbegotten war in Iraq. The space program has provided substantial investment and impetus for a lot of technological advancement over the years. The war in Iraq has netted us NOTHING but pain, death, and misery.

[tapper]

32. Hear, Hear!

The shuttle should never have been more than a 1st generation test-bed, to be followed by several generations of development before any rational assumptions about payload costs or safety.

A sensible program, IMO, would be working on at least two types of reusable craft - one for manned flights, and the other for heavy payload, unmanned flights.

[Massacure]

34. The Soviet Union had something going with its Buran program.

NASA has three engines on it's space shuttle, while Russia lifted it's Buran purely with external engines. The Energia rocket that lifted it could be used as a heavy lift vehicle by itself, or it could attach to the Buran if they needed a rather large crew. On top of that, the lift rockets were fully reusable and didn't need as much refurbishing as NASA's solid rocket boosters do.

Too bad the Soviets only launched it once before axing it.

[Psephos]

40. Buran was based on purloined Space Shuttle designs

Anyone remember Concordski? lol

The Russians built Buran because they were convinced the Space Shuttle had a secret and perhaps decisive military advantage, and even though they couldn't figure out what that was, their paranoia convinced them they needed one anyway.

The Buran was a cost nightmare, and filled with flaws. The USSR was very good at building simple, reliable heavy lift, but utterly flummoxed when it came to to the sophisticated engineering demands of a shuttle. In particular, they were hampered by grossly inferior electronics and systems control capabilities, and weakness in advanced material technology.

BTW, want a good read on the Russian space program during the Great Space Race? (You'll also understand how/why the Buran debacle came to pass.) Check this out: Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471327212/qid=1121313477/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/002-5575623-4847238?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Enraged_Ape]

37. The shuttle is really not that far removed from the 'lifting bodies'

of the '60s and early '70s, the same craft that Steve Austin cracked up in on in the classic TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man".



I know we've gone far past this technology. I think the X Project showed that this country can create a far safer, cheaper, more useful spacecraft, and we should channel a small portion of the ridiculous amounts we spend on things like the war on terra and missile defense in order to do it.

[Chicago Democrat]

41. I think the whole shuttle program needs to be scrapped

They are too old and dangerous. Build something else.

[HuckleB]

42. What do you mean? Lance has the yellow jersey.

Sure, Vinokourov's attacking victory today was impressive, but the Discovery boys are clearly in control.

[Psephos]

43. OK, HuckleB, we get it :-)

lol

[HuckleB]

44. Awwww.

It's good to know someone cares!

Salud!