Re: Chicken *** NASA (was Re: Hubble good as dead)


"Homer J. Fong" <homersimpson23@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message
news:270420051838305997%homersimpson23@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <Xns961746402A21Djkporterhawaiicom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John
> Porter <jkporter2000@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> You would think that NASA / USA gov would let the suttle make at least
>> one
>> extra trip into space to repair it or come up with some smaller craft
>> that
>> could be used from ISS to go to the Hubble to do the repairs. Maybe they
>> could do what they did to get other people - other than NASA to put
>> together a ship for the next generation of shuttles. We will still have
>> to
>> get stuff up to the ISS once the suttles are done.
>>
>
> So what's happened to NASA to turn them so chicken *** about sending
> astronauts to service Hubble? We went to the moon and back several
> times, sent men who had never walked in space before to walk in space,
> and even recovered from the near-disaster of Apollo 13.
>
> But now they're all knock-kneed about sending up an earth-orbit mission?
>
> I'd be interested to hear what the Apollo veterans think of NASA
> turning into a bunch of cowards all of a sudden.

I don't know if I'm an Apollo veteran, but I was an engineer at McDonnell
Douglas for 32 years (1965-97) and worked on programs like Gemini, Skylab,
Shuttle (TPS, mostly on the RSI tiles), DC-X/XA, X-33.

IMHO, NASA's Hubble fear reflects a loss of confidence both in the shuttle
hardware and in the ability of the shuttle operations organization to
prevent a relapse into the mindset that led to the two shuttle disasters.
The loss of 2 of the 5 orbiters and 14 crewmembers in two disasterous
accidents has had a sobering effect on the entire shuttle organization,
including the contractors involved in shuttle operations. My gut feeling is
that the shuttle organization is doing the best it can under very
disadvantageous circumstances. The shuttle managers know that any fixes they
come up with as a result of Columbia will not significantly improve the
overall riskiness of shuttle operations. When shuttles return to flight, the
ET foam problems will be fixed (hopefully), but the vehicle will still fly
with lotsa waivers and with a long list of Criticality I items. They have to
fly 28 more missions and it's entirely possible that another orbiter might
be lost before that flight sequence has been completed, despite their best
efforts.

Personally, I tend to cut a lot of slack for the current generation of
shuttle operators, including folks like Ron Dittemore and Linda Hamm who
took a lot of heat for Columbia. I definitely don't think that NASA
management or the shuttle ops folks are a bunch of cowards. Many of these
folks were not even born when we were working on Phase A of the shuttle
project (Jan 1969-July 1970). They inherited our design which was a product
of the 1970 state-of-the-art in reusable launch vehicles and spacecraft,
which was essentially zero when we started the shuttle design work (no
reusable LV or spacecraft existed then).

And that design effort was marred by politics, OMB and White House meddling,
cost-cutting, and over-enthusiastic NASA hype about the cost-effectiveness
of reusable launch vehicle hardware, about "airline-like" operations, $10M
per flight costs, 160 hour turnaround time, 60 shuttle flights per year,
etc. etc. Thinking back on those early days, I remember the hubris that
permeated the effort. Most of us believed in our god-like abilities as LV
and spacecraft engineers. After all, we were the Apollo generation, the
generation that put footprints on the Moon. If we can do that, we can make
the shuttle work. No problem.

So we designed an orbiter that looks like an airplane, mistakenly believing
that if the vehicle has wings, landing gear and uses a runway instead of
splashdown, then it will have other desireable airliner attibutes (low
operating cost, high reliability, on-time departure, etc). In fact, the
shuttle has none of these qualities. We handed the next generation an
extremely complicated and very brittle and unforgiving shuttle design that
was stripped of all of the launch and reentry safety features we used in
Apollo (launch escape systems, water landing ability, rugged ablative
heatshield, landing parachutes). And we convinced ourselves that the
resulting shuttle was safer than Apollo, until Challenger happened and the
chickens came home to roost.

The Rogers Commission report uncovered a lot of the truth behind the shuttle
design and the operational flaws that had been hidden since the early 1970s.
It took 32 months to fix the problems that led to Challenger. Unfortunately,
the shuttle operations organizations remained flawed and the same mindset
that led to Challenger (keep flying and fix the problems later) ultimately
led to Columbia.

I hope the shuttle organization can get through the remaining flights
without another disaster. Their reward will be great because they have
served their time in hell.

Later
Ray Schmitt


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