Re: shuttle & ISS mistake news article

George wrote:
> Anytime you sling a fragile space vehicle in such a configuration, you will
> always run the risk of things falling off and damaging the vehicle. It is
> a flaw inherent in the design. The in-line approach will always be much
> safer in comparison, as history has shown.

When you look at Soyuz, falling debris might damage the stage 1 engines
attached on the side".

I think the big advantage of the "stick" design is that the orbital
modules are actually shrouded and thus protected from air friction
during early launch. If you had a winged vehicle atop a stack, do you
really think that it could safely eject and steer itself clear should
there be an explosion or serious defect below it ?


When you look at early designs for rockets, how many self-destroyed or
failed at launch ? When you look at Arianne, how many spectacular
fireworks displays has it caused in recent times ?

Should you dismiss the stick design because of all the failures that
have occured since start of rockets ?

Once you know what the problem is, you *can* fix it.

I am sure that given the right mandate and budget and no restrictions on
innovation, NASA could fix the ET design once and for all and make it
just as safe as stick designs.

People used to say elevators were extremely dangerous and would
recomment people walk up stairs. Early on, there were accidents. But
then they developped safety systems to make elevators pretty reliable
and safe, despite the concept still being "dangerous". But now,
elevators are considered very safe.

Similarly, if they were to find a good solution to insulate the ET
without debris falling, shuttles could fly without much worry of debris
damaging the shuttle.

As long as NASA is told it can't fly until it fixes the foam, NASA will
only be looking for some quick fixes to be able to claim in some report
that it has fixed the foam and then be given green light to resume operations.

NASA needs to be given green light to fly the dangerous foam (something
whicn is politically not correct) while it takes the time to find a real
long term solution. And this is something which should have been done a
long time ago.

People complain about the shuttle being a 1970s vehicle. Had NASA been
given its budgets for shuttle upgrades, many of the dangeorus aspects of
the shuttle would have been fixed. And perhaps NASA could have been
tasked to replace the foam with something more flexible that woudln't
break off.
.

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