Breaking news: Shuttle not going anywhere.

[Scout1071]

Now, let's see if we can get away from the round the clock coverage.

Looks like they will be forced to start covering the news again.

[dogday]

1. I noticed that too and thought this is way too

much coverage for a space flight. Almost mandated that the press cover this and Bush is making a big deal out of this.....

[rniel]

2. This will be bigger than OJ

wait and see...

[richmwill]

3. Good!!

Can someone please explain to me why it's more important to spend millions of dollars to send a couple of men on a trip to the moon rather than spend those millions on feeding some of the homeless in this country?

[Bill McBlueState]

6. Who's going to the moon?

Nobody. Try learning something about the mission before you start throwing around uneducated criticism.

[richmwill]

13. Ok, so it wasn't going to the moon...

This was the "test to make sure it works", I guess. Ok, so- how much did this cost us? Sure, we'll do it tomorrow. When I was a kid, I loved the space program. Until I grew up and realized the millions of dollars spent on it, for what? We were told that we'd live in "cities in outer space" by now- not even close. So ok, spend another hundred million on that project while homeless sleep in the streets. And why? So we can say "we were there first"?

[Bill McBlueState]

18. not an either/or scenario

I doubt that if NASA were scrubbed completely in the next federal budget, anti-poverty programs would see any extra money. I'm not naive enough to expect that of our government. Homelessness and hunger are a problem not because money's all tied up in the space program; it's a lack of commitment to solving these problems on the part of our elected officials.

Besides, if you're concerned about government excess, astronomy isn't the problem. Last week I posted elsewhere,

"A country with as many resources as ours can afford safe schools, affordable housing, health care, AND basic science. The total cost of the Deep Impact mission is $330 million. The total cost of the *movie* called Deep Impact, which also had no measureable impact on poverty in the U.S., was $100 million. Each of these one-time price tags is less than 1/1000th the *annual* budget of the U.S. military."

...and sorry if I sounded a little harsh in post 6.

[caledesi]

14. You are thinking logically again Rich...bad, very bad. LOL! nt

[TheFarseer]

17. I'm glad we are exploring outer space

Do you realized how much we have learned from space exploration? What if Columbus and all the rest of them were denied their ships because the money could be used better to feed the poor? It is a tiny part of the budget anyway. What if they decided satellites were a waste? I think space will be a vital part of the future. It reminds me of a freeper post I saw the other day, "They're spending all that money to send up a shuttle to find out the origins of the universe?! They could save alot of money by reading Genesis." My God, could they be more stupid???? Don't get me wrong, you are of course entitled to your opinion, I just think you're being terribly short-sighted.

[Scout1071]

4. We now return you to your regularly scheduled celebrity trial.

Or is the story du jour the tropical depression/storm/hurricane forming again?

[RobertSeattle]

5. Memories...

I can recall when the Space Shuttle was first "sold" to the US it was basically be a space-going dump truck - we'd just slap a couple of fuel tanks on it and launch it whenever we want - NASA had plans where we'd have dozens of Shuttles launches PER YEAR. Launch costs would be only a couple of million per launch.

Now it costs somewhere around a billion dollars per launch and requires thousands of workers to keep it going.

Sheesh.

[Bill McBlueState]

8. where did you get that number

"around a billion dollars per launch" Where did that come from?

And isn't a good thing to have thousands of US technological workers employed?

[dmkinsey]

12. billion is an exaggeration

http://www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf

A quick google finds a launch cost of 300 million (2000)

The reality is that the shuttle is a waste of money and produces only a very small amount of new science in return for it's huge cost.

We'd be better served to put those tech workers on a more cutting-edge project.

[RobertSeattle]

15. More like 1.3 Billion per launch

I want our Tech workers PRODUCTIVELY employed - breaking down frontiers, coming up with new technolgies - not nursing this 30 year space plane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle

While the shuttle has been a reasonably successful launch vehicle, it has been unable to meet its goal of radically reducing flight launch costs, as the average launch expenditures during its operations up to 2005 accumulates to $1.3 billion <1>, a rather large figure compared to the initial projections of $10 to $20 million. The total cost of the program has been $145 billion as of early 2005 ($112 billion of which was incurred while the program was operational) and is estimated at $174 billion when the Shuttle will retire in 2010. NASA's budget for 2005 allocates 30 % or 5 billion to Space Shuttle operations. <2>

The original mission of the shuttle was to operate at a high flight rate, at low cost, and with high reliability. It was intended to improve greatly on the previous generation of single-use manned and unmanned vehicles. Although it did operate as the world's first reusable crew-carrying spacecraft, it did not improve on those parameters in any meaningful way, and is considered by some to have failed in its original purpose.

Although the design is radically different from the original concept, the project was still supposed to meet the upgraded AF goals, and to be much cheaper to fly in general. One reason behind this apparent failure appears to be inflation. During the 1970s the US suffered severe inflation, driving up costs about 200% by 1980. In contrast, the rate between 1990 and 2000 was only 34% in total. This has the effect of magnifying the development costs of the shuttle tremendously. The original process by which contractors bid for Shuttle work has also inflated overall project costs as there were political and industrial pressures to spread Shuttle work around. For instance the need for a single piece SRB design was dismissed as only one company was located close enough to the Launch site to make this viable. Morton Thiokol who secured the SRB contract are based in Utah making it necessary to have the modular design that contributed to the Challenger loss. Ironically the US aerospace mergers of the 1990s mean that the vast majority of the STS contracts are now held by only one company (Boeing).

However, this does not explain the high costs of the continued operations of the shuttle. Even accounting for inflation, the launch costs on the original estimates should be about $100 million today. The remaining $400 million arises from the operational details of maintaining and servicing the shuttle fleet, which have turned out to be tremendously more expensive than anticipated.

[Bill McBlueState]

19. you make a good point

However, I fear that disillusion with the space shuttle can easily be translated into disillusion with the space program in general. The shuttle doesn't return much science for the investment, but NASA's other projects, like Deep Impact, Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and on and on provide an excellent return.

The climate in this country is taking a turn toward superstition, so scientists are worried about the future of funding for projects that really do work. But I agree with you that the shuttle is looking more and more like a dead end.

[RobertSeattle]

20. The Shutted was supposed to be a Means to a End (Science)

Not 30% of NASA's budget each year.

[gmoney]

7. Why? Did more shit fall off?

I mean, it's just SITTING there, and stuff falls off and breaks the "protective tiles"?

Would you buy a freakin' CAR where the side mirror just fell off while you were looking at it?

[Scout1071]

9. Apparently, the shuttle cannot take off on a partly cloudy day.

[gmoney]

11. That inspires confidence in our Mission to Mars!

Well, then again, every piece in the thing is provided by the lowest bidding government contractor, so no WONDER it barely works.

[Scout1071]

10. Story has now changed to "faulty fuel tank sensor."

[caledesi]

16. I live in Tampa, but was visiting a friend in St. Augustine years ago

and got to see a shuttle launched into space. It was quite impressive, although the "price of admission" was a little steep, if you catch my drift. LOL!

[BulletproofLandshark]

21. Today's my brother's birthday

and he took the day off to drive from Orlando with his family out to the Cape to see the launch. He's lived down there for 20 years and today was going to be his first time seeing a launch up close. Bet he's pissed right about now.