SPACE

[Darkflame]

Exactly.
Which is why its still a planet.

[F-ZeroOne]

As time goes on, more and more things I was taught at school are proved wrong.

You know that image of the planets in your text-book? The one where they're all lined up neatly in a row, and almost right next to each other?

Thats so absolutely, incredibly, massively wrong you probably wouldn't believe it.

[Darkflame]

Next youd be telling me that atoms arnt like little solar systems!

[F-ZeroOne]

Don't even go there.

[axel000]

Earth as seen from the Moon, Apollo 8 ? hi-def image from NASA

[WiteWulf]

New desktop <click>

[zip accident]

Via /.

http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacenew ... .html#BM_3

Sounds a little worrying, only a little at this point, but the situation will bear watching.

Time the ESA got a bigger launcher I think, I really (REALLY, REALLY), don't want to see a repeat of the Skylab situation.

[axel000]

ISS support isn't going to be cancelled, but it sounds like the Obama administration may be looking at postponing fielding of Aries until the lunar missions, meaning the Shuttle would continue as the primary NASA vehicle to get to and from ISS for the foreseeable future. I think this is the most likely scenario.

There will likely be some cost cutting where possible, but NASA won't be gutted. Too many important votes in Florida, a key battleground state.

[Darkflame]

Dosnt sound like a good idea at all. Shuttle's already been going too long :-/
Seems dangerous to keep stretching their lifespan over and over imo.

Is it really that hard to build another one? (exact same design, just create a new one as a temporary measure until a true modern replacement?)

[axel000]

Incredibly expensive, the original production equipment and facilities are long gone, any new shuttles would be one-offs, costing bilions more.

[axel000]

Looks like the Shuttle is being waved off for a landing at Kennedy today due to crosswinds, NASA may choose to land it at Edwards AFB this afternoon in California, a rare event. Streaming coverage is available here :

NASA tv feed is linked on the right

[PVB]

Looks like the Shuttle is being waved off for a landing at Kennedy today due to crosswinds, NASA may choose to land it at Edwards AFB this afternoon in California, a rare event. Streaming coverage is available here :

NASA tv feed is linked on the right

On the left, Shirley?

Anyway, she's down and clear.

Shuttle Endeavour Lands Safely in California
30 November 2008 4:30 p.m. EST

Shuttle Endeavour has safely landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, ending a 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

Endeavour touched down at 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT) at the back-up landing site in California's Mojave Desert where weather conditions were perfect for the spaceplane's return.

STS-126 commander Chris Ferguson and pilot Eric Boe guided the Orbiter on its fiery plunge through the atmosphere and hour-long free-fall descent back to Earth, then precisely executed a series of turns and banking maneuvers to slow the vehicle for its powerless landing on the 12,000-foot long asphalt/concrete temporary Runway 04 on Rogers Dry Lake in the high desert of California's Antelope Valley.

[Darkflame]

Incredibly expensive, the original production equipment and facilities are long gone, any new shuttles would be one-offs, costing bilions more.

But why exactly?
Isnt it all just..well...shaped materials?
While I can understand some components need clean rooms and what-not, the bulk of it isnt going to require that precisely because whatever panel/engine/body/seat/whatever you make is going to be in a darn site better condition then whats currently in use.

Of course, making anything one-off will be more expensive per-unit then a batch, but it stills seems hard to equate billions being minimum to arrange materials in a pre-made shape that size.

Perhapes the best investment now would not be a shuttle replacement at all, but rather some perminate large scale nasa fabrication plant? Some fancy large-scale CAD-CAM based facility that can make massive parts for shuttles like vehicles at reduced cost. ( Rather then make another load of one-off specific facility's just to make the shuttles replacement, make a more expensive one that can be used for all sorts of general designs and replacements ).

A facility like this, could, of course, be argued politically as it could be rented to other company's needing parts of similar size/precision.

[axel000]

Interesting concept but I'd guess that a production setup that could make *anything* from a CAD design on order would be prohibitively expensive.

The tooling required to be able to engineer *anything* would be quite something.

[F-ZeroOne]

Just about anything aerospace related relies on sub-contractors, some of them not even in the same country. When Lockheeds Skunk Works were building the SR-71, which is about as "one-off" as you could get back then, they had to jump through all sorts of semi-Bond stuff to acquire materials without giving the game away. They got most of their titanium - and the Blackbird was pretty much all titanium - from the USSR. Yes, the very people the SR-71 would be aerially owning.

There probably is something that flies that might be built in one facility, but I bet its either a) small or b) expensive.

As another example of some of the problems, I remember reading that Lockheed-Martin had to beg Intel to restart production of some obsolete computer chips for the F-22 Raptor, which was designed in the 80s but is only just entering service in numbers...