Excited to see United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launch tomorrow night. Can't make it up to Cape Kennedy to watch it there, looks like I'll be watching launch from my rooftop AGAIN. Hope the weather's clear, usually night launches are Awesome spectacles to see even from 60 miles south. ULA's live webcasts make it nice to watch countdown, then trek to our "rooftop observation" spot for liftoff and flight.
Too bad they've delayed launch of the Falcon9 rocket w/Dragon capsule from Feb 9, That's one launch I WILL be driving up to K.S.C. to SEE and FEEL! It's not quite the Shuttle Program, (Not even close!) but it is a start in the right direction. America shouldn't have to depend on "Hitchhiking" on Russian Souyuez rockets or launches from countries ending with "stan" I Really, Really MISS our Shuttle Program.
I'm sure I'm not the only one suffering from "Space Shuttle" withdrawel ??
Agree... hope to make it to Florida for a launch of *something* *someday*. Hoped to get over there for the final shuttle flight but things just didn't work out... stayed up all night at the MIL's house in Indiana, with the live coverage on NASA TV in the living room and the feed from the shuttle website on NASA.com on the computer, moving back and forth between the computer in the kitchen (don't ask) to the living room TV set all night...
I dunno... what I consider the REAL travesty was, the shuttle was ordered "retired by 2010" all the way back in 2004... yet instead of working toward a replacement launch capability, even if only an "interim" one (say like Atlas V Heavy with an Orion block one on it) they threw everything into Lunar/Mars Orion, and Ares I and V, and basically planned to pay for it by dumping ISS into the Pacific in 2016, after spending $100 billion bucks and 13 years and DOZENS of shuttle flights to build the thing... and after stringing along the international partners with unfulfilled promises throughout...
It's not like NASA has never developed an "interim capability" before... heck the entire project Gemini was basically in interim program to gain experience and knowledge and keep the space program moving after Mercury was completed and until Apollo was ready 5 years later... So they enlarged and improved the Mercury capsule plans for the "Mercury Mark II" into the Gemini spacecraft, and man-rated the Titan II missile to loft it into space. No reason that couldn't have been done again, using Atlas V this time... (just as Mercury originally used the old Atlas I for its booster). Water under the bridge now I guess...
Thing is, shuttle was a BIG risk... in 2003-4 when the decision to retire shuttle was made, it was figured that the risk of losing another shuttle between then and its scheduled retirement in 2010 was about 50-50... those ain't good odds! Shuttle was expensive, and it was fragile... and really getting BADLY outdated... most of it's electronics systems were state of the art-- in the MID 70s!!! To really update shuttle to "modern" standards and equipment would have cost billions... plus the airframes were going to need a complete inspection, refurbishment, and recertification to continue flying anyway, another multi-billion dollar program. Shuttle was an amazing vehicle, but a fundamentally flawed one in several ways that NEVER lived up to its intented purpose and plans and promises... basically it started as an experimental vehicle and finished as an experimental vehicle... an experimental vehicle originally meant to be replaced after about 15-20 years (in the early 90's) that continued on for 30 years... and had Columbia not been lost, would probably have continued with NOTHING else on the horizon for another 10-20 years... (or until another shuttle was lost, and the decision to retire it became obvious-- just a matter of timing).
Even now, with Orion in ground testing and continued development, and Ares I and V canceled and replaced with the "new" SLS, with no test flights until basically the end of this decade, all we hear about it "commercial crew launches" and "leaving it to industry to launch astronauts to the station." Of course at the same time, Congress is slashing funding to CCDev (commercial crew development) which is going to slow the process considerably. Heck I even read recently on space.com that NASA "hopes" that *some* commercial companies will be able to launch crews
BY 2017 . This is already a slip on their purported intent at NASA to have commercial crews launching around 2015... but, "no bucks, no Buck Rogers" still applies... companies NEED NASA seed money to really be able to do this... grandiose 'space tourism and space hotels' plans notwithstanding...
The whole situation was just unnecessarily handled very badly... and what's worse it CONTINUES TO BE...
I'll risk a little prognostication and say, that it won't surprise me one bit if this country ends up totally precluded from manned spaceflight. I can see this happening in several ways... If the Russians end up their string of bad luck having an actual Soyuz abort (they have in the past) with an American crew aboard, there's going to be some hard questions asked from Capitol Hill... if a crew is lost or severely injured in such an abort, it's going to be VERY difficult to continue putting US astronauts on Soyuz. If the ISS was to get damaged or holed by space junk or suffer some severe equipment failure that rendered it uninhabitable, ESPECIALLY with no LARGE cargo/equipment launch capability to repair it in the pipeline (no shuttle doesn't count, because as it is right now, even if the shuttle was ordered back into service tomorrow, it would be YEARS before it could fly again, and BILLIONS of dollars to recreate the supply chain and infrastructure, design/build/test/certify/recertify replacement equipment, not the least of which is the External Tank, much of which the tooling has been torn out by now, and SRB's, which the old four-segment shuttle SRB's are no longer capable of being produced, and the five segment SRB's are still in testing (and when certified COULD be used without a center section, making them a four segment). Flight spares for the equipment most likely to fail were flown up on shuttle and stowed at the station, but if something unexpected quit... especially if it's something large that just won't fit on anything else... (or would have to be redesigned to fly on another vehicle, like Proton, Ariane, Delta IV, or Atlas V... all of which would take MONTHS or years to accomplish, and probably a billion bucks or more...) IF something like this happened, ISS would likely be abandoned and de-orbited, since its orbital lifetime while unmanned and in hibernation mode is limited... it would probably be very easy to see the US simply let manned spaceflight wither to nothingness in a sea of "maybe someday" grandiose plans with nothing concrete being done... If the US/Russian relations get frosty, over say us deciding to intervene in Syria or the Russians pulling out the stops and helping Iran overtly (or both) then we could quickly find ourselves no longer welcome to launch aboard Soyuz... and without a ride whatsoever for at least several years... this isn't as far-fetched as it might sound... stranger things have happened. And fast-tracking Orion and *some* booster to carry it will only help SO much... it'll still take several years and a few billion from the word "GO!" to actually get something to the pad ready to carry crews...
Oh well, Congress/NASA seem content to "fix the barn door after the horses are gone" so we're stuck with it, whatever happens...
Later! OL JR
![[POW]Eagle159](https://cdn.imagearchive.com/rocketryforum/data/avatars/m/7/7839.jpg?1323629723){kind=avatar}
