NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

MikkelR · 2006-02-18 06:08:57

Read more here

http://www.space.com/news/ft_060218_atl … etire.html

Looks like Atlantis is going to have a tight schedule until then..

Rxke · 2006-02-18 06:53:22

Before SpaceNut points out he already made a post about this, I think it merits its own topic.

This is the beginning of an end to an era. Will it end up at Smithsonian, after being gutted for spare parts?

Grypd · 2006-02-18 08:52:13

Before SpaceNut points out he already made a post about this, I think it merits its own topic.
This is the beginning of an end to an era. Will it end up at Smithsonian, after being gutted for spare parts?

Will it be gutted for parts unlikely as the reason the Atlantis is going first is that it is due a renovation in 2008 and to save what will be a major expense it is easier to make it the first to be "retired". So in short I suspect it will be cleaned up and delivered to a museum whole. The parts inside will be worn and the only reasonably feasible part wanted for the CEV and the heavy lifter is the engines. And a very good case can be put forward that a shuttle without engines would look a bit silly. (A bit like the whole shuttle concept )

GCNRevenger · 2006-02-18 09:03:03

Nonsense, NASA isn't going to just give away $120M of perfectly good rocket engines just to avoid a museum piece "looking silly"

Commodore · 2006-02-18 16:12:55

Why do I have the inescapable feeling that they are going to regret this before its all said and done?

PurduesUSAFguy · 2006-02-18 20:44:40

Before SpaceNut points out he already made a post about this, I think it merits its own topic.
This is the beginning of an end to an era. Will it end up at Smithsonian, after being gutted for spare parts?
Will it be gutted for parts unlikely as the reason the Atlantis is going first is that it is due a renovation in 2008 and to save what will be a major expense it is easier to make it the first to be "retired". So in short I suspect it will be cleaned up and delivered to a museum whole. The parts inside will be worn and the only reasonably feasible part wanted for the CEV and the heavy lifter is the engines. And a very good case can be put forward that a shuttle without engines would look a bit silly. (A bit like the whole shuttle concept )

NASA will pull the engines and the Museum will have to foot the bill on some reletivley inexpensive mock up engine bells, museums do things like that all the time, NASA can have their engines and the Smithsonian can have their proper looking orbiter.

Actually, the smithsonian already has the Enterprise, so I'd like to see the Atlantis go to the Air Force museum at Dayton, OH

SpaceNut · 2006-02-18 20:55:50

Originally in the other thread:

NASA plans to park space shuttle Atlantis in 2008
With just 17 or so flights left on the shuttle manifest before the program is terminated in 2010, NASA's three remaining orbiters can only expect to fly about five missions each. As it turns out, NASA now plans to retire Atlantis in 2008, after five flights, rather than put it through a required overhaul and to "fly out" the remaining half-dozen missions on the manifest with Discovery and Endeavour.
Why is the end goal count still changing?
Also if the Atlantis is not good enough to fly in 2008, then how can is salvaged parts be any better....
With Discovery only a few flights out of its main overhaul, Endeavour soon to come out of its latest slumper. Then why is not doing the one for Atlantis practicle, when a higher burden of flights per ship is something that seems to be at issue.

Continuation:

I have been searching for the overhaul cost on the shuttle to give a reason for how little Nasa will be saving from the Atlantis grounding.

In 2001 Columbia did go through a major overhaul of an estimated 70 million and 18 months but it actually cost somewhere nearer to 145 million. At the time NASA's oldest shuttle orbiter was to be possibly mothballed as part of an agency bid to deal with a projected budget shortfall of about $800 million over the next six years

I also found [url=http://newton.nap.edu/html/upgrading/ch1.htm]Upgrading the
Space Shuttle[/url] by the National Academy Press.

This document covers what was to be the means to make it safer.

It appears that the SSME overhaul after each flight cost somewhere around 145,600 at least...

Cost savings if any are so small that they are not worth the grounding. I would favor selective upgrading for this lessens the impact to the other shuttles incurred though the increase flight count if the Atlantis were grounded.

TheMadCap · 2006-02-19 12:13:02

one down, two to go...

Rxke · 2006-02-21 03:51:54

Just keeping it in operational shape costs money, too, and people, infrastructure,... I bet it all adds up to a tidy sum.

BTW: oh, an idiot on Slashdot commented they shouldn't be allowed to cannibalise it, but keep it pristine to put it up at Smithsonian.

And was modded '+5, Insightful'

Sigh. Cannibalise it to shreds, if needed, dammit, there are still TWO others you can eventually keep pristine.

GCNRevenger · 2006-02-21 07:27:26

Well thats' dumb... I am sure there are some parts on Shuttle that NASA would very much like to keep, particularly since the old birds may have componets that are out of manufacture. If it wouldn't cost much to strip these off, then by all means we should do it.

Rxke · 2006-02-21 08:29:16

particularly since the old birds may have componets that are out of manufacture. .

Yeah, I bet some NASA geeks are drooling over the prospect to get their grubby hands on those elusive 8-bit microprocessors, heehee...

Austin Stanley · 2006-02-22 01:27:14

It appears that the SSME overhaul after each flight cost somewhere around 145,600 at least...

I've been looking for this metric for a while. If correct, it means that SSME are a solid bargin. ~150k to reuse and 20 odd launches each? That's a steal compared to disposable engines.

Rxke · 2006-02-22 02:53:38

The doc's from 1995,96, one snippet (emphasis mine):

NASA planning assumes continued utilization of the Space Shuttle through at least the year 2012, which is the planned life span of the international Space Station.

Harumph. ISS = MIR II ...

cIclops · 2006-02-26 12:55:05

Latest NASA long range planning forecast for the remaining STS flights can be seen here

PurduesUSAFguy · 2006-03-04 14:39:54

It appears that the SSME overhaul after each flight cost somewhere around 145,600 at least...
I've been looking for this metric for a while. If correct, it means that SSME are a solid bargin. ~150k to reuse and 20 odd launches each? That's a steal compared to disposable engines.

I'm sorry but I am going to have to call shenanigans on that one...

If each engines overhaul cost was only $150,00, your talking on only spending $450,000 on refurbishing a complete set of engines. If turn around on SSMEs we should be keeping the shuttle and just trying to retrofit it with a less man hour intensive TPS.

Quoted rate for a shuttle launch if $500million, although a billion is a more honest cost. $15million a copy for SRBs, not sure what it is for recylced ones that have been fished out of the ocean, $50million for an external tank, and $450k for engine refurbs. That's $80,450,000 a shuttle launch. You can't tell me that there is $900million wrapped up in pad/fueling opperatiosn and TPS refurbishment.

GCNRevenger · 2006-03-04 18:35:08

Here I think you are somewhere between right and wrong, Purdues:

It very well may be that the cost of actually building an SRB is $20-30M and servicing an SSME costs under $1M each, but these are small componets of the Shuttle system.

It is really hard to comprihend the complexity of Shuttle, and infact I don't think any one person on this planet really does, not even the people that operate them. There is just so much more hardware stuffed into that set of mold lines then the SSMEs, and all of it has to work right... or people die.

Heat shield, life support, hydraulics, fuel cells, fuel tanks, radar dish, FCS computers, engine computers, specialty landing gear, RCS thrusters, RCS fuel systems, SSME gimbals, window seals, cockpit controls, and on and on and on... Because Shuttle is basically dismanteld between flights, the cost of rebuilding it each time it goes up consumes hundreds of millions of dollars I would imagine.

RobertDyck · 2006-03-04 19:38:36

Modern commercial airliners also have a lot of complex systems. They're also pressurized; a loss of pressure seal would be catastrophic. Once an airline maintenance worker replaced windshield bolts with the next size smaller, when that aircraft ascended to cruise altitude the bolts failed. The pilot was sucked out and the co-pilot had to descend rapidly to altitude with breathable air. Airlines also have radar dish, hydraulic controls, and landing gear. In fact, the dashboard of the Shuttle is modified from a C-5 Galaxy military transport. Landing gear is the same basic design as modern large aircraft, such as a military transport or airliner; the only difference is special tires. Yes, the Shuttle has fuel cells but airliners have electric power generators. The Shuttle has APU to generate hydraulic pressure, but airliners have hydraulic pumps too. The Shuttle has avionic flight computers, airliners have computers as well. The main differences between the Shuttle and modern airliners are TPS, main engines, OMS, RCS, and life support. If an airliner can be designed to fly multiple flights between servicing, and designed to make servicing convenient, why can't the Shuttle?

Actually, design to be services like an airliner was a design criteria for DC-X. You can argue whether the a land-on-your-tail rocket is a good idea, but designing for maintenance was a good idea. The Shuttle wasn't designed for that, the engine compartment does have to be substantially dismantled to service the main engines. That wasn't a good idea, but we learned. However, one astronaut said the engines are removed for overhaul on a maintenance schedule, not every flight.

So what does that leave? The TPS turned out be very light compared to the titanium shingles that were proposed before it, but too many tiles are lost or damaged with each flight. TPS takes too much maintenance for each flight. The windshield is hand-ground between each flight, very labour intensive. The windshield of an airliner never is, if that much damage is caused it would be replaced. Micrometeorites are don't exist in the atmosphere, but we need a windshield material that doesn't require that kind of labour.

I suggest ALON, an aluminum ceramic developed by the US army as transparent armour for tank windows. They found the strongest, lightest transparent armour is a composite: ALON outside, strong glass middle, polycarbonate inside. The primary purpose for polycarbonate is a spall shield. ALON and polycarbonate can be used without the glass middle, but it can't endure higher calibre bullets. Since the Shuttle windshield is glass and doesn't get penetrated, and the goal is to eliminate micrometeorite pitting, the glass middle isn't necessary. So replace the windshield with ALON/polycarbonate laminate. By the way, spacesuit helmet visors are polycarbonate with an anti-scratch coating to protect from micrometeoroids. This would be the ultimate version of that. ALON is aluminum oxynitridide, the chemical formula is [tex:a656fd7d13]Al_{23}O_{27}N_{5}[/tex:a656fd7d13], technical documents spell it AlON while some sales literature capitalize just the first letter like a proper name: Alon. It's labour intensive to polish an optically clear surface, hence a little expensive, but you only have to grind it smooth once. It should eliminate that much labour between flights.

::Edit:: An alternative to AlON is magnesium aluminate spinel ([tex:a656fd7d13]MgAl_{2}O_{4}[/tex:a656fd7d13]), often called simply spinel. (pronounciation wave, turn on your speakers) A spinel/polycarbonate laninate is stronger than AlON/polycarbonate but not as strong as AlON/glass/polycarbonate. If the goal is to eliminate pitting, a middle layer is irrelevant so spinel/polycarbonate is stronger. Another material is sapphire/polycarbonate, but AlON and spinel perform better and are cheaper. One purpose for transparent armour is sensor windows for supersonic aircraft, aerodynamic heating is already considered.

GCNRevenger · 2006-03-04 22:40:40

Comparing Shuttle to an airliner is a bit like comparing a race car to a family sedan, maybe similar that they both have wings and hydraulics, but they really are completly different beasts. Its a meaningless comparison, Shuttle is simply not like regular airplanes.

There should be a "design freeze" on Shuttle as well, that no more money should be poured into upgrade programs or switching one material for another unless a really big bennefit will be realized. By the time 2010 rolls around, the Shuttle program should be so far scaled back that they might as well land the thing at the Smithsonian and not the Cape'.

Austin Stanley · 2006-03-05 01:03:58

It appears that the SSME overhaul after each flight cost somewhere around 145,600 at least...
I've been looking for this metric for a while. If correct, it means that SSME are a solid bargin. ~150k to reuse and 20 odd launches each? That's a steal compared to disposable engines.
I'm sorry but I am going to have to call shenanigans on that one...
If each engines overhaul cost was only $150,00, your talking on only spending $450,000 on refurbishing a complete set of engines. If turn around on SSMEs we should be keeping the shuttle and just trying to retrofit it with a less man hour intensive TPS.
Quoted rate for a shuttle launch if $500million, although a billion is a more honest cost. $15million a copy for SRBs, not sure what it is for recylced ones that have been fished out of the ocean, $50million for an external tank, and $450k for engine refurbs. That's $80,450,000 a shuttle launch. You can't tell me that there is $900million wrapped up in pad/fueling opperatiosn and TPS refurbishment.

I don't claim to know the exact accuracy of this number, other than the fact that it comes from an offical NASA document, which would tend to support it's veracity. Their accountants should know where the money goes. While there may be some more "hidden costs" in there, if the figure is anywhere close to accurate, the reusable engines are a tremendous bargin vrs disposable ones. I'm still looking for more figures on the engine refurb costs.

My guess is that the greates costs involved in the shuttle probably relate to servicing the orbiter itself, especialy it's thermal protective system (the tiles). The Orbiter has a LOT of parts (more than the SSME for sure) and testing them all is probably not as simple as hauling the engines back to Lousiana for a once over and test-fire. Also, depending upon the budget figures you are using, costs for mission control and crew training may also be included, which probably takes up another big chunk of the budget (and can not easily be elimanted in any manned space program).

RobertDyck · 2006-03-05 08:42:06

Comparing Shuttle to an airliner is a bit like comparing a race car to a family sedan, maybe similar that they both have wings and hydraulics, but they really are completly different beasts. Its a meaningless comparison, Shuttle is simply not like regular airplanes.
There should be a "design freeze" on Shuttle as well, that no more money should be poured into upgrade programs or switching one material for another unless a really big bennefit will be realized. By the time 2010 rolls around, the Shuttle program should be so far scaled back that they might as well land the thing at the Smithsonian and not the Cape'.

Actually, airliners are more sophisticated than you think. Their computers are actually more sophisticated than the Shuttle, partly because they continued development while Shuttle electronics were frozen in the mid-1970s. Airliners have to work with reduced pressure and -70°C temperatures in the stratosphere. The Shuttle works with vacumm and greater temperature extremes, it's just more so.

Remember I'm the one who called for completing all of ISS without scaling it back, but using the new SDV to reduce Shuttle flights to just 7. If Russia launches SPP themselves and the SDV is Magnum, then Shuttle flights can be reduced to 6. But if they're going to fly more than 15 further orbiter launches, then replacing the windshield with something that doesn't require grinding is worth it.

Josh Cryer · 2006-03-07 18:52:02

Guys, cut this shit out. Stop the fucking name calling and bickering. It's unbecoming (and I realize how my language is somewhat ironic, but I'm really in a pissy/bad mood).

Stay on topic.

And GCNRevenger, stop being such a hardass, it's not making you friends here, and eventually I'll have to boot you. That's how it tends to work. You really don't want to be the only other member (than Dobson) banned here, do you? Like you said, this is a liesure message board, so if people want to go on flights of fancy you have no right being such a prick about it.

(You really must appreciate how pissed off I am, you and everyone else knows I don't intefere with discussions, but this crap has to end.)

publiusr · 2006-03-08 15:06:30

He's not being a hard-a**

He's being realistic. STS is complex. I loved Buran as a concept--if for no other reason than the fact that you could leave the orbiter off and you would still have an HLLV. STS can't even claim that, sadly.

John Creighton · 2006-03-09 07:34:55

Did, I miss something? Did you delete some posts? I don't see any name calling or evidince of GCNRevenger being a hard a**. Of course I only skimmed quickly so I could of missed alot.

clark · 2006-03-09 09:22:11

I like walking in parks.

Sometimes I watch the ducks. Sometimes I watch people throwing rocks at the ducks. Sometimes I watch the people yelling at the people throwing rocks at the ducks.

Everyone has their own hobby.

Filthy ducks.

Rxke · 2006-03-09 11:16:31

Did, I miss something? Did you delete some posts?

Yeah. Good decision, IMHO.
Don't worry, you didn't miss anything *ahem* informative.

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#1 2006-02-18 06:08:57

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#2 2006-02-18 06:53:22

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#3 2006-02-18 08:52:13

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#4 2006-02-18 09:03:03

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#5 2006-02-18 16:12:55

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#6 2006-02-18 20:44:40

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#7 2006-02-18 20:55:50

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#8 2006-02-19 12:13:02

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#9 2006-02-21 03:51:54

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#10 2006-02-21 07:27:26

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#11 2006-02-21 08:29:16

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#12 2006-02-22 01:27:14

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#13 2006-02-22 02:53:38

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#14 2006-02-26 12:55:05

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#15 2006-03-04 14:39:54

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#16 2006-03-04 18:35:08

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#17 2006-03-04 19:38:36

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#18 2006-03-04 22:40:40

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#19 2006-03-05 01:03:58

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#20 2006-03-05 08:42:06

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#21 2006-03-07 18:52:02

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#22 2006-03-08 15:06:30

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#23 2006-03-09 07:34:55

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#24 2006-03-09 09:22:11

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

#25 2006-03-09 11:16:31

Re: NASA retires Atlantis in 2008

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