Monday, July 17, 2006
The end of STS-121
It's been interesting listening to the post flight press conference. It's possible that this flight was one of the most trouble free shuttle flight NASA has had for some time, perhaps even going back to the original STS-1. To listen to the press corps, it must have been a flight of near calamity. I guess a smooth trouble free mission with very little in the way of anomalies doesn't sell very many papers. The landing was a flawless one. I mean they even changed the landing direction from Runway 33 to Runway 15 at the last minute due to rain clouds that popped up to the south, and the flight crew handled it all with aplomb and the pilots put that thing down right smack dab on the numbers. I mean smack dab on the numbers. They could not have been more accurate. Hell, I never was able to get that consistently good when I was flying. Yet, just about all the press has been able to do is nit-pick the very few things that did go wrong, such as the right air data probe's late deployment during landing, the few chips that did appear on the tiles and an APU(That's Auxiliary Power Unit, for you non-techs types.) fuel leak that amounted to about 6 drops an hour or so. Man, I should leak that little. It turns out that leak was so insignificant, they used that APU anyway with no problems.
It's a complicated machine, still considered experimental. and perhaps more complex to operate and maintain than originally anticipated. At one time in the beginning, they were calling it a space borne Mack truck. More like a Ferrari with a cargo department. That's the nature of advanced technical stuff. You're learning all the time. At one time, I didn't think that the shuttle should be retired. I now believe it's time for the next generation reusable spacecraft. Hopefully, taking the lessons learned from the shuttle fleet, the next generation will be more reliable and easier to fly and maintain. It'll have to be, for if it turns out to be a bear to use, it won't last much longer than the shuttle has. I also believe they're going to need to develop the ability for all weather operations. The main advantage to the shuttle is its enormous cargo carrying capacity. Even the largest existing Russian rockets can't lift as much. If the politicians can keep their fingers out of the pie, it should be a good bird.
And I still believe the Hubble Telescope needs another service flight. IMHO, the previous director of NASA was an idiot for canceling that mission.
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor."
Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
