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Chemical Ollie
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Bored of this board
Jan 2002
time: 06:25
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quote:
Originally posted by DanS
You have some weird opinions. Does Sweden spend so much money rolling the dice on great scientific progress? Does Sweden have a large portion of christian conservatives?
Further, even removing military R&D, the US spends more than the EU on science as a %-age of the economy. I wonder what basis you think you have to criticize. |
Checking the actual stats, I must admit you are partly right. The Swedish Space Corporation spends only 6$ per citizen while NASA spends about 11$.
http://www.ssc.se
But the 3 G$ NASA budget I heard about on the news today equals the Swedish puny defense budget. And Sweden is a very small country, so it sounded ridiculous compared to the military budget of US. As I said, If you wanna buy some new rockets, let them be space shuttles.
But Sweden do have Europe's largest space launch site. And talking general science, not only space research, all schools teach the ToE, even the few that are driven by Christian conservatives (but only under protest of course). Do yours?
Last edited by Chemical Ollie on 02-02-2003 at 06:30
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Zylka
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Well, this is of presence and would draw a tear from my own eye if I had seen it live... but so would the instance of a half a dozen children dying on Quebec's highways in a collision.
All I'm saying is that these men and women died living out a dream - there's no reason for intense sorrow.
May God bring them peace
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Zkribbler
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Los Angeles, CA, USA
Feb 1999
time: 21:25
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quote:
Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings
Peter Beaumont
Sunday February 2, 2003
The Observer
Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former Nasa engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed.
In a letter to the White House, Don Nelson, who served with Nasa for 36 years until he retired in 1999, wrote to President George W. Bush warning that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.
During his last 11 years at Nasa, Nelson served as a mission operations evaluator for proposed advanced space transportation projects. He was on the initial design team for the space shuttle. He participated in every shuttle upgrade until his retirement.
Listing a series of mishaps with shuttle missions since 1999, Nelson warned in his letter that Nasa management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident. Since 1999 the vehicle had experienced a number of potentially disastrous problems:
· 1999 - Columbia's launch was delayed by a hydrogen leak and Discovery was grounded with damaged wiring, contaminated engine and dented fuel line;
· January 2000 - Endeavor was delayed because of wiring and computer failures;
· August 2000 - inspection of Columbia revealed 3,500 defects in wiring;
· October 2000 - the 100th flight of the shuttle was delayed because of a misplaced safety pin and concerns with the external tank;
· April 2002 - a hydrogen leak forced the cancellation of the Atlantis flight;
· July 2002 - the inspector general reported that the shuttle safety programme was not properly managed;
· August 2002 - the shuttle launch system was grounded after fuel line cracks were discovered.
Nelson's claims - which The Observer could not independently verify yesterday - emerged against a background of growing concern over the management of safety issues by Nasa.
They followed similar warnings in April last year by the former chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory panel, Richard Bloomberg, who said: 'In all of the years of my involvement, I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as I am right now.'
Bloomberg blamed the deferral or elimination of planned safety upgrades, a diminished workforce as a result of hiring freezes, and an ageing infrastructure for the advisory panel's findings.
His warning echoed earlier concern about key shuttle safety issues. In September 2001 at a Senate hearing into shuttle safety, senators and independent experts warned that budget and management problems were putting astronauts lives at risk. At the centre of concern were claims that a budget overspend of almost $5 billion (£3bn) had led to a culture in Nasa whereby senior managers treated shuttle safety upgrades as optional.
Among those who spoke out were Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who warned: 'I fear that if we don't provide the space shuttle programme with the resources it needs for safety upgrades, our country is going to pay a price we can't bear.
'We're starving Nasa's shuttle budget and thus greatly increasing the chance of a catastrophic loss.'
Although Nasa officials said that improvements were being made they admitted that more needed to be done.
A year earlier, a General Accounting Office report had warned that the loss of experienced engineers and technicians in the space shuttle programme was threatening the safety of future missions just as Nasa was preparing to increase its annual number of launches to build the International Space Station.
The GAO cited internal Nasa documents showing 'workforce reductions are jeopardising Nasa's ability to safely support the shuttle's planned flight rate'.
Space agency officials discovered in late 1999 that many employees didn't have the necessary skills to properly manage avionics, mechanical engineering and computer systems, according to the GAO report.
The GAO assembled a composite portrait of the shuttle programme's workforce that showed twice as many workers over 60 years of age than under 30. It assessed that the number of workers then nearing retirement could jeopardise the programme's ability to transfer leadership roles to the next generation to support the higher flight rate necessary to build the space station.
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Jack_www
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Some of the post people are making make me wonder. When something like this happens people still bash America and the people in it. Come on people died and is a huge set back for space exploration, yet people still have hate in them at this moment.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:25
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Re: Bravery. On reentry, you get rock and rolled in far stronger turbulence than the worst anyone's every felt on any airliner, and you for a good period of time, you do it in the middle of a bubble of sorts, of superheated gasses that are 2-3000 degrees.
There are a lot of possible scenarios and conditions which can occur to the spacecraft, from which there is simply no possibility of recovery. You try to avoid those by engineering, but know nothing is ever 100% certain. The problems you can recover from, you train your ass off.
Willie McCool was a friend of mine and neighbor years back before he got accepted by NASA for training. Flying in space is what he wanted to do more than anything, and he knew the risks. Knowing those risks, he wouldn't (and didn't) hesitate for a moment to pursue selection for astronaut training, and he worked his ass off and applied his great talents to do it.
He was funny, low-key but wound up at the same time, a great guy, not-so-great chess player, but super talented, smart as all hell, and he knew what he wanted in life and he went for it, and he made it. 
Ned - no surprise, the guy briefing the press is may not likely be privy to NASA requests to intel agencies operating classified equipment. NASA and the shuttle program run a lot of military missions with classified payloads, so there's pretty definite partitioning between classified and non-classified activity and personnel. I wouldn't be surprised at all by any apparent discrepancy like that.
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02-02-2003 05:55
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and I'm sure since it is their necks they're putting on the line, they're well aware of it. 
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