In , Discovery was also the first Space Shuttle to dock with the International Space Station , currently orbiting at miles above Earth. Visitors are sometimes fooled by the size of the Space Shuttle. Inside the cavernous McDonnell Space Hangar, it appears rather small.
Looks are deceiving: Discovery measures feet long by 58 feet tall with a wingspan of 78 feet. We include a series of photos with the exhibit to give it a sense of scale and so people can understand what it was like to participate on one of those missions.
Despite its overall dimensions, Discovery has a small interior. The flight deck, middeck and payload bay are modest in size compared to the exterior. The exhibit incorporates 3-D photography to show people the confining restrictions of working and living in a Space Shuttle for up to a few weeks at a time.
However, astronauts had the advantage of floating around in a space, so using the volume is a big benefit. Museum staff went to great lengths to preserve Discovery when it was delivered to the Smithsonian in The Space Shuttle had been subjected to considerable stress during its 39 launches and reentries back to Earth.
Extreme care was taken to ensure the spacecraft was preserved as it appeared after its final mission—dings, dents and all. Are you planning on cleaning it? The search for debris took weeks, as it was shed over a zone of some 2, square miles 5, square kilometers in east Texas alone. NASA eventually recovered 84, pieces, representing nearly 40 percent of Columbia by weight. Among the recovered material were crew remains, which were identified with DNA. Much later, in , NASA released a crew survival report detailing the Columbia crew's last few minutes.
The astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of Columbia, but lost consciousness in seconds after the cabin lost pressure. The crew died as the shuttle disintegrated. In the weeks after the disaster, a dozen officials began sifting through the Columbia disaster, led by Harold W. Gehman Jr. Joint Forces Command. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, or CAIB, as it was later known, later released a multi-volume report on how the shuttle was destroyed, and what led to it.
Besides the physical cause — the foam — CAIB produced a damning assessment of the culture at NASA that had led to the foam problem and other safety issues being minimized over the years. It also called for more predictable funding and political support for the agency, and added that the shuttle must be replaced with a new transportation system.
It is in the nation's interest to replace the shuttle as soon as possible," the report stated. The shuttle's external tank was redesigned, and other safety measures were implemented. In July , STS lifted off and tested a suite of new procedures, including one where astronauts used cameras and a robotic arm to scan the shuttle's belly for broken tiles. NASA also had more camera views of the shuttle during liftoff to better monitor foam shedding. Due to more foam loss than expected , the next shuttle flight did not take place until July Read more about the space shuttle program.
The shuttle fleet was maintained long enough to complete the construction of the International Space Station, with most missions solely focused on finishing the building work; the ISS was also viewed as a safe haven for astronauts to shelter in case of another foam malfunction during launch. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe initially canceled this mission in out of concern from the recommendations of the CAIB, but the mission was reinstated by new administrator Michael Griffin in ; he said the improvements to shuttle safety would allow the astronauts to do the work safely.
The space shuttle program was retired in July after missions, including the catastrophic failures of Challenger in and Columbia in that killed a total of 14 astronauts. NASA developed a commercial crew program to eventually replace shuttle flights to the space station, and brokered an agreement with the Russians to use Soyuz spacecraft to ferry American astronauts to orbit.
The first commercial crew flights were delayed several years due to developmental and funding delays. As of late , the companies SpaceX and Boeing both planned to start test commercial crew flights in The Shuttle had an operational altitude of only to miles. Plans for the Space Shuttle were created in as a way to keep the cost of spaceflight down.
And see what happened there. Each Shuttle was supposed to fly fifty missions per year…yet it averaged approximately four flights a year.
Each Shuttle was designed for only ten years of life. Keeping the Shuttle flying for twenty years past expiration date stifled creativity and innovation. Just how bad was the Space Shuttle? SpaceX was just given the go-ahead to launch its unmanned Dragon capsule to the ISS on April 30th after a recent successful test flight; SpaceX looks to be the first of many businesses vying for the "space" that NASA left when it stopped ferrying astronauts.
Dragon and its commercial brethren are certainly feats of engineering. What truly makes them different is that they are designed to be profitable commercial vehicles, built with commercially sourced components from a private enterprise supply chain and with paying customers.
Including NASA. Instead of building its own spacecraft, NASA will off-load the business of transit to and from space to the private sector, which can now do it better and cheaper, while the space agency can get back to doing what it does best—pushing the frontiers of science and the exploration of space. Best of all, these new vehicles will eventually become cheaper through demand and competition, which means that I can expect to fly in space at some point in my lifetime. And so can you. Not only that, they will be profitable and self-sustaining too.
Just the thing that the US is meant to be good at.
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