Tesla Roadster actually Launched to Mars.. No kidd

[emg]

Originally Posted By: billt460
When the Shuttle Program was brought on line, NASA said that a total loss of payload, vehicle, and crew every 50 missions, was more than an acceptable rate of failure.


When the shuttle first flew--even up to when Challenger was lost--NASA were claiming about a 1 in 10,000 chance of losing a Space Shuttle. In reality, based on what we now know, the odds of losing Columbia on its first flight were probably about 1 in 10.

With hindsight, the Space Shuttle was probably the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever built. The earlier capsules probably had a higher chance of a launch failure, but they all had escape systems. The Shuttle was going to be so safe that there was no need for a launch escape system.

So much for that.

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Space-X is still very much in it's early stages. And they've had quite a few major failures already.


Falcon-9 has about a 96% success rate, which is quite typical for a new launcher in its first few dozen flights. As I mentioned above, now SpaceX can recover the first stages, they can see where there are problems in the design that might cause launch failures, and fix them.

 

[billt460]

Originally Posted By: emg
When the shuttle first flew--even up to when Challenger was lost--NASA were claiming about a 1 in 10,000 chance of losing a Space Shuttle.


The NASA engineers never claimed it to be that low of a risk. Neither did the astronauts. It was their idiotic management that gave ridiculously low risk numbers for obvious political, and funding reasons.

"After the Challenger exploded in 1986, President Reagan ordered a commission to investigate the disaster, and one of the participants was the famous physicist Richard Feynman. In his appendix to the presidential report, he wrote that the engineers he surveyed estimated such a disaster could happen roughly one out of 100 launches. Management gave figures like one in 100,000.

https://www.npr.org/2011/03/04/134265291/early-space-shuttle-flights-riskier-than-estimated

 

[billt460]

Originally Posted By: emg
The Shuttle was going to be so safe that there was no need for a launch escape system. So much for that.


That's not entirely true either. The first Shuttle flights that lifted off with only a Commander and a Pilot, had ejection seats. They could only be used until it reached a certain speed and altitude. If you listen to the Cap-Com on early Shuttle flights, you can hear the "Negative Seats" call up. (Usually around 1:45 into the flight).

After the Shuttle started launching with a full crew of 7, there was no way they could build a system to eject the astronauts seated on the lower deck. So the entire system was abandoned. It's not that there was "no need". There was simply no way to practically engineer such a system for the vehicle.

 

[emg]

Originally Posted By: billt460
That's not entirely true either. The first Shuttle flights that lifted off with only a Commander and a Pilot, had ejection seats.


Which would just have fired them into the solid rocket booster exhaust, where they would probably have died anyway. The seats were only really useful after the SRBs had separated, which means the crew might well still have died if the SRBs had failed the way they did for Challenger. And they would still have died if the heat shield had been damaged like Columbia's final flight, because no-one knew that until the shuttle was in space.

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It's not that there was "no need".


NASA decided there was no need, or they would have designed it with a way to escape. There were many other proposed shuttle designs: they didn't have to pick the one they finally chose.

 

[John Done]

They also want to send Cybertruck to space. I guess the company produces cars not for regular use but for sending them to space.

 

[kschachn]

They also want to send Cybertruck to space. I guess the company produces cars not for regular use but for sending them to space.

Thanks for joining to resurrect an old thread just for that.

 

[OVERKILL]

Thanks for joining to resurrect an old thread just for that.

He's actually resurrected three that I can see so far, two in the General and Off Topic forum as well. Looks like we have ourselves a necroposter!

 

[ZeeOSix]

He's actually resurrected three that I can see so far, two in the General and Off Topic forum as well. Looks like we have ourselves a necroposter!

All space related posts.

John Done

 

[Jetronic]

Thanks for joining to resurrect an old thread just for that.

isn't this whole thread about reusability?