What If The Discovery Mission Fails?

[Johnny_L.A]

@Sam Stone

The big problem would be finishing the space station, since pieces that are needed for it were designed for the shuttle’s cargo bay and could not be sent into space any other way.

Hey, I have an idea!

Or perhaps NASA would look at alternatives like a heavy-lift craft using the shuttle’s fuel tanks and boosters, with a big cargo pod replacing the shuttle.

Ack. Serves me right for thinking before finishing reading the post!

[carnivorousplant]

Can they can fly and land the shuttle with no one aboard like Buran?

[AndrewL]

Can they can fly and land the shuttle with no one aboard like Buran?

Not at the moment - the Shuttles are designed to only be flown manned. Although the actual flight control and guidance is done by the computers and can be remote-controlled, there are still several steps in the mission process that require on-board crew. It wouldn’t be impossible to make a shuttle fully automated, but AFAIK there’s no plan to do this at the moment. Current thinking seems to be that it will be better to develop a new unmanned cargo carrier based on shuttle-derived hardware.

[zega]

(man these boards are finicky; two failed posts)

@AndrewL

Without the Shuttle, Soyuz and Progress launches can just barely keep the station working in its present unfinished form, until some vital part that’s too large to be taken up by anything other than the Shuttle fails. The ISS was designed from the start to be built and supplied by the Shuttle. Without the Shuttle, the ISS program is dead, even if the Russians can keep it limping along for a few years more.

I’m not saying don’t replace the shuttle, I’m saying scrap it now, keep the ISS “limping” on Russian missions, and build the replacement ASAP. Sam Stone makes my point for me:

@Sam Stone

However… The shuttle and operations budget for 2006 is about 4.9 billion dollars. With no shuttle program, that money could be diverted into the CEV program, more than quadrupling its budget. Mike Griffin, the administrator of NASA, has already said he wants the CEV program moved forward so that it’s flying in 2010 when the shuttle retires. With huge funding boosts and a serious incentive to speed things up, they might be able to move CEV up to maybe 2008, and accelerate other projects as well. So the U.S. might only lack a manned program for 3 or 4 years. Since the U.S. manned program has already been grounded for 2.5 years, this seems survivable. More reliance on Progress rockets and Soyuz for the space station.

A lot of money is being wasted on the current shuttle that could be spent on new crew-only and cargo-only models. The crew-only module could be built to be a lot safer; safety first, right? And by separating the two, priority could be given to the crew-only pod to get it going sooner.

I guess what NASA is trying to do is get as many ISS pieces up before giving up on the shuttle. But there’s nothing crucial about the ISS, other than having a huge budget and therefore a lot of political clout associated with it. I can only hope NASA doesn’t rush or let its risk assessment be skewed by ISS schedules.

[Sam_Stone]

NASA is trying to finish ISS because it has made commitments to its partners to do so. NASA plans to extricate itself from ISS by 2016.