DailyDirt: Space Shuttle Stories

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Jun 12th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

For some people, NASA's Space Shuttle program was almost a complete boondoggle. The shuttles never fully lived up to their original promises, and they were far more expensive than planned. But the design of a reusable space plane captures the imagination in a way that an acorn-shaped capsule doesn't. Here are just a few stories about the Space Shuttle that you might have missed.

Wayne Hale, a retired Space Shuttle Flight Director, explains how Columbia was damaged by the loss of insulation foam -- by finding out that Discovery was almost damaged in the same way. It wasn't due to improper foam installation, but instead thermal cycling from filling and re-filling the cryogenic fuel. [url]
On its way to a museum, Enterprise sustains damage to its wingtip after hitting a bridge. The NASA prototype spacecraft never flew in space, and it suffered only cosmetic damage while being transported to its final destination at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan. [url]
Caenorhabditis elegans worms actually survived the Columbia disaster, and their descendants flew into space in 2011 on the Endeavour. Worms on a m*********ing spaceplane! [url]
To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: caenorhabditis elegans, columbia, discovery, endeavour, enterprise, shuttle, space, spacecraft, wayne hale, worms
Companies: nasa

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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2012 @ 6:21pm

cockroaches and worms will outlive us all
It's a wonder that higher organisms have evolved at all when worms and insects seem to be virtually un-kill-able. let's flood MArs with worms and insects to terreform that planet for us.
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Wally (profile), 12 Jun 2012 @ 8:13pm

RAM
One of the least known facts about the shuttle's entire computer system ran on 1 Megabyte of RAM.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2012 @ 8:19pm

Re: RAM
Damn, I guess no Crisis on the trip to orbit.
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LDoBe (profile), 12 Jun 2012 @ 8:27pm

Re: cockroaches and worms will outlive us all
There's actually an ongoing ethical debate about terraforming.

Basically, since we really don't whether there is life of some kind on Mars, we may have an ethical obligation to prevent any kind of biological contamination to the planet, since it might destroy native microbes. And while there has been no evidence of extant life found on Mars, it's foolish to assume there isn't any, since we haven't looked at even 1% of the planet. And even if it does turn out there's no life on Mars at all now, there might have been in the past, and there might be inestimably valuable remains left on the planet that could be damaged irreparably by earth biology.

The long and the short of it is: We don't know what might happen if we contaminate Mars, so our best option is to not do anything biologically to the planet until we have a much more complete picture of the planet.

Besides, we've f**ked up the planet we live on pretty badly. Why would we do any better with Mars?
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Jun 2012 @ 5:55am

Re: RAM
One of the least known facts about the shuttle's entire computer system ran on 1 Megabyte of RAM.

Boondoggle, indeed!

Microsoft could learn a thing or two from NASA software engineers apparently.
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Violated (profile), 13 Jun 2012 @ 10:37am

Re: RAM
Yes and all their computer systems used to launch these Shuttles on the ground were designed and installed back in the 60s. They never once updated these ancient computers when it would have been vastly too expensive.

Those computer went at the same time the Shuttles did. Compare that to modern launches using laptops or the latest touch-screen.
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Wally (profile), 13 Jun 2012 @ 1:29pm

Re: Re: RAM
If I recall, the specific type was magnetic core memory so the flight computer could track where they were in case of an emergency where it got shut off :-)
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