Clark, As ex RCAF I know the mindset of venturesome people, like fighter jocks, and Astronauts are akin to them. They know the odds, and they have their personal belief in immortality, and they knowingly take these chances. The trouble is we stacked the deck. The beurocracy tends to act like a mother wanting you to wear rubber boots, a heavy mackintosh, carry an umbrella, wear extra underwear and then she tells you to have fun.....how can you. There comes a point where the weight of the safety features actually impedes the mission by making it heavy.
What does every pilot now do before each mission?....a pre-flight check. On earth a walk around is easy, in space it is not, but it is absolutely needed to forestall accidents like this. The devil is in the details, and in hindsight a pre-flight inspection is what was needed before they took off from orbit and headed for earth.
Now they say repairs cannot be done, but then other measures can be taken to either land the shuttle or extend the flight until a rescue/supply/repair shuttle could be arranged. Careful reduction of the electric loads on the system would extend the breathing oxygen for some period by diverting less to electric power.
A 25 pounds free floating camera pod, powered by microthrusters, could be programmed to go out and to a systematic scan of the ship. It would radio data back to the shuttle on board video screens and to ground control.
I bet you could make it weight less than 10 pounds with modern CCD image sensors, autofocus etc. Just a videocam in a covered box and a battery and thrusters system, this is an easy project to make. All parts are off the shelf. They could have a protoype in a month and make it perfect in 6 months.
Implement that kind of inspection robot and make a standby shuttle available, and fly them again.
In addition, get a human launcher that is able to take 6-8 people and a ton of supplies up, and let the freight rockets take up the large bits. With use of the work done before a design could be done in a year+, made in another two and flight tested in another two, so 5 years would give us a better system.
Bill |
