how many space shuttles does the US have?

[drmirage]

since we lost columbia :( and lost challenger

how many space shuttles do we have left? anyone have any idea how much these costs?

[mfspolo]

3:sad:


:marco:

[drmirage]

Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor

[mfspolo]

they had 5 i thought????

lost 2 now they only have 3:dunno:


:marco:

[Azn328i]

THAT SUX... ITS SABOTAGE! RAaAaA

[Chocaine]

anyone have any idea how much these costs?
approx. 2.1 billion

[Impulss]

I thought there was one named Enterprise? :chase:

[drewcon]

no thats an aircraft carrier.

first nuclear powered one at that. :thumbup:

[Harvinator]

Originally posted by mfspolo
they had 5 i thought????

lost 2 now they only have 3:dunno:


:marco:
You are right - those 4 above plus Challenger. They lost Challenger and Columbia now.

[Skybum]

Actually the prototype shuttle was named Enterprise.

When you think about the shuttles' track record kind of sucks. This was STS-107. So in 107 missions we've had 2 losses. That sucks.

[King of Chicago]

how can you say that sucks?
less then 2% failure rate
and lets not overlook the fact we're traveling at mindboggling speeds over unimaginable distances.....

[lilherc79]

absolutely. i think the shuttles have absolutely proven their worth and have lived up to their potential despite the dangers involved. Its time to invent the next generation of space shuttles.

[pfloyd57]

Stupid CNN had a crawl going on yesterday saying that the Columbia was travelling at 18 times the speed of LIGHT. Oh really?

If NASA builds another shuttle (which I seriously doubt) they ought to call it the Phoenix.

[M3Inline6]

The U.S. had 22 shuttles before the loss of Columbia! So now it's 21. Columbia was the oldest of the fleet!

[Fraggle]

Originally posted by M3Inline6
The U.S. had 22 shuttles before the loss of Columbia! So now it's 21. Columbia was the oldest of the fleet!

No no no...

While your correct that the Columbia was the oldest of the operational fleet, Enterprise (a flight, but not spaceworthy prototype that currently resides in Huntsville, AL) is older by a good bit.

There are only 3 operational Shuttles left

Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavor-(Challengers Replacement)

I do think people need to realize when they say that the shuttle is too old of a design, they need to remember that even as old as it is, it is still an excellent design (the USSR agreed too, does anyone remember their shuttle?)

The US has had a remarkably safe space program compared to the only other space fairing nation, Russia. Space travel is VERY dangerous, and we tend to forget that until something like this happens.

[eksath]

Originally posted by M3Inline6
The U.S. had 22 shuttles before the loss of Columbia! So now it's 21. Columbia was the oldest of the fleet!


Where the heck did you get "22"?....The current operational number = 3.

The Enterprise was only capable of gliding back to earth from piggyback release of the NASA 747. I think it is in storage with Rockwell (not sure on that one).

[eksath]

Originally posted by mod220
how can you say that sucks?
less then 2% failure rate
and lets not overlook the fact we're traveling at mindboggling speeds over unimaginable distances.....

Agreed it travel to Space and there is a certain element of engineering to be over come but..........
If you compare the Shuttle stats with airline aircraft, it is very bad. i.e. if the Shuttle was a commercial plane it would be grounded by the FAA. As a private pilot, i would NOT fly it. Look at the stats below for the common commercial aircrafts. An event is defined as the an incident in which there was a fatality. Rank is leval of safety flights/events. Higher the number more dangerous it is.

Model Events No. Flights Rank

Aerospatiale Concorde 1 0.08 Million 19
Airbus A300 9 8.0 Million 12
Airbus A310 5 2.7 Million 13
Airbus A319/320/321 4 6.0 Million 7
Boeing 727 4 70.0 Million 6
Boeing 737 4 76.0 Million 5
Boeing 747 24 14.8 Million 14
Boeing 757 4 7.2 Million 4
Boeing 767 3 6.5 Million 3
British Aerospace BAe 146 4 4.5 Million 10
Embraer 110 Bandeirante 28 7.5 Million 17
Embraer 120 Brasilia 5 7.0 Million 8
Fokker F-28 20 8.5 Million 16
Fokker F-70/F-100 3 4.5 Million 7
Lockheed L-1011 Tristar 5 5.5 Million 11
McDonnell Douglas DC-9 42 55.5 Million 9
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 15 7.6 Million 15
McDonnell Douglas MD-80 9 20 Million 2
McDonnell Douglas MD-11 4 0.7 Million 18
Saab 340 3 9.0 Million 1

[eksath]

Sorry guys the table got all messed up..... but here is the website i got the numbers/stats from:
http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/

[M3Inline6]

I got my info about the 22 shuttles from CNN (or was it the newspaper???:dunno: ) I've only read 2 articles about the whole shuttle incident, and in one of those articles, it stated that. So either CNN or the Sun/Times was wrong! Damn, I can't even remember what paper it was (work has got me stressing! :banghead: ). But I believe that info came from CNN's website!

[eksath]

Originally posted by M3Inline6
I got my info about the 22 shuttles from CNN (or was it the newspaper???:dunno: ) I've only read 2 articles about the whole shuttle incident, and in one of those articles, it stated that. So either CNN or the Sun/Times was wrong! Damn, I can't even remember what paper it was (work has got me stressing! :banghead: ). But I believe that info came from CNN's website!


:D ....no big deal....but most news organizations are horrible with technical details and facts...i have seen some awful reporting on aviation

[B]

Originally posted by M3Inline6
I got my info about the 22 shuttles from CNN (or was it the newspaper???:dunno: ) I've only read 2 articles about the whole shuttle incident, and in one of those articles, it stated that. So either CNN or the Sun/Times was wrong! Damn, I can't even remember what paper it was (work has got me stressing! :banghead: ). But I believe that info came from CNN's website!

well it sounds like you got the length of service mixed up because I believe the shuttles have been around for 22 years... :dunno:

[Swancoat]

Originally posted by eksath


Agreed it travel to Space and there is a certain element of engineering to be over come but..........
If you compare the Shuttle stats with airline aircraft, it is very bad. i.e. if the Shuttle was a commercial plane it would be grounded by the FAA. As a private pilot, i would NOT fly it. Look at the stats below for the common commercial aircrafts. An event is defined as the an incident in which there was a fatality. Rank is leval of safety flights/events. Higher the number more dangerous it is.

Model Events No. Flights Rank

Aerospatiale Concorde 1 0.08 Million 19
Airbus A300 9 8.0 Million 12
Airbus A310 5 2.7 Million 13
Airbus A319/320/321 4 6.0 Million 7
Boeing 727 4 70.0 Million 6
Boeing 737 4 76.0 Million 5
Boeing 747 24 14.8 Million 14
Boeing 757 4 7.2 Million 4
Boeing 767 3 6.5 Million 3
British Aerospace BAe 146 4 4.5 Million 10
Embraer 110 Bandeirante 28 7.5 Million 17
Embraer 120 Brasilia 5 7.0 Million 8
Fokker F-28 20 8.5 Million 16
Fokker F-70/F-100 3 4.5 Million 7
Lockheed L-1011 Tristar 5 5.5 Million 11
McDonnell Douglas DC-9 42 55.5 Million 9
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 15 7.6 Million 15
McDonnell Douglas MD-80 9 20 Million 2
McDonnell Douglas MD-11 4 0.7 Million 18
Saab 340 3 9.0 Million 1

This is crazy, you cannot compare the safety level of a space shuttle to an airplane. Air travel has been going on since roughly 1910, and have logged literally billions of miles and many fatalaties before the above mentioned planes were ever designed. Also, you have to give some consideration to the shuttle for the altitudes it hits, and the stresses it faces.

If you compared the fatality rate per mile driven for racing cars vs. passenger cars, you'd find that racing cars have a much, much lower fatality rate - yet no-one's calling passenger cars deathtraps.

[eksath]

Originally posted by Swancoat


This is crazy, you cannot compare the safety level of a space shuttle to an airplane. Air travel has been going on since roughly 1910, and have logged literally billions of miles and many fatalaties before the above mentioned planes were ever designed. Also, you have to give some consideration to the shuttle for the altitudes it hits, and the stresses it faces.

If you compared the fatality rate per mile driven for racing cars vs. passenger cars, you'd find that racing cars have a much, much lower fatality rate - yet no-one's calling passenger cars deathtraps.


Swancoat,

I totally agree to the assumption that space travel is inherrently more dangerous than air travel but you seem to miss the whole scheme of things. So was air travel using old technology!

Let me play the devil's advocate here:

If I used your logic that safety in air travel is based on past experience. Then Vostok 1 lifted off with Yuri Gargarin on April 12, 1961. Since then we have had numerous designs of spacecraft. So 42 years of space travel and our shuttle has such a bad safety record? So bad that almost 1 in 50 flights leads to catastrophic failure!

Our first powered aircraft flight was in 1903 (Wright brothers). 42 years after that we had a very good mastery of the air. We were just finishing WWII and the jet engine and mass transport by plane was here.

Here is the whole scheme that you have failed to realize or acknowledge. 42 years since the first manned space travel our shuttle program is not up to mark. We still lack a stable and reliable space transport system (except for the Russian Soyuz)

In contrast, our Apollo program was far superior. Unfortunatley 75 % of NASA budget has been pumped into making a Freighter that flies like a big,freaking DUCK.:thumbdwn:


Your logic on race cars/ versus passenger car miles is playing with stats. Given the high number of flights by the aircrafts (in the millions), the only way to look at these number in a comparable way to the Shuttle is to look at flight numbers. However, even if you were to figure out how much these flights translated to miles, I SINCERELY DOUBT THE SHUTTLE WILL COME OUT BETTER ( even if each shuttle flight involves 100' s of thousands of miles).
Imagine this: You are more likely of slipping and falling in your bath tub and getting a fatal injury THAN dying in commercial air travel. That, my friend, is tribute to the engineers and the aircrafts. We need these very same standards for space travel if we expect to colonize mars,moon etc.:)

I still put it to you: if the shuttle presented itself for FAA civil transport certification, it would be rejected due to its low safety rate.;)

[noahabel]

You go Eksath, kick that crazy aerospace knowledge! :bow:

For real, where is the next-gen space shuttle. 22 years with an identical design? I know a new design is only going to create new problems, but come on. They have to at least have some way to improve on the design, to integrate new technologies, lightweight materials. I read that there are system components on the Shuttle that are no longer made, and that NASA cruises e-bay looking to buy stuff to repair elements of the shuttle. :dunno: :banghead:

It just feels like we haven't made any real progress in the last 22 years with what our capabilities are. Look at the first 20 years of the space program versus the last. The improvement curve has flattened out substantially.

Maybe I'm misinformed, which I usually am. :confused:

[eksath]

Originally posted by noahabel
.............Look at the first 20 years of the space program versus the last. The improvement curve has flattened out substantially.




AS Werhner Von Braun showed with Gemini,Mercury and Apollo:
You don't need a pseudoplane to go to space. All you need is a dumb rocket. We wasted soo much money and time building a "spaceplane". In the end we have a sucky spaceship and a sucky plane (it can only glide back). We compromised so much of our overall mission by trying to do everything in one package.(kinda of like the V-22 Osprey helicopter-plane for the Marines)

In contrast the Russian Buran is probably a better version of the Shuttle, even if it looks like a "shuttleski". ...

If we can achieve 7 miles/sec we are in space then we worry about coming back less gracefully but reliably like the Soyuz.:D

[Swancoat]

Originally posted by eksath


I still put it to you: if the shuttle presented itself for FAA civil transport certification, it would be rejected due to its low safety rate.;)

You make some pretty good points above, but I guess the important thing (to me at least) is that the shuttle is NOT presented for civil transport. This is a pseudo-military operation that pushes the boundaries. It's still a learning process, not a refining process as with flight.

Regardless, your argument does provide me with some interesting food for thought.

Jeremy

[eksath]

Agreed. I believe in space travel and i think it is a worthy and necessary for survival of the specis. Hopefully we can get back on track after they clean up the mess.

But remember NASA is a CIVILIAN organization. It is NOT military. The military member s are seconded to NASA. Also, most of the missions flown are civilian hence the civilian adminstrations and rules. Also, a lot of the astronauts are civilians,too.

If you are ever in Ft.Lauderdale look me up as i do a lot of research into biomedical applications in space/astronomy. I will give you a tour of the cosmos from ground leval.

Eksath

[kyoko]

Maybe they should get bangle to design the new space shuttle:lmao: :lmao:

In all seriousness, it sucks what happend over the weekend, and I'm sure that we'll learn and move on. Space travel is still very dangerous, and even though we have made many advances, all these advances come at a huge cost.

Just think about how much we need to spend to send a shuttle up to space. All the prep work before the launch and all the people helping out the mission on the ground when it's happening.