Hubble Mission Delayed

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6030998.html

Hubble mission postponed until next year.

Looks like another part failed over the weekend, so NASA is getting a new
one and spending time training the crew on its replacement.


--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

On Sep 29, 7:16*pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6030998.html

Hubble mission postponed until next year.

Looks like another part failed over the weekend, so NASA is getting a new
one and spending time training the crew on its replacement.

--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

Just Great, now what do I do with my air fare !!??!!

" wrote in message
...

Just Great, now what do I do with my air fare !!??!!

Invest it? ;-)

Sell it to someone that wants to go to Central Florida next monday..
ever heard of Craig's list ?

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:24:38 GMT, "Alan Erskine"
wrote:

" wrote in message
...

Just Great, now what do I do with my air fare !!??!!

Invest it? ;-)

On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:16:42 -0400, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


Hubble mission postponed until next year.

And the Shuttle's fly-out schedule just went up in flames. Did we just
lose a flight, assuming 2010 holds? Sure looks that way. A four month
delay means Atlantis will be four months later returning to service
after the post-Hubble mods, and they didn't have four months extra to
spare.

They might be able to make up some time by flying both 126 and 119
before trying 125 again, and flying 125 in the long ISS 'no-Shuttle'
gap from March to May, but that keeps Atlantis earth-bound an
additional 2+ months. No matter how you slice it, they've lost an
Atlantis slot in the launch rotation and the dominoes fall from there.

Can they have Discovery and S6 ready to fly in the mid-January window,
using the 125 stack? That could buy back a month.

Constellation is stuck in the crossfire, too. They won't get Pad 39B
or their MLP until March at best, May-June more likely. So Ares 1-X is
probably well over a year away now (not that it matters much for that
hopelessly behind schedule program.)

Brian

On Sep 29, 11:26*pm, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:16:42 -0400, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"

wrote:
Hubble mission postponed until next year.

And the Shuttle's fly-out schedule just went up in flames. Did we just
lose a flight, assuming 2010 holds? Sure looks that way. A four month
delay means Atlantis will be four months later returning to service
after the post-Hubble mods, and they didn't have four months extra to
spare.

They might be able to make up some time by flying both 126 and 119
before trying 125 again, and flying 125 in the long ISS 'no-Shuttle'
gap from March to May, but that keeps Atlantis earth-bound an
additional 2+ months. No matter how you slice it, they've lost an
Atlantis slot in the launch rotation and the dominoes fall from there.

Can they have Discovery and S6 ready to fly in the mid-January window,
using the 125 stack? That could buy back a month.

Constellation is stuck in the crossfire, too. They won't get Pad 39B
or their MLP until March at best, May-June more likely. So Ares 1-X is
probably well over a year away now (not that it matters much for that
hopelessly behind schedule program.)

Brian

Whenever they launch STS-125, it means Atlantis will need more time
than normal to be processed for STS-128 to the ISS. So if they flew
STS-119 as planned in Feb, then bump STS-125 to whenever Endeavour
could be prepared for STS-127 and also used for the LON STS-400,
probably around May sometime, could they then use Discovery on STS-128
and keep the late-July timeframe and Atlantis fly STS-129 in the
fall?? That'd keep them a little more on schedule, assuming nothing
else happened along the way. If STS-125 happens in Feb, then it's
pretty commited to flying -128 which would then slip to the fall...
how important is it to have the orbiters currently assigned to ISS
flights be the ones to fly them (weight restrictions, etc)?

wrote:

Whenever they launch STS-125, it means Atlantis will need more time
than normal to be processed for STS-128 to the ISS. So if they flew
STS-119 as planned in Feb, then bump STS-125 to whenever Endeavour
could be prepared for STS-127 and also used for the LON STS-400,
probably around May sometime, could they then use Discovery on STS-128
and keep the late-July timeframe and Atlantis fly STS-129 in the
fall?? That'd keep them a little more on schedule, assuming nothing
else happened along the way. If STS-125 happens in Feb, then it's
pretty commited to flying -128 which would then slip to the fall...
how important is it to have the orbiters currently assigned to ISS
flights be the ones to fly them (weight restrictions, etc)?

130/20A is the only flight that needs to stick with its orbiter
(Endeavour) for weight reasons. It could fly on the others but requires
a lower rendezvous altitude, which in turn might require an ISS deboost.

SSPTS is the big constraint against moving missions between orbiters.
Atlantis doesn't have SSPTS and therefore can't support the same docked
duration and number of EVAs as the other orbiters. The timelines for the
missions are built with that understanding.

On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 08:10:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:


Whenever they launch STS-125, it means Atlantis will need more time
than normal to be processed for STS-128 to the ISS. So if they flew
STS-119 as planned in Feb, then bump STS-125 to whenever Endeavour
could be prepared for STS-127 and also used for the LON STS-400,
probably around May sometime, could they then use Discovery on STS-128
and keep the late-July timeframe and Atlantis fly STS-129 in the
fall?? That'd keep them a little more on schedule, assuming nothing
else happened along the way. If STS-125 happens in Feb, then it's
pretty commited to flying -128 which would then slip to the fall...
how important is it to have the orbiters currently assigned to ISS
flights be the ones to fly them (weight restrictions, etc)?

Atlantis is supposed to have her mini-OMM between Hubble and her next
flight, so I doubt Atlantis will fly twice in 2009. My money is on 119
flying before 125, and 125 in late April.

I think we've lost one of the remaining flights, unless Congress and
the President extend past 2010, which I doubt will happen (the next
President won't be campaigning for votes in Florida anymore, and the
next Congress will have a bad case of sticker shock thanks to the
current Congress's one trillion dollar handout to Wall Street
speculators.)

I find it mind-boggling that NASA just threw away a Shuttle flight for
the sake of adding a little more redundancy to Hubble. Is having both
Sides working again really all that criticial, given that Side A
lasted 18 years? Is that worth losing a Shuttle flight's worth of
spare parts to ISS? NASA just said "yes", and it doesn't appear they
gave it a helluva lot of thought (all of two days internal debate, at
most, between Saturday's failure and Monday's scrub announcement.)

Brian