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Space shuttle to go the distance

Venerable space shuttles, America's space trucks, aging but respected space draft horses, won't likely be replaced for decades. Congress won't likely give NASA the money. Shuttles often carrying 1950s and 1960s technology may become the early 2000s' B-52: a high-tech antique still flying in the 2020s and 2030s, with pilots not born when it first flew. B-52 analogy is valid. Space shuttles will be hard to replace. Scheduled for 2005 completion the space station is assembled primarily via shuttles carrying components to low Earth orbit. Delayed retirement is noble but ironic for the shuttles, which almost died in the crib when Nixon half-heartedly proposed it to a reluctant Congress. The fleet's doom also seemed certain when in Jan 1986 the Challenger exploded over Florida on TV. Long after doomsayers predicted a second shuttle disaster they still fly 7 - 8 times a year. Although shuttles Columbia, Atlantis, Endeavor and Discovery age gracefully they must be upgraded and made safer and more efficient. Long-hoped-for replacement vehicles such as single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicles that would take off and land horizontally like airplanes won't likely become major players in aerospace for decades, given present tight federal funding for aerospace research. The shuttle lands horizontally. Unlike the hypothetical SSTO it takes off vertically, propelled into space by a large orange-brown external tank of liquid fuel and 2 smaller rockets packed with solid or plastic-like fuel. Federal funding is so tight NASA holds bake sales. Possible shuttle retrofits - proposals to keep the aging shuttles reliable include:

*Replace dangerous solid-rocket boosters, playing a key role in the fatal 1986 Challenger explosion, with reusable, winged liquid-fueled rockets that would drop off during launch and return to Earth.

*Place electronic components inside the whitish tiles that serve as the shuttle's skin and protect it from severe heat as it reenters the atmosphere. The electronics would automatically warn ground crews if a tile had been damaged by, say, a meteor.

*Replace helium-triggered actuators that activate shuttle mechanical components with more reliable, gas-free alternatives.

Will such technical innovations keep the shuttle flying safely into the 2020s and 2030s? Or will they be as useless as plugging holes in the Titanic with gum? The 1986 Challenger explosion was caused not by faulty technology but faulty decision making, pushing technology to do more than it was designed for, not heeding engineers' warnings not to launch shuttles on cold days. Cold impaired a simple O-ring, triggering a chain of technical mishaps that blew up the ship. Prize physicist Richard Feynman helped investigate the catastrophe. In a memorable remark much quoted afterward Feynman accused NASA of trying to fool nature, but nature can't be fooled. Is NASA trying to fool nature again? The question arose with 3 small holes in a rocket engine nozzle on Columbia shortly after its return from space. On that mission, piloted by the first female shuttle commander, Air Force Col Eileen Collins, the shuttle hauled into orbit the giant Chandra X-ray telescope which will scan the heavens for black holes and other galactic exotica. Former shuttle commander Shaw insists NASA must make do with shuttles for a long time to come. They get so much tender loving care they're almost like new at liftoff. "No reason you can't fly them a very long time. On the other hand we must develop complementary or backup space transportation just in case. I'm not worried about disaster. We work hard to preclude that. It's not in our national interest to put our eggs in one basket," he said.

Disney in space

NASA seeks shuttle sponsors

Mickey Mouse may not be on the next space shuttle's wing but possible NASA-Disney partnership in space was clear at the first Shuttle Development Conference of 700+ people at Mountain View's NASA/Ames Research Center. Disney, its core product perfectly suited to NASA, could place a Webcam in the shuttle for 24-hour mission coverage. Space is fundamentally about obstacles. The 4-day conference in Hangar 1 promoted upgrading the shuttle program, underscoring the private sector's increasing role in space exploration. In the 1960s there was no question we were behind in the space program. Today NASA turns over as much as possible things private industry can do faster and cheaper than the government. As conference participants spoke glowingly of the international space station and the shuttle program, many wanting to repopularize space acknowledged the American public's waning interest. Space.com aims to raise public interest, combining space industry news with e-commerce to bring to young minds the same curiosity and desire to explore space people had when man first walked on the moon.

For those who build and operate the shuttle the conference's primary purpose was networking, share and learn from each other and combine capabilities and expertise. Over 2,000 companies in 44 states contribute parts and services to the program, from Boeing's Rocketdyne Division designing the shuttle's main engine to smaller firms making flight simulation software. On the most recent mission the Columbia shuttle developed leaks in 3 liquid hydrogen tubes along the nozzle. Though the problem did not jeopardize crew safety, questions were raised about sensitivity of the shuttle's diagnostic equipment. NASA/Ames is a leader in sensory technology, giving automated feedback on a machine's working conditions to engineers in labs. Boeing and Ames engineers brainstormed on applying that technology to the leaking tubes problem.

X-ray eye in the sky peers into cosmos

Shuttle carries potent telescope

Think TV's violent? Check images from a new observatory in space. X-ray telescope Chandra, launched aboard space shuttle Columbia, will map galaxy-gobbling black holes, exploding stars, neutron star collisions and cosmic cataclysms we never thought of. Plans include mapping vast spider web-like hot cosmic gas streams slowly collapsing into galaxies. The $1.55 billion Chandra X-ray Observatory is space-based astronomy's biggest breakthrough since 1990's Hubble Space Telescope and 1991's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. 45-ft Hubble, seeing in visible light, is astronomy's Ansel Adams, revealing cosmic vistas of unparalleled beauty and grandeur. Compton maps gamma radiation from the sky. 45-ft Chandra, taking over 20 years to develop, will map cosmic sources of X-rays. Chandra is a technological zoo with millions and millions of parts to worry about if one wants to. Hubble orbits circular, close to Earth. Chandra orbits an elliptical 6,000 - 80,000 miles from Earth, 1/3 of the way to the moon. Chandra will map X-ray radiation from matter being compressed and heated as it plunges into black holes, and from super-hot debris from exploded stars. Chandra will look for X-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursters, puzzling gamma bursts from point sources far beyond nearby galaxies. Chandra will measure X-rays from Jupiter's atmosphere and from comets.

Cosmic X-rays are emitted by extremely hot objects with temperatures of millions of degrees. The sun's surface is only 10,000 degrees F. One mystery Chandra should solve is the nature of cosmic X-ray radiation coming from all directions. Astronomers are uncertain whether all the radiation truly comes from all directions or from innumerable individual X-ray sources such as stars so vast in number they appear merged into a smooth surface, like dots in a newspaper photograph. Past X-ray space images were fuzzy, poorly focused. Chandra's images are more precise, with fine resolution characteristic of visible light pictures. X-ray astronomy is a Cold War spinoff. In the 1960s orbital space probes scanned for sudden flashes of X-ray radiation, revealing covert Soviet nuclear bomb tests on Earth or in the upper atmosphere or deep space. Space probes detected cosmic X-rays not from nuclear bombs but from a previously unknown, unbelievably bright type of star, the quasar (quasi-stellar object) Quasars are thought to be radiation from a galaxy slowly devoured by a black hole.

Chandra is named for Nobel Prize-winning Indian astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who taught at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay WI. Chandra's students included Carl Sagan. Scornful of scientific inexactitude, Chandra intimidated students. They avoided passing his office when he was there, according to Kameshwar C Wali's 1991 biography. Chandra kept Mickey Mouse comic books in his desk. Thanks to super instruments like Chandra's namesake we'll finally understand or not understand the universe.