AirSpaceMag.com

Looking to add a little acrimony to your life? Join the debate about the Obama Administration’s decision to cancel NASA’s Constellation Program. That decision would direct commercial companies, such as SpaceX, which already has 27 unmanned flights on its launch manifest, to take over the job of moving astronauts from the ground to low Earth orbit. NASA, meanwhile, would divert billions per year from this type of activity into studying technologies that will someday get humans beyond low Earth orbit, back to the moon, and finally to Mars.

But that has invited a debate about safety, and the huge expense of human-rating a rocket for flights to low Earth orbit. Skeptics of commercial human spaceflight say the expense of human-rating will dramatically drive up the costs for companies like SpaceX. The company counters that they’ve built their Falcon 9, which will make its first flight in two weeks, with human rating standards all along, and that they would add a launch abort system as they move toward flying astronauts. A launch abort system, the long tower above a Soyuz capsule that contains small, powerful rockets to pull the crew away from a failing booster, rode atop all the manned rockets used in the Mercury and Apollo programs (Gemini used ejection seats). The shuttle has never had one, though it had ejection seats on the first four flights, which carried just two astronauts.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX

Regardless of whether NASA or SpaceX builds the next vehicle to ferry humans to the space station, there will be a gap of several years, during which American astronauts will have to ride on Soyuz. And that has given way to another debate about safety: Will NASA astronauts be less safe going to and from orbit exclusively on Soyuz? This debate, at least, can be properly examined with some firm numbers.

Soyuz TM-31 prepares to carry the first resident crew to the International Space Station in October 2000. Credit: NASA

Through the most recent mission, STS-130 in February 2010, the shuttle has taken 788 people to orbit (“people” includes repeat fliers—so Franklin Chang Diaz’s seven flights would count as seven people). Fourteen astronauts lost their lives on Challenger and Columbia, which leaves a ratio of one fatality for every 56 people taken to orbit. Soyuz has orbited 250 people, not including two successful aborts: Soyuz 18a in April 1975, which occurred late in a launch 90 miles high, and Soyuz T-10-1 in September 1983, on the launch pad. The program has suffered four fatalities: one on Soyuz 1 in April 1967, and the other three on Soyuz 11 in June 1971. That’s one Soyuz fatality for every 63 people delivered to orbit. Based on those ratios, Soyuz is a little safer.

But there’s also the number of manned launches: shuttle, 130; Soyuz, 103. Who knows if Soyuz might have a critical failure in the next 27 flights? It’s only fair, however, to point out that Soyuz hasn’t had a fatality in almost 29 years. Maybe they’ve worked out the kinks.

Some of the Russian rocket’s safety rating is due simply to the existence of its launch abort system. The shuttle, by contrast, beginning with STS-5, and continuing through the Challenger disaster, the 25th flight, offered no escape for the crew once the solid rocket boosters were lit. After Challenger, a telescoping slide pole was installed in the mid-deck that requires each astronaut to unbuckle from the seat, attach a ring to the pole, and dive out the side hatch for a parachute descent. The orbiter would have to be in a controlled  glide below 50,000 feet and traveling slower than 230 miles an hour.

Finally, NASA astronauts have been riding Soyuz since Norm Thagard’s flight in 1995, and relied on it exclusively for 30 months after the Columbia tragedy. Adding the 32 months that the shuttle was grounded after the Challenger tragedy, the shuttle has been out of service due to fatal safety problems for more than five years out of its 29-year life.

STS-1 launches, April 1981. Credit: NASA

No matter how much careful engineering and modeling went into the design of the shuttle—and few deny that it performs beautifully despite its complexity—the decision to put men on it the first time it flew may have revealed some NASA hubris. STS-1 encountered many issues such as tiles that separated from the orbiter and different flying characteristics at high speed than those predicted by computer models. Most worrisome, an overpressure wave from the solid rocket booster ignition pushed the orbiter’s body flap below the main engines past a threshold at which engineers would have expected damage to the vehicle’s hydraulic system, and would have made reentry impossible. The crew didn’t know about this until after the flight. Upon learning of it, commander John Young, according to space historian James Oberg, said: “I’d have ridden the vehicle up to a safe altitude, and while still in the ejection envelope I’d have pulled the ring.” On its inaugural launch, Columbia would have gone to the bottom of the Atlantic.

So important questions remain: Who, in the coming years of human spaceflight, will be the arbiter of safety? What criteria will they use? How soon will they allow astronauts to ride a new rocket? And when a commercial operator suffers a fatality—which will happen eventually—will the government shut down commercial human spaceflight? Or will the government acknowledge, as it did after the Apollo 1 fire, and after Challenger and Columbia, that human spaceflight is a dangerous business, but that it must continue?

[Revised March 31, 11:42 a.m.]

Twitpic photo: Astro_Clay

Maybe it’s the advent of Twitter and Facebook. Maybe it’s because there are only a few space shuttle flights left. But 50 years into the space age, NASA astronauts seem to be loosening up in the way they present themselves to the public.

Case in point: this photo posted on the Twitter page of Clayton Anderson, who’ll fly as a Mission Specialist on next month’s STS-131 mission. Presumably that’s Anderson’s wife wishing her husband well before a practice spacewalk. The picture doesn’t appear on NASA’s STS-131 photo page. Can anyone else recall a photo of an astronaut kissing his/her spouse during training, even though that surely happens all the time? If so, let us know.

The yellow broadsheet, published three times a month out of Crossville, Tennessee, is the go-to paper for all things aircraft. Warning: can be habit-forming. It’s like picking up a map: you get blissfully lost in the details. Here’s a sample of the latest classifieds.

Under Help Wanted:

“Need 1 good man. Must be familiar w/Chinese MiG-17 (JJ5).”  (Applicants are advised to send qualifications to a Houston, Texas address.)

Under Personal:

“PhD, ATP, CFII, 47, blond, blue eyes, romantic, interested in traveling, gardening, cooking, looking for a marriage orientated [sic] woman 30-65.”

Under Warbirds Misc.:

“F-16 External fuel tanks and boarding ladders, good condition.”

“F-18 Fuel Wing Tip Drop Tanks, 100 available at Red Deer, Alta., Canada.”

What the –? [Scratching head] Where did they come from, and where are they going? Comments welcome.

Photograph by D'Arcy Norman / Flickr.

Green America’s February 2010 report, What Goes Up Must Come Down: The Sorry State of Recycling in the Airline Industry, takes the study of garbage to new heights. It seems that the average passenger generates 1.3 pounds of refuse per flight, which doesn’t sound like a lot, until you consider that there were 678 million airline passenger trips in the U.S. alone in 2008—generating some 881 million pounds of trash. Seventy-five percent of this waste is recyclable, says Green America, but only 20 percent actually is recycled. Included in this rejected rubbish are enough aluminum cans to build 58 Boeing 747 jets, the organization claims.

The report ranks the recycling programs of 11 airlines commonly flown by Americans. While no carrier gets a “A,” Delta Airlines comes out on top, earning a B- partially for the size of its in-flight recycling program (which includes aluminum cans, plastic bottles, plastic trays, beverage cups, newspapers, and magazines). Virgin America also receives a “B-” due, in part, to its practice of offering passengers local, organic, and sustainable foods on flights, and for flying Airbus A320s, which have fewer CO2 emissions than some other aircraft. Virgin Atlantic and Southwest Airlines earn a Gentleman’s C, while Continental Airlines, JetBlue, American Airlines, British Airways, and Air Tran get lackluster “Ds”. Failing grades are reserved for both United Airlines (which only collects and recycles plastic and aluminum beverage containers on flights that land in Hawaii) and US Airways (possibly because the company declined to participate in Green America’s survey, and the existence of an in-flight recycling program is unknown).

NASM Image # SI 2000-10682

In 1928, Elinor Smith, at age 16, became the youngest pilot to earn a license, which was signed by Orville Wright. She made headlines later that year by flying under New York City’s four East River bridges. With Bobbi Trout as co-pilot, they became the first women aviators to refuel an airplane in mid-air in 1929. A group of her peers, including Amelia Earhart, voted her Best Female Pilot in 1930. Smith set numerous speed, altitude, distance, and endurance records in the 1930s, then took a break to raise four children. She resumed flying in the 1950s, piloting military transport planes and jets.

Elinor was a great letter-writer. In 1991, we were dishing about British-born flier Beryl Markham, author of West With The Night. “She certainly was an interesting lady,” Elinor wrote tactfully. “As to her private pecadillos—WOW! We’ll have to get together some day and compare notes!”

I remember Elinor fondly as an energetic and occasionally feisty old lady, and I want to be just like her when I’m 98.

(Read the reminiscence that Smith wrote for our September 1988 issue, or listen to an NPR interview with National Air and Space Museum curator Dorothy Cochrane about Smith’s life.)